The Top 6 Things I’ve Done to Better My Mental Health

My dedication to my mental health has improved my life in ways I couldn’t have predicted. Read on for the steps that made all the difference and the most noticeable results of my hard work.

Recovering from depression isn’t a linear process. I’ve lived with depression for over a decade. But for the past 5 years or so, I’ve begun to focus on finding healthy coping skills, putting my all into therapy, and building a life I want to live.

Of course, I still have bad days — and weeks — where my depression rears its head. Overall, however, focusing on mental health recovery improved my life in so many ways.

But how did I do it? In no particular order, here are the top six things I’ve done in the past 5 years that have given me some relief from my depression and mental health issues.

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Weekly talk therapy

Since I was 14 and my parents noticed I was feeling depressed, I’ve seen a therapist once a week or once every other week. Through high school and college, I went to therapy as an obligation to my family. I missed appointments, I refused to open up, and I failed to take what I learned in therapy and apply it to my life.

After I graduated college and the COVID pandemic began, I was forced to sit alone with my thoughts and emotions and I realized something needed to change.

That’s when I started focusing on therapy and committing myself to healing. I had to face my fears of sharing my thoughts and emotions and actually try some of the suggestions my therapist gave me. I soon realized therapy was a helpful tool I could rely on to keep me afloat.

Opening up made it easier to process what was going on inside my head and I learned many new coping skills that helped me manage my mental health issues.

I still see the same therapist I had when I was 14 and I’m very grateful for the impact she’s had on my life over the years. Therapy has become something I can rely on to support me each week and hold me accountable for staying dedicated to recovery.

EMDR therapy

While talk therapy is an essential part of my healing journey, it has its limitations. When I first tried to approach talking about traumatic events that caused my PTSD, I would completely shut down. Every thought would leave my head and I would be stuck with feelings of fear and shame.

My therapist noticed this block and suggested I try Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy (EMDR) to help process my trauma and reduce symptoms of PTSD.

Research suggests that EMDR is an effective tool for trauma healing, and my personal experience aligns with the science. In EMDR, I didn’t have to talk about my trauma to process it. I got to sit quietly and process the trauma in my thoughts rather than speak with someone about it, which helped me overcome a huge hurdle.

EMDR helped decrease many symptoms of my PTSD like hypervigilance, emotional flashbacks, and the intensity of my emotions surrounding my trauma.

Ketamine infusions

In January of 2023, I faced a particularly low moment with my depression.

I felt hopeless and like I was no longer feeling improvements with my weekly talk therapy sessions. I struggled to verbalize what I was going through, so talking through my struggles with my therapist felt nearly impossible. The Zoloft I was on felt more numbing than anything, and I realized I needed to jolt my brain out of a rut.

After much research, I gave ketamine infusions a try.

The treatment wasn’t covered by insurance or FDA-approved, but studies suggest overwhelmingly positive outcomes. I decided to go for it, and I’m so glad I did.

The infusions were painless and the mind-altering effects of the treatment were short-lived. However, the positive results were incredible.

The treatment cleared my mind and helped me identify the difference between depressed thoughts and my own identity. I also felt more energized after my infusions and noticed an uptick in my motivation. Best of all, the ketamine helped relieve some of my suicidal ideation.

It allowed me the space to get my life back on track and start looking forward to the future.

Seeking intensive care

The idea of going to an inpatient psychiatric hospital can be scary. You lose access to your TV, phone, and favorite clothes. You don’t get to sleep in the comfort of your own bed, and hospital food isn’t always appetizing. But inpatient facilities can be lifesaving.

In 2021, I felt lower than I ever had before. I was at a point where I could see no future for myself. I made the terrifying choice to take myself to the ER and they sent me to an inpatient psychiatric hospital. After my 10-day stay in the hospital, I went to an outpatient partial hospitalization program (PHP) for about a month.

Taking a step away from my life to focus on healing all day, every day, was exhausting. But I walked away with a new outlook and more coping skills to keep me afloat.

In 2023, after undergoing ketamine infusions, I felt like I needed extra support. I began another PHP program that helped me ground myself once more. Taking time off work or school can be a difficult decision, but taking that time to heal gave me a new path forward.

I don’t want to know what would’ve happened if I hadn’t checked myself into the hospital. All I know is that 10 days of lackluster meals and hospital beds was worth exchanging for my mental well-being.

Building mastery and engaging in my passions

Outside of mental health treatments, engaging in my passions has been the biggest help to my mental health. I’m an artist and I need a creative outlet to thrive. For years I focused on school and work without giving art much thought. But living like that emptied me of motivation and joy.

Around the same time I started ketamine infusions, I decided to enroll in a wheel-throwing ceramics class at my city’s local craft center. I remembered times at art camp as a kid and in my ceramics elective in high school where I found immense joy in creating with clay.

When I walked into my first ceramics class, I felt an overwhelming sense of gratefulness and hope wash over me. While I had no idea what I was doing, I had fun playing with clay and learning how to throw pots on the wheel. As the months passed and I kept at it, I noticed myself improving and honing my skills.

Now that I’ve been creating with clay for 2 years, I’ve found my artistic style and built confidence in my practice. I spend as much of my free time as possible working on my craft. Learning and creating with clay helps me feel more capable and gives me motivation to succeed.

Best of all, ceramics bring joy to my life and fill a void I’ve desperately been searching to fill for years. It helps me practice mindfulness when I enter what artists call the flow state — working on a pot, getting lost in the moment. I could not imagine my life without it.

Finding a like-minded community

My depression and fear of opening up to others kept me isolated for many years. I also have social anxiety, so reaching out to people and making friends isn’t easy for me. But staying stuck in my own little depressed bubble never helped me.

Over the past few years, I’ve begun intentionally building friendships and joining communities to improve my life and with it, my mental health.

A little over a year ago, I learned about a queer art club that meets every week in my city. I plucked up the courage to go to a meeting and discovered a group of kind, accepting people with a shared passion. While sometimes my social anxiety takes over and I struggle to participate, I feel at peace seeing my art club friends every Thursday.

Through the art club, I’ve met many wonderful friends and my partner. The community brings me so much joy and a sense of belonging that lacked in my life before. Plus, it provides a safe, judgment-free place to challenge my social anxiety.

Results of my hard work

While my depression has had ups and downs since the beginning of my recovery journey, I’ve noticed some key improvements that stay pretty stable no matter how I’m feeling.

Here are some of the results of my attempts to heal my depression and other mental health issues plus the top six things I’ve done that I believe helped me improve my mood, my mental health, and my life.

Lower intensity and frequency of painful emotions

For years, my depression was a near-constant state that I struggled to escape. No matter how much I tried to shove away the painful thoughts and intense feelings of hopelessness, the depression never wavered. When I finally decided to dedicate myself to recovery, I slowly began to find wider gaps between my depressive episodes.

What once lingered for months at a time only stuck around for 1 to 2 weeks. Plus, the depression became more manageable. The painful emotions became less distressing over time as I gathered coping skills that actually worked and had the space to talk about my experience with my therapist.

Fewer PTSD symptoms

Along with my major depression, I struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Emotional flashbacks, nightmares, and hypervigilance quite literally kept me on my toes at all times. For years I lived with these symptoms and accepted that I’d have to feel like that forever — scared and stuck in the past.

But once I began recovering from depression, I realized I could also tackle my PTSD. After intensive therapy, I no longer experience intense emotional flashbacks and I feel much more calm and in the moment in my daily life.

A clear mind

Depression and anxiety stripped me of who I was. I often felt lost and like I didn’t know myself or what I wanted in my life. Even little things like deciding what to have for lunch caused immense turmoil because I couldn’t trust myself to make a decision.

As I focus on improving my mental health, I’ve noticed that I’ve regained a sense of self. I have goals for the future for the first time in my life. I’m much less confused about who I am and what I want.

Resilience

My mental health used to make me feel incapable of handling anything life threw at me. At one point, I couldn’t work because I was so depressed and anxious. It felt like I couldn’t take on life’s challenges because I was stuck in bed crying all the time. I could barely eat, let alone hold down a full-time job and take care of my family.

With more coping skills in my toolbelt and as my mental health improves, I feel more resilient. If I can face past traumas and go through intensive treatments, I can do pretty much anything. I don’t work full-time most of the year, but I did work full-time at a summer camp and managed to do a great job at it this past summer.

I have a part-time job and run a writing business during the school year. I feel much more capable than I used to, and I have the evidence to show myself that I can do it.

Bottom line

For years, I avoided facing my mental health head-on and used unhealthy means to cope in order to distract myself from how terrible I felt. Once I began to focus on my mental health, I was able to reduce a lot of the distress in my life even though coming face-to-face with my struggles felt scary.

Healing from depression has many ups and downs, but dedicating myself to recovery is one of the best things I’ve done.

From ketamine infusions to weekly therapy to building mastery in my ceramics practice, I’ve reduced the symptoms of my mental health issues so I can live a life I love.