Author: Debbie Page 4 of 23

Daughter, sister, friend, wife, mother.
Beach lover. Peace seeker. Speaking random acts of kindness.
Advocate for others.
Educating and information sharing.

Ways To Simplify Your Life(And Improve your Mental Health)

By Debbie

On September 5, 2022

In Mental Health

One thing I have realized over the years is that when it comes to managing my depression and keeping my mental health at its peak, less is more. This doesn’t just pertain to belongings, but also people, activities and anything else that fills up your day-to-day life. It can become very overwhelming to try to keep up with everything and that can lead to you having little time or energy to do the activities you need to incorporate into your life to manage your mental health.

Make a list of the areas in your life that are overwhelming you. Set aside 10-20 minutes to just sit down with a notebook and pen or to type up on a word document the areas in your life that are making you feel overwhelmed, anxious or depressed. Look at all the different areas where you feel you can possibly simplify. Don’t do an overall assessment. Just brainstorm for 10-20 minutes and write down everything that comes to mind that seems to add pressure or stress to your daily life. This will give you a good starting point on where you really need to focus most of your time and energy.
Slowly begin to clean out your closets and drawers. Most of us are guilty of shoving junk in our drawers or bringing in my clothes, shoes, office supplies (you know who you are!) and many other items we really don’t need, yet feel compelled to buy anyway. Then, we either struggle to let these things go or we are too unmotivated to ever go through our storage spaces and get rid of the excess. We get an endorphin rush when we purchase items we like and this new item makes us feel temporarily better. But often we lose interest quickly and just hang onto them. These items build up and create clutter. So, start small. Do one drawer a day if you have to. Work on your closet 30 minutes at a time. If you are struggling, hire someone to help you or invite a friend over for support. A productive habit to create is to purge your excess every 3 months. I have found that going through my belonging on a quarterly basis helps me to stay ahead of the clutter. This has made such an incredible difference for my mental health. Many of us who live with mental health challenges often struggle to keep our homes neat and orderly. By having less stuff and less space, it means having to spend less energy on keeping our space looking nice and more energy to put towards keeping our mental health strong.
Learn how to say “no.” Learning to say “no” to activities, people or anything else that is asked of you, will be one of your most powerful techniques. I’m not saying to say no to everything or everyone. We just need to put ourselves first and our mental health first. If it is an obligation that you will enjoy and will bring you some peace or happiness, then go for it. If a good friend wants to go to lunch and you always have fun together, then say “yes!” Just be sure you have time in your schedule. Make sure your What learning how to be simplifying your life helps you do is to only accept obligations that fit into your mental health routine. How do you figure out if you say “yes” or be strong and say “no”? Just ask yourself these questions: Will the activity bring you happiness or will it increase your stress?
Look at your social circle and the people in your life. Does everyone around you bring you love and happiness or do they bring you sadness and stress? Are they a support to you or do they emotionally drain you? Do they give as much as you give or are they takers? There is no crime in thinning out the people who suck us dry and drain our emotions. Clutter can come in the form of individuals too. Keep your social circle filled with those you add joy and peace to your life. Include those who make you laugh and leave behind those who bring tears. You must protect yourself and sometimes that means we must let some people go.
Assess your space. What do you have in your home? Do you need all of it? What can you let go? Another thing you can do is to determine if the space you have is the right space for you and your mental health. When I moved to Orlando, I opted to get a condo instead of a house. I have realized over the years that smaller spaces are easier for me to manage which has led to me having more time to focus on my mental health and remain stronger. It has been one of the most freeing decisions I have ever made. I think I would love a townhome eventually but for now, not having to worry about a house, lawn and a bunch of rooms I don’t need has been a game changer. Of course, this is probably a decision that needs to be done over time.
Bring a friend or a team of professionals to help you in areas you are stuck and help you to organize your things. If the thought of simplifying your life and your belongings, bring some friends or family over to help you. Grab some good snacks and drinks and just start! If you can afford it, there are also businesses that do this for you or assist you with the process. I know it can be overwhelming for many, so often having some support can make it easier.
Resist buying that next item yo love but don’t need. This may be one of the most difficult ones for many of us. You see a cute knickknack for your shelf you don’t need, buy that wonderful smelling candle despite having a bunch at home or my favorite, the late night online shopping spree! This can be very dangerous for many of us who live with depression. When we buy something, we get a small and brief endorphin rush that makes us feel better temporarily. As I have already mentioned, this feeling of happiness doesn’t last long. It can be hard at first, but once you begin to realize the peace your simpler life is creating, you will find it easier to resist bringing items into your life that you like, but don’t need.

Some great resources to get more inspiration is The Minimalist documentary and podcast, The Home Edit on Netflix and their book, Pinterest and any organizing website. You can do it. Start small. Grab a friend. Just get started. If you need some support, feel free to reach out to me by email. I’ll happily help you to figure out where to start. Simplifying is a great step to a more peaceful and joyful life. I created a FREE guide for simplifying your life. You can grab your copy HERE. I hope you begin to feel lighter and stronger as you begin to create a simpler life that will give you more time and energy for your mental health.

3 Ways Practicing Mindfulness Has Improved My Overall Mental Health, Especially My Depression.

By Debbie

On August 15, 2022

In Mental Health

What is mindfulness? It is a word we are hearing more and more these days, but do we really understand what it means or what it is?

Mindfulness is defined as, “a mental state achieved by focusing on one’s awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting ones feeling, thoughts, and bodily sensations, used as a therapeutic technique.”(Oxford Dictionary) Everyone can learn to practice mindfulness. There are a number of easy mindfulness exercises to you practice being mindful in your daily life. The more you practice, the sooner you will catch yourself being more mindful as you go through your day.

Being more mindful will reduce stress, and can improve our overall mental health. Since 2018 I have been practicing a wide variety of mindfulness exercise. What I have realized is what a positive affect mindfulness has had on my mental health, especially my depression.

Practicing mindfulness has helped me become more aware of my emotions at all times. When mindfulness becomes an automatic part of your life, you will begin to be more aware of how you are feeling physically, mentally and emotionally. By being more aware, you can begin to stay ahead of the negative feelings. You are able to implement your know coping skills that will help to avoid slipping into a deep depression or full blown anxiety attack. Another benefit is that you will recognize when you are feeling amazing or, even better than usual. By being aware of positive feelings and emotions, you will begin to realize that you possibly have more good moments than bad. Often we get so consumed with the difficult and negative emotions that we miss our positive ones.
Practicing mindfulness daily has taught me how to stay in the moment and not to jump ahead to the “what ifs” or look behind at the “what might have beens.” By learning to be mindful of the moment we are in, we are less likely to jump ahead and worry about the future or look back into the past with regret. Both of these will lead only to depression and anxiety. There is nothing we can do to change the past and for the future we can only do what we can to prepare for it. One way to prepare is working on creating the strongest mental health you are capable of achieving. Practicing daily mindfulness exercises is something to consider adding to your regular routine to help your mental health.
Practicing mindfulness daily had allowed me to be more aware of the beauty around me and to be filled with gratitude. One thing about living with mental illness is that it consumes a lot of our time and energy to stay above the water and not feel like we are drowning. By learning how to be mindful of staying in the moment, we begin to notice the world around us a little more. By staying mindful of our current moment, we have more energy to take in our surroundings and see the beauty in the world. One of the mindfulness exercises I have in my workbook is to simply take 30 minutes to walk around your neighborhood and take pictures of things you find beautiful, interesting or moving. This is a great way to take notice of the beauty in our everyday lives instead of focusing on the darkness depression can bring or the worry of anxiety.

Because of the positive results I have had on my mental health, I want to help others learn these techniques so they can also find positive benefits. It is so easy to feel overwhelmed when you are venturing into a new activity. It can be easier to start slowly, try a few different exercises and see which ones you enjoy the most and which exercises benefit you the most. I have a 31 Day Mindfulness workbook you can download for free HERE. I recommend doing one exercise daily. Make notes on how each one made you feel, which ones gave you feel calmer, more at peace. After 31 days, you’ll have multiple mindfulness exercises to help you keep your mental health strong and you will learn how to bring yourself more peace to your life. Continue using the ones that you enjoy the most. As with anything, it is easier to be consistent with activities you enjoy. This goes for mindfulness too.

There are plenty of incredible ways practicing mindfulness can improve your mental health. The more you implement mindfulness into your daily life, the quicker you will begin to notice more peace and awareness with your mental health. If you want to read more about how mindfulness can help your mental health, you can read another post I wrote back in October 2020 by clicking HERE.

Remember, we are stronger together.

If you haven’t gotten a copy of my book, you can grab it on Amazon HERE. Please leave a review if you do purchase it. This will allow Amazon to suggest my book to more individuals who are seeking resources for depression.

Creating a Life That Supports Your Mental Health

By Debbie

On July 18, 2022

In Mental Health

Does your current life support your mental health? Do you feel you have the time, strategies, support systems and resources to help support your mental health so you can thrive instead of just survive? Do you have the energy to give yourself what you need?

Most of us would answer “no” to these questions. We don’t make the time. We feel overwhelmed or alone. We become stuck in our routine and are afraid of the changes we know we need to make in order to thrive. Our energy all goes to everything except our mental health and our own health. The life we are living simply doesn’t support our mental health. It doesn’t support the healing we need to do. We don’t make the time, or we don’t have the time, to take care of our brain and body the way we need to in order to achieve our ultimate functioning level.

It took me way too many years to realize that instead of trying to force my mental health to support my life, I needed to create a life that supports my mental health. For me that was my depression. We try to conform to what the world expects of us, even if that is detrimental to our health. The life I had was not helping to my depression but increasing my difficult times.

A few years ago, I realized I needed to make some big changes. I reflected on my current life and slowly began to change what wasn’t working, removing individuals from my life who were causing stress and negatively affecting my mental health, and assessed what changes I wanted to make.

I decided I needed to start working towards a career that gave me the flexibility to create my own hours. This would allow me to take time for exercise, sleeping in when I need to, have the energy to make healthy food and anything else I need to do in order to strengthen my mental health.

One thing I did was downsized from a 3000sqft house to a 1200sqft condo. This created less time having to keep up with a house which left me more time to nurture my mental health and decrease my depression. I moved to Florida because I do better in warm weather.

I switched from eating a standard American diet and now eat a whole food plant based diet. This has had incredible impacts on both my physical and mental health.

I got rid of stuff I no longer needed. Less is more when it comes to living with depression. Less stuff to keep up with means more time to keep up with yourself. I find purging things I no longer need or the items that no longer serve me in a positive way. It brings a feeling of lightness.

Slowly, I was able to free up time in order to exercise, rest to take care of my mental health My stress level went down. I was able to eat healthy meals because I had the time to prepare the food. I switched careers becoming a realtor in 2021.

I still have a few more things to do, but it has made life a lot more supportive of my mental health.

To truly manage your mental health, you need to do more than simply go to a therapist and take anti-depressant. I do both of these too, but taking a whole life approach is what has really helped. Each day, just do a little something to work towards creating a life that supports your mental health. It won’t happen overnight. Focus on just small changes.

James Clear, the author of the book, Atomic Habits, states, “Getting 1% better every day counts for a lot in the long run.” Just 1%! Small steps. Otherwise, you will become overwhelmed and if you are like me, you will shut down! So focus on small movements forward each day.

What changes have you made to your life in order to better support your mental health? What changes do you think you need to make?

Please follow my FB page, Ending Stigma Together with Debbie Brady HERE and my IG account @Ending_Stigma_Together.

Be sure to grab a copy of the second edition of my book, Depression Survival Guide on Amazon. Just click the the link HERE and head on over to grab your copy. I had lowered the price to $5 for Prime Day but will be leaving up at that price until the end of the month!

Psilocybin In Mushrooms for Treating Depression And Other Mental Illnesses

By Debbie

On June 13, 2022

In Mental Health

Psilocybin. Mushrooms. Marijuana. All these substances have been considered illegal drugs with no good uses. Over the last 20 years, this has started changing. In 1996, California became the first state to legalize medical marijuana and in 2021, Oregon became the first state to decriminalize Psilocybin, more commonly known as mushrooms.

What is Psilocybin? Psilocybin is naturally occurring hallucinogen that are found in certain fungi. They are often referred to as magic mushrooms. They are consumed for their hallucinogenic effects and have been found to trigger changes in perception, mood and thought (Alcohol and Drug Foundation) While over my 53 years of life, these substances have been considered dangerous and illegal substances, there has been a recent surge in research and medical proof that the Psilocybin in mushrooms can be helpful in treating certain mental illnesses. Multiple studies have shown significant impact in treating treatment resistant depression, as well as PTSD among others.

Umbo Founders, Del Jolly, Rashad Evans and Jake Plummer

Last month, I had the privilege of talking to Del Jolly from Umbo, the company he helped found in 2020. Del, along with former NFL quarterback, Jake Plummer and former UFC champion, Rashed Evans, created Umbo(www.getumbo.com) to help end the stigma associated with mushrooms, fund research with universities such as Johns Hopkins and Duke, that show how these substances can help individuals with mental illnesses. According to their website, Umbo is functional mushrooms company that helps support people taking their health into their own hands and support responsible psychedelic research. Del told me that this all started in 2017 when he was living in Colorado and a friend of his began to challenge Del’s anti-marijuana stance which he had held most of his life. Once challenged, Del began to do research into the health benefits of THC. His curiosity got the best of him, and as he dug deeper, learned more and understood how THC can help others more than hurt them. Del worked as part of Decriminalize Denver and Charlotte’s Web CBD before co-founding Unlimited Sciences(www.unlimitedsciences.org), a psychedelic research nonprofit partnered with the likes of Johns Hopkins University.(Umbo website) In 2019, while Del was living in Denver, the city of Denver decriminalized mushrooms. Since then, multiple cities and the state of Oregon has also decriminalized mushrooms. He began to discover how Psilocybin found in fungi (aka: Mushrooms) also have significant health benefits that our medical system has been missing due to the stigma associated with these medicinal plants that have been seen as simply dangerous drugs. This knowledge and realization are what led Del to create Umbo so he could help end the stigma, supply supplements and help major research universities fund studies proving how Psilocybin helps illnesses such as depression and PTSD.

Psilocybin has begun to be used in therapeutic settings. It is important to mention that in order to use Psilocybin for healing, it needs to be used and managed in a therapeutic environment with a mental health professional monitoring your dose and your reactions. Experimenting with any medications, whether that from a pharmacy or a natural supplement, it should always be done under professional guidance.

I was very curious on how Psilocybin worked with helping individuals who struggle with depression, PTSD, anxiety, eating disorders and more. Del gave me a quick overview on how it works in a therapeutic setting. Typically, an individual works with a therapist for 6 or more weeks using CBT (Cognitive Behavior Therapy). Cognitive therapy works with changing our thoughts and behaviors. For the use of Psilocybin to be effective, the individuals mind needs to be in the right spot. The individual must have the right mindset in order to be open to a spiritual experience. The goal is to first prep the mind for the changes the individual hopes to create. Once the Psilocybin is taken, the therapist helps guide the client through their psychedelic experience in order to guide them towards their realization and necessary changes. Through the therapeutic process along with the Psilocybin, the re-imprinting of the brain will create new pathways. So, if someone lives with depression, they can begin to imprint their brain with more positive self-talk. Or an individual with PTSD can use this technique to re-imprint the trauma of a particular event or events and replace them with those of peace and serenity. It helps to reprint the negative, damaging thoughts with new, better thoughts.

Multiple universities, including John Hopkins and Duke, have active studies for using Psilocybin for therapeutic reasons in order to validate the value of using them in a therapeutic setting. There has been such tremendous success that Del told me that the FDA is fast tracking approval for the use of Psilocybin in a therapeutic setting for both Trauma and Treatment Resistant Depression. The irony it, this new treatment option could also help those who battle drug addiction. Survivors of childhood trauma are 15 times more likely to attempt suicide, four times more likely to develop alcohol-related disorder and 2.5 times more likely to smoke cigarettes according to Counseling Today publication. So, what could happen if this technique could be used to help those with addictions create those new pathways in their brain and re-imprint their brains to create new pathways to deal with those memories from their trauma? Instead of having to numb themselves or use drugs to forget, could actually be used to help them reset their brain in order to function a healthier way. This has the potential to be a real game changer in the world of addiction recovery as well as those with other mental illnesses. I would be willing to bet that everyone reading this blog post has been affected by addiction in some way. Trauma is almost always connected to addiction in some way and this could really be an incredible advancement in their recovery.

Umbo is a Functional Mushroom Company which is on the forefront of the legal use of Psilocybin use for our health and wellness. One of their biggest missions is to help destigmatize the use of drugs like Psilocybin and THC to help our mental and physical health. You can find more information, as well as some of their products, on their website at www.getumbo.com.

Like Del, I was once on the anti-marijuana side. It was what I was taught growing up. It was what I thought was true. Over time, I began to learn more and research the scientific studies and discovered we what we were taught wasn’t always accurate. Both THC and Psilocybin in mushrooms are naturally occurring substances that are now known to have significant health benefits when used in a therapeutic setting. They aren’t synthetic or some concoction made in a lab by drug dealers. If you research the history on how marijuana was made illegal, you will learn quite a lot. I now have my medical marijuana card for my chronic pain I deal with daily for my fibromalygia. Both mushrooms and marijuana contain substances that scientist are discovering can help individuals with a wide variety of mental and physical illnesses. From depression to PTSD to chronic pain and more, mushrooms and marijuana are quickly becoming recognized as substances that can help, more than hurt, when used under medical supervision. Slowly, the stigma society has held towards substances such as mushrooms and marijuana is slowly being knocked away and society, along with the medical community, are beginning to recognize that these natural substances have many medical uses for both our body and our brain. What’s important in medicine and life in general is to keep our minds open, accept when things change for the better and work together to end the stigma. That is why it was important to me to share this information.

To learn more about Psilocybin, the research Unlimited Sciences is helping to fund, the everyday benefits of mushroom supplements and the groundbreaking success professionals are having with treating those with certain mental illnesses in a therapeutic setting be sure to check out both websites: www.getumbo.com and www.unlimitedsciences.org. Umbo has an amazing blog with numerous informative articles. Be sure to subscribe to their email list to keep up with the latest news on the research and products both of these organizations are helping to develop in order to change the landscape of mental health treatment.