Mental Health Basics

California-Based Telehealth Mental Health Services

Jason Klimkowski on April 14, 2025

Accessible Support for Working Adults Across the Golden State

For many hardworking Californians, taking time off for therapy just doesn’t fit into the schedule. Whether you’re running a job site, clocking in on the night shift, or balancing work and family, it can feel like in person appointments for mental health are out of reach. That’s why Redeemed Mental Health offers flexible, high-quality telehealth across California — bringing expert care right to you, wherever you are.

Led by seasoned clinical psychologist Dr. Andrea Wagner, our telehealth California program combines trusted therapy methods, real connection, and the convenience of virtual care to help you feel better — without stepping away from your responsibilities.

What Is Telehealth for Mental Health?

Telehealth for mental health services means you can attend therapy and get professional support from your phone, laptop, or tablet. All you need is a private space and a stable internet connection — no waiting rooms, no commuting, no rearranging your whole day.

At Redeemed Mental Health, our online therapy sessions are led by trained, compassionate online therapists who understand what it’s like to balance mental wellness with everyday stress. Whether you’re dealing with depression, anxiety, social anxiety, trauma, or burnout, you’ll receive real tools and guidance that fit your life.

What Services Are Available Through Online Counseling?

Our California-based telehealth mental health services include:

Individual therapy sessions
One-on-one time with a licensed online therapist who tailors every session to your specific needs, challenges, and goals.
Group therapy (as needed)
Connect with others who are facing similar struggles and work on communication, coping skills, and emotional support.
Online counseling for anxiety, depression, adult autism, trauma, and substance abuse
Using proven techniques like CBT, mindfulness, and emotion-focused therapy.
Medication management
Our clinicians can help determine if medication is right for you. We offer ongoing medication management, and can prescribe medications when clinically appropriate — including for controlled substances, if necessary and in compliance with all regulations.
Treatment planning and progress tracking
You’ll get a custom care plan that changes as you do, guided by experienced mental health professionals who care about your success.

Is Online Therapy as Good as In Person?

For many people, online therapy is just as effective — if not more — than in person sessions. You’re in your own environment, which makes it easier to open up and engage. Plus, for folks who live in rural areas, work long shifts, or just don’t want to drive to another appointment after work, online therapy is often a better fit.

Our clients regularly say that online counseling makes it easier to stick to their therapy sessions and actually follow through — something that’s key to real progress.

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Meet Dr. Andrea Wagner – Leading with Experience and Heart

Redeemed Mental Health is not a corporate chain or a revolving-door clinic. We’re clinician-owned, and our care is led by Dr. Andrea Wagner, a respected psychologist with a background in forensic mental health, military behavioral health, and statewide psychiatric systems.

Dr. Wagner brings both expertise and heart to every aspect of the care we provide. Her mission? To make mental health care feel personal, empowering, and actually helpful — not overwhelming or impersonal.

What You Need to Get Started

You don’t need fancy tech or a big budget to access Redeemed’s mental health services. All you need is:

A phone, tablet, or computer
A secure internet connection
A quiet space for your sessions
A willingness to take the first step toward healing

Many of our services are covered by health insurance, and our intake team is happy to verify your benefits and explain what’s included.

Take the First Step Today

Mental health struggles don’t mean you’re broken — they mean you’re human. Whether you’re dealing with stress from work, problems at home, or things you’ve been carrying for years, help is just a call or click away.

Reach out to Redeemed Mental Health today at (888) 915-7091 to schedule your first online therapy session. Our telehealth California services are here to support you — wherever you are, whenever you’re ready.

FAQs About Our Telehealth Mental Health Services

Can telehealth support my overall well-being?

Yes. At Redeemed Mental Health, our telehealth program is designed to support your total well-being — mentally, emotionally, and even physically. By offering flexible, consistent care from licensed professionals, we help clients reduce stress, improve relationships, manage mental health conditions, and feel more balanced in everyday life.

Is online therapy a safe space to open up?

Absolutely. Our online therapy sessions are a confidential, safe space where you can talk honestly with a trained therapist about whatever you’re going through — without fear of judgment. Whether it’s work stress, anxiety, or past trauma, your therapist is here to listen and help you feel supported.

Can I really do therapy from my own home?

Yes — and that’s one of the biggest benefits. Our telehealth mental health services allow you to attend sessions from your own home, your parked car, or anywhere you feel comfortable and have a secure internet connection. No commuting. No waiting rooms. Just help where and when you need it.

Do you serve clients in remote areas of California?

Yes. Our California-based telehealth program is available to anyone in the state — including those living in remote areas where local therapy options may be limited. As long as you have an internet connection, you can access the same high-quality care as someone in a major city.

Is online therapy helpful for older adults?

Definitely. Older adults may face unique challenges — from isolation to grief to chronic stress — and our online therapy options are a flexible, respectful way to get help. Redeemed Mental Health makes it easy for older adults to connect with experienced therapists who understand their needs, without having to travel for in person appointments.

How to Know If You Need Outpatient Depression Treatment

Jason Klimkowski on October 21, 2024

If you’ve been diagnosed with depression, getting treatment is very likely to be an ongoing part of your life. That’s so much true that many people benefit from inpatient stays in clinics for rehab treatment and care. That stint in full time treatment gives you a baseline to build life skills and to learn how to manage your disorder. However, over time, you might need more and ongoing support.

Outpatient treatment is ideal for that because you can stay at home, continue your daily life and responsibilities, and fit treatment into your life instead of the other way around.

Outpatient treatment is typically 5 days per week and up to three hours per day. Here, you’ll go to treatment in the evening after work or during the day, while kids are in school. You might also opt for treatment on the weekends or in the morning before the rest of your day starts. In any case, you’ll get treatment for your depression without having to give up on the rest of your life. Mental health treatment is normal and it should be. 12.7 million U.S. adults received mental health assistance for things like depression and anxiety in 2022. If you need help, it’s important to ask. Whether you need that or not should almost always be decided by a doctor. However, some signs that you will benefit from it include:

You’re Struggling

If you’re having trouble with your day-to-day life, you probably need help. That’s true whether you’re withdrawing from the things you love, you’re having trouble keeping up with routines, you’re dropping out of social life, or you feel bad. Even persistent feelings that things are off or wrong are a good sign to reach out and talk to your doctor and to potentially get help.

You should never have a hard time keeping up. You should always feel like you have the tools to manage your life and the things in it. And, while emergencies happen, the norm should be that you have a handle on things. If that doesn’t feel like it’s the case, reaching out and looking into treatment and help is an important thing.

That’s also true if the issue is that you’re “just” feeling stressed or tense all of the time. A lot of people experience expression as fatigue. Others experience it as stress or feelings of tension or that things are about to go wrong. These feelings are not normal, and you shouldn’t have to live with them all the time. You can get help and you can work on finding a solution.

You’re Not Enjoying Things

If you’re doing things you used to enjoy and are getting nothing out of it, it’s time to talk to a doctor about treatment. Depression means that your brain isn’t processing serotonin and dopamine correctly. That can mean feeling less enjoyment, less motivation, and more simple fatigue and tiredness. Either way, if you’re not doing things you love anymore, it’s a sign that things are deteriorating. And, that means things will get worse. Without positive things in your life and things you enjoy, you won’t have outlets or good things to look forward t. That will mean things will just keep getting worse. Therefore, it’s critical that you seek out depression treatment if things are that bad.

It’s okay to have a few down weeks. However, if things last more than a few weeks, you really want to make sure you’re getting help.

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Your Routines are Falling Apart

If your routines are falling apart, it’s a good sign that you’re overwhelmed. Sometimes that can be because the routines are too much. In other cases, it can be because you are not doing well and you need help keeping up. This means that the first step is to step back, reduce your workload, find workarounds, and ensure that you have tools to get things done. That might mean talking to a professional and asking for help and insight. That’s especially true if you have family responsibilities that might push you towards doing more than you feel capable of. However, if you notice:

Personal hygiene slipping, e.g., you don’t put the same effort into dressing up, you don’t brush your hair, you don’t get dressed, etc. It’s a good time to be concerned for yourself and to ask for help. Major changes in personal routine and hygiene are hugely important indicators of your mental health. Even small stuff like not being invested in dressing nicely when you used to be or feeling like tying your shoes is too much effort can be hugely important indicators of mental health.
Slipping up on home routines like cleaning the house, putting away the dishes, or cooking. If you used to have a routine you could keep up with and now things are piling up, or you don’t know how to create a routine you can keep up with, it’s a very good sign that you might want professional help. It’s normal to have some trouble keeping up with dishes and other cleaning. It’s less so to have those tasks be overwhelming, for them to fall by the wayside for weeks at a time, or for some chores like laundry to just not happen until things are extremely bad.
Dropping responsibilities at home, like childcare, cooking for yourself, spending time with your partner, etc. The more important the responsibility, the larger the red flag it is when you drop it. If you find you’re just not keeping up with things you need and want to do, it’s critical to ask for help – even if that means staying at an inpatient facility.
Being late for work or failing other major responsibilities outside the home. If you’re not keeping up when social or financial pressure are involved, it’s a sign that you are having significant trouble and you should be getting help.

Letting things slip for a few days is okay. But, if things are falling behind for the longer term, you feel overwhelmed, too tired to manage, or just don’t care, it’s a very good sign that you badly need help.

Trouble with Relationships

The worse you’re doing, the more your mood is going to go up and down, the harder of a time you’ll have handling your emotions, and the worse you’ll be at keeping up with social responsibilities. That often means your relationships with friends, family, and even partners will deteriorate. Here, it’s important to recognize that depression can actively sabotage your relationships. Having the tools to communicate that, to set expectations, and to manage your emotions will allow you to manage your relationships and to maintain them around depression. That’s important for you, your quality of life, and your ability to maintain those relationships. Often, it will mean going to treatment, getting relationship therapy, and learning skills to manage your life around depression.

Eventually, going to treatment is a normal and healthy thing. Even if you think you’re struggling, it’s a good idea to talk to your doctor, get insight from a professional, and get a handle on what your options are and how you can move forward.

Outpatient treatment for depression can be a great choice to allow you to get help and to get your depression under control without putting your life on hold – but you might also need more intensive care. It’s important to talk to a professional and ask for advice on what will work for you with your symptoms.

Redeemed Mental Health is a mental health & dual diagnosis treatment center offering PHP, IOP, and individual levels of care. Contact us today to begin your journey of recovery!

What is Insight-Oriented Therapy and What Happens?

Jason Klimkowski on October 7, 2024

Insight-oriented therapy includes a branch of therapies very often recommended to individuals with disorders such as eating disorders, substance use disorders, personality disorders, mood disorders, and anxiety disorders. Insight-oriented therapy or IOT is sometimes known as psychodynamic therapy or insight therapy and focuses on helping the patient get to know themselves and their responses better. Here, therapy relies on intensive talks between the therapist and that patient to help the patient uncover and understand their behavior, reactions, and emotions – so that they can be more self-aware, can recognize behaviors as they happen, and can make meaningful steps to changing behavior, improving emotional regulation, and resolving internal conflicts.

If you or a loved one has been recommended insight-oriented therapy as part of mental health treatment, it means your therapist thinks you might benefit from insight into yourself and your behavior. It’s also commonly used in cases where patient motivation for treatment is getting in the way of seeing results with other forms of therapy. Let’s take a look at what insight-oriented therapy is and how it works.

What are the Goals of Insight-Oriented Therapy?

Insight-oriented therapy is a talking therapy in which you first work to build trust and a bond with your therapist and then work on exploring yourself. This means that you spend sessions of 45-60 minutes 1-3 times per week for 3-24 months with your therapist. The length and duration of therapy depends on you, your goals, and the complexity of the situation, as most IOT is delivered on a personalized and needs basis. This means you’ll get a different program depending on your initial assessment during intake and your program will be updated as you progress (or don’t) along the way.

The primary goal of insight-oriented therapy is to understand how past experiences and patterns limit and cause problems today, so that you can take steps to change those patterns.

Exploring the Unconscious Mind – Much of IOT is based on psychotherapy and the idea that unresolved conflicts from early life shape your behavior, thoughts, and feelings. That means exploring the unconscious mind as part of therapy, which can help you to understand processes that influence your actions and reactions now. This is often used to understand transference – where you project feelings, responses, and beliefs from the past onto current people. E.g., some of us feel anxious and like our loved ones may abandon us because we were emotionally neglected as children, and moving on from that means dealing with that trauma.
Understanding Patterns – Another primary goal of IOT is to help you understand your own patterns and behaviors. That means what you do, how you do it, and how you respond to things. For example, defensive mechanisms, coping mechanisms, automatic habits, and behavior patterns that are automatic responses rather than thought out and chosen. For example, if you rely on patterns of denial to avoid painful emotions, if you act defensively when people ask you for change, etc., you may be able to work past that by simply understanding those patterns and the root cause and acknowledging that at the root.

Insight-oriented therapy is a long-term program intended to deliver treatment over a period of months or even years. That’s significantly different than many approaches like cognitive behavioral therapy, which may deliver the entire therapy in as little as 10-15 sessions. Therefore, your relationship with your therapist, your long-term adaptation, and growth over time all become important.

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What Happens in Insight-Oriented Therapy?

Insight-oriented therapy is a talking therapy where you sit down and talk to your therapist over a period of months or even years. It’s the classic picture of a patient leaning back on a couch with the therapist sitting on a chair listening.

Intake – You’ll have one or more sessions with your therapist that are entirely about sharing basic details, getting to know your therapist, and allowing the therapist to figure out a good approach to start your treatment. These sessions will mean sharing your life information, relationships, current concerns, current mental health symptoms, and establishing current goals.
Exploration of Childhood Experiences – Most IOT begins with multiple sessions designed to help patients explore and share their early childhood experiences. This means sharing family dynamics, sharing emotions, sharing things that happened and notable experiences, etc. This is in part to set an easy starting point to share with your therapist and to build trust, while giving the therapist insight into why you might act, behave, and think in the ways that you do.
Exploration of the Self – Insight-Oriented therapy will then switch to sessions designed for self-reflection, exploring current behaviors, and building insight into what’s underneath current behaviors. That means reflecting on current emotional state, thoughts, and behaviors. Here, you’ll likely be asked to connect thoughts and emotions or reactions to influences from the past. This stage can be tricky, as it’s easy to make “false” breakthroughs, without truly understanding the root of a problem. Still, your therapist will work with you to help you understand what’s underneath coping mechanisms, defensive behaviors, avoidance behaviors, etc. This includes sessions and time spent on self-reflection, on interpreting dreams, fantasies, and imagery, and on building insight into the self.
Catharsis – Insight-oriented therapy has a significant focus on exploring and releasing previously repressed emotions – leaving room for emotional distress and experiencing feelings. However, this stage is normally very late in the therapy and requires significant trust and relationship with the therapist.

Depending on your progress, these sessions can take you years to work through. In addition, they won’t always be delivered in order. You might spend a few sessions focusing on childhood experiences then explore how those affect your life now – and then go back to exploring more of your childhood. Your therapist will determine how your treatment program is paced based on your needs and your responses in session.

Who Can Benefit from Insight-Oriented Therapy?

Insight-oriented therapy is one of the oldest therapies delivered to patients. It’s intended to deliver self-awareness and an understanding of the “gears” that make you tick. That means taking time to look at what’s going on underneath your problems, so you can work on resolving the root causes of issues.

That’s ideal for individuals struggling with mental health disorders like depression, anxiety, personality disorders, mood disorders, trauma, and interpersonal problems. However, it’s not intended to be a crisis intervention. It’s intended to be a long-term look into solutions that help you improve your life, your emotional understanding of yourself, your relationships, and your relationship with yourself.

It’s also ideal for individuals who show resistance to traditional behavioral therapy techniques, where you might need a deeper exploration and understanding of what’s going on to make progress with changing behavior.

Insight-Oriented Therapy is not a quick fix. It’s not ideal if you need emergency treatment right away. Instead, it provides long-term structural support and safety, where you get to explore yourself, your emotions, and how you work and then learn to apply those insights to your behavior while continuing to get therapy. That can make it extremely helpful for individuals with chronic and long-term mental health disorders where longer-term support and room to work through problems has the most benefit.

Take the first step toward recovery today! Reach out to a qualified therapist to discover how Insight-Oriented Therapy can guide you on your journey to healing and self-discovery. Your path to a healthier, more fulfilling life starts now!

What Are the Best Types of Therapy for Trauma?

Jason Klimkowski on September 24, 2024

An average of 50% of women and 60% of men will experience a major traumatic event in their lifetime. This means that the majority of Americans will experience a traumatic event as an adult. That trauma always leads to risks including mental and psychological side-effects with complications that can include increased anxiety, reduced quality of life, and major mental health disorders like post-traumatic-stress disorder. PTSD develops in about 30% of cases where an individual experiences severe trauma. Getting treatment early means mitigating those side-effects and preempting the risk of PTSD developing.

Trauma treatment also requires custom or personalized therapeutic approaches that address underlying or “pre-risk” factors like stress, environment, genetics, personality, coping mechanisms, and worldview. As a result, the best therapy for treating trauma is often customized to the person. However, some treatment options are relied on for trauma and PTSD treatment more than others.

Counseling May be Enough for Early Trauma Treatment

In most cases, the side-effects of trauma should go away on their own in about 2 weeks after the trauma occurs. In other cases, it can take up to about 2 months. Here, it’s often recommended to seek out counseling. For example, many police departments offer counseling to individuals who have experienced trauma. It’s also more and more common for emergency service responders to receive trauma counseling as part of response to traumatic events.

Counseling means that you have someone working with you from day one to identify any blockers to recovery, to help you talk through the traumatic event, and to recognize if things are not going well. That means you have someone on-hand to help you recover so you might not need ongoing therapy or more intensive treatment.

The Best Therapy for Trauma Treatment

Globally, CBT or cognitive behavioral therapy is the primary treatment used for therapy and for PTSD. However, other treatment types are also used.

1. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

Cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT was first developed in the 1950s to help people understand their thoughts and feelings and to learn behaviors to control, manage, and relate to those thoughts and feelings. In trauma-treatment, it usually means bringing exposure therapy, cognitive restructuring to change behavior (E.g., to stop negative thought patterns), and to learn acceptance and coping mechanisms.

As a result, CBT is often the first choice for trauma treatment almost everywhere. For PTSD treatment, it’s also normally combined with exposure therapy, where a normal course of treatment might include 5-6 weeks of a benzodiazepine to reduce symptoms of PTSD followed by CBT with exposure therapy starting in the middle or near the end of the CBT program. In this capacity, it’s one of the most proven treatments for helping patients to recover from PTSD.

2. Trauma-Focused CBT

TF-CBT is a form of CBT developed in the 1990s to specifically treat trauma and PTSD. It’s also specifically designed for younger patients and is delivered over 8-25 sessions. Here, therapy focuses on delivering culturally adapted CBT to help children change worldview, process distress, and learn coping mechanisms.

While technically a subtype of CBT, TF-CBT is considered the strongest and most evidence-backed treatment choice for children and adolescents. As a result, most people under the age of 17 with PTSD receive this treatment.

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Prolonged Exposure Therapy (PE)

Prolonged Exposure Therapy or PE is a form of CBT that switches the focus away from reframing emotions and emotional processing and towards confronting and processing events and trauma. The treatment program typically consists of 8-15 90-minute sessions with weekly exposure to trauma in a safe environment, mixed with tactics to process emotions, keep the body calm, and reduce negative reinforcement. This line of treatment is ideal in situations where the individual may have low risk factors relating to the traumatic event and may be good at emotional processing, but still needs help with a specific traumatic event. The idea is to specifically target and focus on the specific trauma rather than on emotional and trauma processing as a whole. That means confronting, processing, and desensitizing to specific trauma and environments, resulting in decreased fear response, decreased avoidance, and increased ability to cope and apply other coping mechanisms to the event.

Cognitive Processing Therapy

Cognitive Processing Therapy is based on CBT but is specifically designed for individuals with PTSD or trauma complications. The idea is that persons with PTSD are unable to recover on their own, which means that the focus is on identifying and removing the blockers to recovery. That’s typically delivered across 12 sessions focused on helping individuals to understand worldview, though processes, automatic responses, and to identify and correct negative thoughts and behavior patterns that contribute to symptoms. The idea is to build the beliefs, skills, and coping mechanisms that contribute to the ability to recover – essentially delivering building blocks for recovery. CPT is considered a first line treatment for PTSD.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)

EMDR was designed in the 1980s as a therapy specifically for treating trauma. Here, the therapy primarily focuses on exposure therapy, where the individual is asked to consider specific distressing memories or thoughts at the same time as sensory stimulation with either a moving object to focus on, tapping, or other body stimulus. The idea is that patients with trauma typically experience impaired memory processing, and the body may respond as though it is experiencing the trauma. Exposure therapy with EMDR forces the body to be physically present in the present, allowing the patient to process the memory as what it is – a memory. EMDR sessions are typically once or twice per week for 6-12 weeks depending on patient responsiveness. The results are almost always reduced distress in response to the traumatic event.

Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET)

Narrative Exposure Therapy or NET is a type of trauma therapy normally applied after the fact and for cases of complex PTSD. Here, the therapy helps the individual to organize and write out their trauma in a chronological order – stopping to understand and acknowledge the impact and emotions behind events at every stage. Narrative Exposure Therapy is one of the most important therapies in treating longer-term trauma exposure such as refugees and for cases of domestic and child abuse. However, it’s also most-often combined with CBT or followed up with CBT in order to also deliver reframing, coping skills, and emotional processing strategies that enable recovery.

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT)

Dialectal behavioral therapy or DBT is a branch of CBT. It was originally designed to help individuals with personality disorders such as schizophrenia or borderline personality disorder by focusing on acceptance of things as they are, minimizing symptoms that are there, and improving emotional regulation. The focus of the therapy is not “recovery” but improved quality of life. As a result, it’s not a primary treatment for PTSD. However, it’s a line 2 treatment for individuals who have complex PTSD that has been shown as resistant to other treatments. Here, you work to learn to understand symptoms, to learn tactics to reduce symptoms, and to learn tactics to manage and prevent symptoms where you can. Together, these can have a powerful impact on quality of life.

Conclusion

There are more therapies used to treat trauma and PTSD. In addition, there’s no one best option. For many people, choosing the right therapy means going to a doctor, getting advice, and being referred to a specialist in trauma and PTSD. From there, you’ll be given a program that tackles your unique experiences, personality, and trauma, so you may receive a mix of treatments. However, CBT is the most common treatment for PTSD, so chances are very high that if you have trauma, PTSD, or complex PTSD, treatment will start there. Good luck getting help.

How to Cope with Insensitive Comments About Your Mental Health

Jason Klimkowski on September 13, 2024

If you’re struggling with mental health, it’s a given that not everyone will understand. An estimated 59.3 million Americans, or 23.1% of the total population, struggle with mental illness. Yet, the popular perception of mental illness is still rife with stigma, misconception, and beliefs rooted in outdated medical practice. As a result, people can be deeply unkind about mental health problems. While it’s not your responsibility to educate the people around you, you can take steps to ensure that you can cope with their insensitive comments.

Most people will have mental health problems at some point during their lives. Whether that’s temporary depression, grief, anxiety, or a diagnosable mental health disorder doesn’t matter. Mental health problems are something everyone faces, so it’s important to keep that in mind. In addition, you’ll want to accept that dealing with these kinds of comments is hurtful and make space for yourself to process, feel, and recover from those emotions.

Acknowledge and Recover

Insensitive comments are hurtful. That’s true whether or not the person saying them meant anything bad with them. It’s important to give yourself that space.

“They didn’t mean anything bad by it but that still hurt, and I get to feel hurt”

Here, it’s also important to set boundaries on how you get to feel hurt. E.g., taking a few minutes to be sad and to acknowledge that something hurts is good for you. Wallowing for several days and allowing yourself to replay the scene over and over in your head is very bad for you. Acknowledge and recover is a technique where you make 10-60 minutes to go “This made me feel bad, I get to feel that” and then go back to your life. The amount of time you dedicate to it should depend on how badly you’re hurt and how good you are at moving on from things. And, when you go back to life, you probably want to start with something distracting (like doing something with your hands or playing a game) rather than doing nothing or watching TV which would allow you to continue thinking.

Set Boundaries

Boundaries are important for reducing the amount of hurt you feel in the future. For example, if you see someone often, you may want to set boundaries around insensitive comments.

A good boundary politely establishes a line that should not be crossed and then establishes a consequence if that boundary is crossed. Here, it’s important to follow up on consequences.

For example:

“I am not comfortable with how you talk about my mental health. I find it hurtful. If you keep talking about my mental health when I see you, I will stop seeing you”
“I’d appreciate if you could treat my mental illness as an illness, if you can’t, I will be engaging with you less”
“Please be more considerate of me when you make comments, I’m sure you realize that saying that is hurtful. I’m not up for talking to someone who keeps casually hurting me”.

Some people will be very receptive to receiving boundaries and others will not. Unfortunately, there’s very little you can do when people are not but exercise your boundaries and practice the consequence you set. Good consequences include things like:

Limiting seeing the person
Reducing contact
Only seeing the person when you have a safe person present
Discussing the person’s behavior with your therapist and discussing next steps with them
Refusing to engage with insensitive comments

You should never set a consequence that you are not willing or able to follow up on or practice. If it comes time to exercise the consequence and you can’t do it, your boundary is manliness. So, boundaries have to be set with care.

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Educate Where You Can but Choose Your Battles

Many people are open to education and learning about mental illness. If your close family and loved ones are behaving in an insensitive manner, chances are very high that they don’t want to. You can work with them to offer learning material, books about your mental illness, and to talk to them about what it’s actually like for you. Especially with family, you might find that family members are a lot more receptive and understanding than you’d think, because mental illnesses tend to run in families. You might be surprised to hear things like “oh, like aunt X has” or “I have that sometimes too” or “I struggle with the exact same problems”.

Not everyone is open to education. Try to engage, if you don’t get anywhere or only get resistance, you probably want to stop investing in trying.

Get Professional Support

It’s important to keep in mind that you may want and need professional support dealing with insensitive comments. The worse your mental health, the more likely it is you’ll want to be able to talk to a professional about comments, to work out what the comment actually means for you, and to structure it. For example, if someone says you’re lazy, talking to a professional and working out that your loved one feels invalidated because you don’t do as much work as they do and they don’t feel appreciated can help you to take steps to make your loved one feel more appreciated, fixing the root cause of the issue. Therapy can also be about helping you cope, by giving you a way to place the comment, skills to deal with comments, and next steps you can take to make yourself and your loved ones feel better.

For example, you can work with your therapist to develop a resilience plan. Here, you work to build your support networks, work to identify which people in your life are educatable, know who you can turn to for support and help, and list and reinforce positive coping mechanisms. E.g., talking to your loved one, acknowledging pain, venting emotions by going to the gym versus having a tub of ice cream. Resilience plans vary a lot per person because they have to reflect your actual capabilities – which means you’ll get a plan that specifically fits your social circles, your coping mechanisms, and your skills – alongside plans to build up the skills you don’t yet have. That often means engaging in ongoing learning and ongoing mental health help so you can be resilient enough to deal with emotional upsets.

Getting Help

Most people don’t make insensitive comments out of malice. Instead, they’re likely to be ignorant of issues, to feel insecure or defensive, or even to feel invalidated by how you are being treated versus how they are being treated. The result can feel extremely bad for everyone involved. If you’re not managing that, if you don’t have the resources to talk to your loved ones or to try education, or if you fall apart when you hear this kind of thing, you will need help. In addition, comments are very often based in truth, such as you not being able to handle things – which may be a sign that you do need more help than you’re getting. Talking to a professional, getting insight, and working to improve your ability to manage comments and people in your life is always going to be the right way to go. Good luck.

How Long Does Untreated Trauma Last?

Jason Klimkowski on August 7, 2024

Most people will eventually struggle with trauma. An estimated 70% of all Americans experience significant or major traumatic events at some point during their lives. And, everyone experiences traumatic events like the death of parents and grandparents. Often, that means taking time to heal and that means giving yourself time to recover from trauma.

At the same time, that trauma should heal. If your trauma doesn’t start to naturally go away on its own, it’s a sign that something deeper is wrong. For example, if you’re not seeing even slow improvement after a month, you might want to look into treatment. Left untreated, trauma that isn’t resolving on its own can turn into PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) which is a much more serious disorder that requires more significant treatment.

However, the path to trauma recovery varies per person. It’s important that you understand the path to trauma recovery, how untreated trauma works, and the steps you can take to get help if you don’t see improvement.

Talk to Your Doctor

If you’ve experienced a traumatic event, it’s important to talk to your doctor. That means discussing your health and mental health with someone who is both qualified to talk to you about it and who can set up next steps for you. Doing so right away means you’ll understand the options available to you and your doctor will know they might have to make next steps for you in the future. That will simplify the process if you end up needing help later.

Here, you want to discuss:

What happened
What the expected timeline should be
How you feel now and what your doctor thinks about that
What side-effects or long-term affects you might experience and what to do about them
How you feel on a daily basis

If it’s already been some time since you experienced trauma, you’ll also want to discuss whether you’ve made any progress, any actual symptoms, and if things are getting worse.

Trauma means you’re at increased risk of stress, stomach and digestion issues, sleeping issues (sleeping too much or too little), cardiovascular problems, and complications like PTSD. Sitting down with your doctor to discuss those risks, your recovery, and your options will allow you to decide what the next steps for your health should be and what you can do to support recovery.

What is the Normal Recovery Timeline for Untreated Trauma?

If you’ve experienced a traumatic event, recovery can take months. In fact, if a loved one dies, recovery times for that trauma are typically 6-12 months. For other events, you’re generally looking at a shorter recovery period.

The first two weeks are usually the worst in terms of symptoms such as anxiety, flashbacks, and fear
For some people, this initial peak can last as long as 2 months
Improvement starts gradually and can look like accepting things, feeling less discomfort, and being more capable or willing to push boundaries around trauma.

In most cases, the rule of thumb is that if someone isn’t showing gradual improvement after about 2 months, they aren’t going to recover on their own. That means you’ll need a mental health intervention such as counseling or therapy to help you step out of trauma and get back to your life.

For most people, that means giving it about a month to get back to feeling like yourself after a traumatic event like assault, robbery, a car accident, or a natural disaster. For others, that might look like 2 months. And for some people, it can take longer. Still, if you’re not showing gradual improvement after 2 months, you definitely want to talk to a professional.

Still, that can be further complicated by the fact that not everyone is aware they have to make steps to recover from trauma. That can mean you need counseling to even start processing trauma which can further complicate the process.

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Risks of PTSD

PTSD or Post-traumatic stress disorder is a complication of trauma in which your brain and your body do not heal from trauma. Instead, you become mentally stuck in the experience of trauma with a heightened adrenal response. That can mean you experience severe anxiety, avoidance, uncontrollable thoughts, nightmares, and flashbacks about the traumatic event(s) for even decades after the event. Normally, PTSD is diagnosable after about a month from a traumatic event.

Here, diagnosing PTSD depends on severity of the symptoms with severe anxiety, guilt or shame, guarded behavior, fear or anxiety, memory problems, negative thoughts, depression, flashbacks, and nightmares being key symptoms looked for. However, PTSD may also be diagnosed purely on the basis of duration of symptoms. Even mild symptoms are PTSD if you continue to experience them for a year after the traumatic event.

If you’re diagnosed with PTSD, you will need treatment. That typically means behavioral therapy like CBT and counseling to help you overcome the impacts of trauma on the brain. At the same time, that treatment can help you prevent complications of trauma to begin with.

Should You Get Treatment for Trauma?

In most cases, if you’ve experienced a traumatic event, it’s a good idea to talk to your doctor. From there, you can make decisions about getting treatment or not based on your history of mental health and potential complications. You can also make sure your doctor is aware of what’s going on, so if things don’t improve, they can help you take the next steps. If you have a history of trauma, it’s probably best to immediately look into treatment. In addition, if you have a mental health problem such as depression or anxiety, that can make recovering from trauma harder. Individuals who have experienced violent crimes are also more likely to experience complications, which means you should typically take advantage of counseling offered by emergency care services.

Otherwise, the best option for deciding on treatment is to wait. Talk to your doctor about what you can do to improve things in the meantime. Then, give your brain and your body time to heal. If you’re not seeing improvements after about a month, it’s a good idea to go back to your doctor, discuss next steps, and to start looking into treatment. Everyone recovers at their own pace, but staying on top of how you’re doing, looking for improvement, and taking action if it’s not there is critical no matter what your recovery process looks like. Starting out by talking to your doctor or your therapist is always a good step. In addition, if you have the option, getting preventive care for trauma is often a good way to ensure you have the tools to prevent complications and recover as quickly as possible.

Eventually, most of us experience trauma. Recovering from that takes time. Depending on you and your mental health, recovering from trauma can take months. For some of us, that won’t happen without therapeutic interventions and counseling. There’s no single path through trauma or trauma recovery. However, it’s important to be able to reach out and get help when you need it and that means talking to medical professionals, understanding what recovery should look like, and taking steps when nothing is changing. Hopefully, this helps you create a strategy so you have that support available to you and you can get help if you need it.

What Are the Rarest Personality Types?

Jason Klimkowski on June 22, 2024

For millions of people, feeling like you fit in can be difficult. In fact, most of us, at some point or another, feel like we don’t fit well with everyone around us. Sometimes, that tracks down to your personality type, which often links to your complex personality traits, mental health, upbringing, and socio-economic status which contribute to stress, education, and how well you’re able to handle things. Personality tests attempt to capture snapshots of this, and can give you a broad impression of what your personality is like. And, it’s true that some traits are rarer in certain combinations than others. Sometimes, you really do have a rare personality type, or really one that’s less common than others.

For example, if you look at the Myers Briggs Personality Test, one of the most commonly used personality tests in the world, the rarest personality still covers 1.5% of the population – or 119265000 people. That’s a big number! It also means if that’s your personality, you’d be one of three people with that personality type in a room with 300 people. Not so bad right?

So, rare personality types don’t mean you don’t fit in, they just mean you have a lower chance of meeting people who are exactly like you. And, that’s okay. Often, we get along best with people who complement us rather than exactly matching us.

So, What are Personality Types?

There are a lot of personality type systems that we use today. Myers-Briggs is the most common in business settings.

We’ll take a look at the big three here:

ABCD Type Model:

This model organizes people into four personality types:

Type A – Competitive, perfectionist, highly motivated and organized
Type B – Lacks ambition, relaxed, flexible in thinking
Type C – Conscientious but struggles with expressing emotions
Type D – Introspective and empathetic but isolating

You probably know this model from memes about Type A.

Myers-Briggs

Myers-Briggs uses 8 personality points to map people into 16 different personality types.

Introversion (I) opposed by Extraversion (E)
Sensing (S) opposed by Intuition (N)
Thinking (T) opposed by Feeling (F)
Judging (J) opposed by Perceiving (P)

The idea of this personality test (the 16 types or Myers-Briggs Personality Test / MBTI) is that everyone leans more to one or the other of the opposed personality traits. Everyone has all 8, but your decision-making and rationalization will tilt towards one or the other.

So personality types like ENFJ mean “Extraversion-leaning, Intuition-leaning, Feeling-leaning, and Judging-leaning. They don’t say anything about what other traits you have, just that on this measurement scale, you lean towards those methods.

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Five Factor/ Big Five:

The Big Five model uses five personality traits to rank individuals on how they show those traits.

1 Openness to experience
2 Conscientiousness
3 Extraversion
4 Agreeableness
5 Neuroticism

This means you’re scoring on individual traits and not as a “personality”.

Of course, there are many other personality tests. DISC models are also very common. However, this gives you a good baseline for understanding what the rest of this article is talking about.

What are the Rarest Personality Types?

Rare personality types depend on the test and who’s taking it. Personality develops from attachment, social learning, learned experience, experience, and private decision-making. Further, people can score very differently on personality tests based on factors like what time of day it is, their mood, and how often they take the test.

In addition, many personality tests don’t actually score how common the type is. E.g., ABCD Type and the Big Five / Oceans tests don’t score or attach any kind of rarity to personality expressions. Often that’s good, because they aren’t measuring your whole personality, just a series of traits that you may or may not show.

Myers-Briggs does, however, measure how commonly its 16 personality types are. For example:

INFJ – 1.5% of the population
ENTJ – 1.8% of the population
INTJ – 2.1% of the population
ENFJ – 2.5% of the population

That sounds like it’s not much. Still, it means over 100 million people in every category. It also just represents that intuition-leaning and judging-leaning combinations are rare in any combination of other traits. Further, if you look at the rest of the list:

ENTP – 3.2% of the population
INTP – 3.3% of the population
ESTP – 4.3% of the population
INFP – 4.4% of the population
ISTP – 5.4% of the population
ENFP – 8.1% of the population
ESFP – 8.5% of the population
ESTJ – 8.7% of the population
ISFP – 8.8% of the population
ISTJ – 11.6% of the population
ESFJ – 12.3% of the population
ISFJ – 13.8% of the population

The scale isn’t as dramatic as calling INFJ rare might sound. Instead, it means there are about 1 INJF personality types per 9 ISFJ personality types. That’s less common, but certainly not “rare” in the truest sense of the word.

So, What Does a rare Personality Type Mean for You?

In most cases, your personality type has little bearing on who you are as a person. Instead, it records your capabilities as measured by a test in that moment, with your mood, stress levels, and recent activity taken into account. These tests are useful for businesses because they tell businesses what you might be able to achieve in the near future and what you’re likely to be like in the near future. They can also be useful for mental health professionals to provide a baseline of your outlook, responsiveness, and mood right now. However, many personality tests will change every time you take them if you take them every day for a week. That means they aren’t reliable as a measure of who you are tomorrow or who you are next week.

What else? Personality tests don’t actually measure your personality. They measure how you’re feeling and how they answer the questions. They also don’t measure compatibility with others, ability or willingness to learn, or your ability to fit into a group. Instead, general interests, ability to be agreeable, ability to compromise, and ability to open up to others. Those factors, more than anything else, will determine how you’re able to connect to others.

In fact, modern science isn’t sure if it’s valid to measure personality types at all. With no clear boundaries and significant overlaps in personality types, it’s usually better to measure personality traits and then understand that, for most people, those traits go up and down based on mood, stress, and current situation. Personality is flexible, because life requires it.

Does that mean you can’t use your personality test to make judgements about yourself? Absolutely not. Your personality test is likely a reasonable snapshot of your behavior and your answers right now – providing you’re honest when you fill it in. You can also broaden the perspective of those tests by taking more assessments, looking at measures of personality traits rather than judgements of overall personality, and also figuring out how that changes or goes up and down based on things like mood. Eventually, it means you’ll have more insight into how your personality affects your life and what you are capable of – which will help you in other ways.

Serotonin, Your Gut, and Mental Health

Jason Klimkowski on June 15, 2024

Most people know of serotonin as the “happiness” chemical. That’s so much true that you can buy jewelry with the chemical formula for serotonin alongside words like “Happy”. The truth is, serotonin is much more complicated than simply prompting an emotion or a reaction in the brain. Instead, it’s a chemical known as a neurotransmitter, which works to move messages between the nerve cells in the brain and body. Its role is in mood, cognition, reward, learning, memory, and physical processes like the digestive tract, organ development, and bone metabolism. As a result, serotonin has wide-reaching impacts on a significant portion of your body’s daily functions.

In fact, if your body isn’t producing or processing serotonin like it should be, you’ll see major issues across your body. That can mean depression, fatigue, gut health problems, and much more. Worse, because mental health disorders often result in reduced serotonin production or absorption, side-effects of mental health disorders like substance abuse also reduce serotonin production, and stress reduces your ability to produce serotonin, these issues are likely to be self-aggravating, meaning that depression results in reduced serotonin, resulting in a downward spiral where you feel worse and worse.

Understanding serotonin, how it impacts the gut, and your mental health can give you better insight into that process so you can get the help you need.

What is the “Gut-Brain Axis”?

The “Gut-brain Axis” is a term used to refer to how changes in the gastrointestinal tract impact mental health and vice versa. Persons who have mental health problems such as depression and anxiety are significantly more likely to experience major problems with digestion and gastrointestinal health. Vice-versa, individuals with gastrointestinal health problems such as chronic diarrhea, Cronn’s disease, etc., are more likely to experience mental health problems such as fatigue, depression, and anxiety.

This axis happens because serotonin impacts the nervous system. This includes the central nervous system, which runs from your brain down your spinal column, and into the body. It also impacts the Enteric nervous system, or the network of neurons that line the gut. That also includes the Vagus nerve, which is well-known as the nerve that runs from the brain to the colon – and which plays a major role in nausea and vomiting. As a result, individuals experiencing a significant amount of stress are more likely to experience nausea and vomiting.

Finally, the gut-brain axis refers to how serotonin actively influences the ecosystem of bacteria and other microorganisms that live in the gut and vice-versa. When things go wrong with gut bacteria, you experience negative effects that impact the rest of the body. That in turn influences mental state, emotional regulation, and regulation of the adrenal and pituitary axis – meaning you have more trouble with managing your emotional state and your mental health.

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Serotonin’s Role in the Body

Serotonin plays a far-reaching role in the body. In most cases, it can be considered a communicator. It transmits messages across the central nervous system and across the enteric nervous system – which goes on to impact the adrenal system, pituitary system, metabolism, and multiple other functions. This allows the reward circuit in the brain to function by transmitting signals to and from the brain and body as necessary. It allows the brain to properly process information. It regulates emotions and mood. It also helps to regulate feelings of anxiety and worry – both through the central nervous system and through the HPA (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis) which is behind the human stress response and cortisol production.

Eventually that breaks down into:

Emotional Regulation – Healthy serotonin production means you can regulate emotions more easily and manage stress, negative emotions, etc., as they come up.
Stress Regulation – Serotonin impacts cortisol production and adrenal production, both of which cause stress and feelings of stress in the body. Healthy serotonin levels mean you’re better able to regulate that in the body, which means stress levels better match what’s happening, you process cortisol more quickly, and go back to feeling better more quickly.
Digestion – Serotonin impacts microbial gut health as well as nerve regulation. Nerves impact muscles moving food through the digestive tract. Low levels of serotonin can lead to indigestion in the form of constipation and poor nutritional absorption. However, serotonin also impacts the vagus nerve, which impacts the colon as well as your vomit and nausea reaction. This can result in chronic diarrhea and nausea.
Sleep – Serotonin plays a significant role in healthy sleep-wake cycles as well as in having energy throughout the day.

As a result, people with low serotonin or unregulated serotonin reuptake typically experience symptoms like:

Depression
Anxiety
Fatigue
Insomnia
Chronic pain
Brain fog
Memory issues

All of that can be self-reinforcing, which means you feel worse because of low serotonin, and then produce less serotonin because of the side-effects. As a result, depression, anxiety, and even gut health problems often spiral and become worse over time if you don’t get treatment, even if the original issue is a physical one rather than a mental one.

Of course, Serotonin also plays many other roles in the body. Therefore, it can impact your body in other ways. Often, that means you’ll see side-effects from mental health and from gut health problems that can look like a range of mental and physical health problems. However, mood regulation, gut health, and fatigue issues are generally the most common problems and very often tie in together – so that if you start with one, you eventually end up with all three.

Getting Help

Getting help for mental health problems, especially when they are tied into physical health problems, can be complicated. For example, it’s often difficult or impossible to tell which came first, gut health problems or mental health problems. For that reason, the starting point is often medication and taking steps to ensure you’re producing serotonin at a healthy level.

You might be aware that one of the most common medications for people with depression is an SSRI or a Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor. This class of drugs reduces how quickly your brain breaks down or reabsorbs serotonin, meaning you have more serotonin available in the brain and in the body, even if serotonin production is low. These drugs are safe, non-addictive, and allow you to increase serotonin levels in the body, which can be used as either a short-term measure to aid in treatment or a long-term measure if your body is not producing enough serotonin.

In each case, treatment is generally also backed up with additional treatment including nutritional therapy, behavioral therapy, and counseling. That means creating a tailored and personalized approach to treatment, adapting it as you respond or not. That can also include medication for gut health, it can include exercise and nutrition, it can include behavioral treatment to help you improve how you regulate emotions even when you feel bad. All of that comes together to give you a toolkit to better manage your mental and physical health, both of which will work to improve each other.

Otherwise, getting help for serotonin issues, even if they are mental health problems or rooted entirely in physical health problems, means getting a tailored approach that specifically targets your actual health problems and works to respond to those as you move forward in treatment.

What is Neuroplasticity in Mental Health?

Jason Klimkowski on May 17, 2024

For many people, depression, anxiety, and other mental health disorders are chronic, meaning that they are permanent or near permanent. For most of us, this means that mental health disorders will come and go throughout our lives, and episodes and peaks can be triggered by lapses in self-care, traumatic events, and stress. For others, mental health problems are a one-off problem that can be treated and overcome and essentially vanish much like a broken bone, leaving some scars, but otherwise gone forever.

At the same time, many people believe that once you’re an adult, your brain stops growing. In fact, many people believe that the brain only has a certain number of cells, that you can only learn things to a certain age (you can’t each an old dog new tricks), etc. None of that is true. Instead, the brain loses some plasticity or ability to change as you grow older but is capable of changing and adapting to every circumstance as you age. This means that chances are very high that your brain can heal from whatever mental health problems you have – although it is true that some issues will remain chronic.

What is Neuroplasticity?

Neuroplasticity represents the brain’s ability to change. This often means capacity for learning, for memory, for changing behavior, and for mental flexibility. Often, what looks like simple behavioral change on the outside is a complex process of the brain changing its physical shape to achieve new things. The human brain adapts to its environment, which is why taxi drivers who memorize city streets see actual changes in the brain, as do jugglers, and medical students. The brain adapts to its environment, especially to structural information, which forces the brain to reorganize and adapt to new input as well as to providing new output.

People who don’t frequently do new things or who routinely do exactly the same thing with no changes will have difficulty changing. This doesn’t mean their brain is no longer plastic, it means they need more time to adapt. At its basis, one of the things that makes the human brain so very “human” is its ability to adapt and to change and to retain that neuroplasticity over time. Factors like life experiences, stress, genes, behavior (including thought patterns) and environment will all limit or enable that change but that change is always available.

Does Mental Illness Change the Brain?

Mental illnesses, including behavioral disorders, depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, and most other mental health problems directly change the brain. Often, this is a two-part change of changes in hormones and neurotransmitters and changes in behavior building different habits or pathways in the brain.

This might look like:

Depression reduces the production of serotonin. Reduced serotonin means that the brain is less able to regulate mood and emotion. So, the brain feels more depressed, worsening the issue. Eventually, the brain might adapt to seek out serotonin-producing experiences (e.g., food, TV, drugs or alcohol, etc.).
Behavior builds new neural pathways that reinforce the habit. So, if you stop challenging yourself, stop taking care of yourself, and stop doing things that require those neural pathways, your brain will dismantle those neural pathways because they require energy. So the less you use behavior patterns for self-care and for maintaining health and mental health, the less you’ll have the ability to.
Mental health disorders often come with negative spiraling, negative thought patterns, and getting stuck in cycles of worry. Those are also often self-reinforcing, as the brain will adapt and you’ll build new neural pathways to make that behavior easier.

That all sounds counterproductive of your brain doesn’t it? The truth is, the brain adapts to the environment it’s given. That means that the more you indulge feeling bad and the more you give yourself leeway to not engage with behaviors that improve mental health, the harder it will be to pick that back up. At the same time, neuroplasticity works in reverse:

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Does Neuroplasticity Mean the Brain Can Heal Itself?

The common perception of the brain is that it doesn’t heal. At the same time, medical science has know that isn’t true for decades. When faced with physical trauma to the brain, patients show a remarkable ability to regenerate tissue and recover. People who have impairment to the hippocampus following significant substance abuse typically recover, so you can’t tell their brain from a healthy brain after about 3 years. Healing takes time, but it does happen.

It’s also important to note that not all mental health disorders require or will result in healing. In some cases, depression, anxiety, or schizophrenia are just how your brain works. You can take medication to supply some of what your brain isn’t, just like you’d wear glasses if your eyes weren’t meeting your needs for driving or reading, but you won’t expect your brain to heal, beyond recovering from any trauma that being untreated has resulted in.

Using Mental Health Treatment to Provide the Grounds for Change

The goal of psychotherapy such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is to help you create new patterns and new behaviors. This means addressing the existing behaviors and recognizing them, figuring out what’s behind them, and then trying to redirect them into new skills and patterns. Behavioral therapy often starts with stopping downward spirals, redirecting negative thoughts, and building basic skills to prevent negativity. At the same time, you’ll create the start of patterns o build positivity, to find positivity, and to build functional patterns. Just like with negative patterns, these patterns will also change your brain and you’ll have the neural pathways to support them – often in as little as 3-6 months after starting therapy.

The more you practice a skill, such as stopping a downward spiral, the easier it will get, as your brain adapts and builds neural pathways to enable it
The more you engage in activities that produce serotonin, the more your brain will make that easier, by building neural pathways to enable it. You can get stuck in a neural rut of thinking negative thoughts, but you can get out of it and create a neural rut about finding good in things.
Building new skills to foster neuroplasticity allows you to better adapt to change over time, so you pick up new things more quickly and adapt more quickly. That means the more you push forward, the easier adding on new things will get.

Neuroplasticity means your brain adapts to the environment it’s in, trying to maximize energy usage and output to what it’s doing and the environment it is in. This means you can always change your brain by changing your patterns, changing your behavior, and changing your environment. That change will often take time and recovering from trauma and physical damage can take years. But, you have the capacity to recover, to build new neural pathways, and to heal. That might not mean leaving your mental health disorder behind, but it will mean leaving the trauma caused by that mental health disorder behind and building healthy patterns that support quality of life and happiness around your mental health disorder.

Getting Help

If you or a loved one is struggling with mental health, it’s important to recognize that there is help. Reaching out to talk to your doctor, working your way towards behavioral therapy, and getting mental health interventions can set you on the path to permanent change and permanent improvement in your quality of life. Eventually, that will mean you have the patterns and the skills to better navigate mental health so you can be happier.

The Connection Between Diet and Mental Health

Andrea Wagner on November 7, 2023

In 2021, an estimated 21 million people, or 8.3% of the population had a severe mental health disorder. Among adults aged 18 or older, 57.8 million people, or 22.8% of the population qualified for a diagnosis for a mental health disorder. That’s without considering the frequency of episodic mental health problems, which typically last 3-12 months. 1 in 5 U.S. adults will have a problem with depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, paranoia, and other mental health problems over the course of their lives. While that’s most related to such diverse risk factors as environment, genetics, and coping strategies, less obvious factors like nutrition and diet can also play a significant role. For example, the symptoms of many nutritional deficiencies mimic those of depression and anxiety. And, having an existing mental health disorder can result in a poor diet and exacerbated mental health symptoms.

Understanding how your diet plays a role in mental health and managing your mental health disorder is an important part of taking control of your life and your wellbeing. A good diet can be difficult to maintain if you’re struggling with mental health. However, not doing so can often cause you to downward spiral and worsen your mental health disorder.

How Does Diet Affect Mental Health?

Diet affects mental health in multiple ways. The first is that a good diet is the foundation for feeling good. Fueling your body with the micro and macro nutrients it needs gives you the foundation to feel good. That means eating well about 80% of the time, following government nutrition guidelines, and eating diverse foods. Eating well gives you energy, helps to stabilize your mood, and prevents you from crashing.

A poor diet also directly impacts your mental health in much more direct and negative ways. And a poor diet can mean many things.

Diets that are high in caffeine and sugar can exacerbate mental health problems by causing rushes of dopamine and serotonin, disrupting your brain’s reward system and balance. People who reply on caffeine and sugar to feel good will often have periods of high and low energy with crashes and fatigue, headaches, and other negative impacts to mental health.
Diets that are low in fruits and vegetables can result in nutritional deficiencies. For example, if you don’t get enough vitamins, you can start to develop deficiencies, which can cause fatigue, lack of resources for mental health, anxiety, depression, and much more. For example, amino acids, omega 3s and B-vitamins are the building blocks for dopamine, GABBA, and serotonin (you probably know the latter as the happiness hormone). Without enough of those nutrients, your brain literally won’t be able to produce the hormones you need to feel happy. Vitamin D deficiencies, which effect as much as 42% of the population, can also mimic depression, with symptoms of fatigue, joint pain, and a “down” mood. And, Vitamin A deficiencies can result in symptoms of anxiety and depression.

Essentially, if you don’t eat well, you’re sabotaging your health in more ways than once. Unfortunately, the more problems you’re having with your mental health, the harder it will be to eat well. And, that creates a negative cycle.

Mental Health Problems and Diet

While poor diet can worsen or even cause mental health problems, mental health problems often cause a poor diet. Often that’s because you don’t have the energy to cook or to go to the store. Or because you’re looking for an outlet or comfort food to temporarily improve your mood.

In either case, people who are struggling with their mental health often struggle with self-care. That means basic self-care like eating healthy meals, exercise, personal hygiene, and cleaning the home become difficult and exhausting. People in these situations can skip meals, eat prepackaged foods or make unhealthy food choices regularly, or go through cycles of starving and binging as energy levels cycle. That all worsens mental health problems by creating nutritional problems.

In addition, mental health problems can cause nutritional issues in other ways. For example, the worse your mental health, the worse your gut health. If you’re anxious, you’re more likely to have inflammation of the intestines, which means you’re having a harder time actually absorbing nutrition from the foods you do eat.

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What do Nutritional Deficiencies Look Like in Mental Illness?

It’s often impossible to tell if you’re having problems with nutrition in addition to a mental health diagnosis without a blood test and analysis. This means that only your doctor can say for certain if you’re low on Vitamin A or B or etc. However, doctors will more and more often use blood tests as part of diagnosis, which means that you may have to tackle issues of nutritional deficiency before getting a diagnosis for depression or anxiety. However, you should still be able to get treatment for the mental health problems, because many treatments are about coping with and managing mental health problems – not about curing disorders.

Treatment and Next Steps

If you’re struggling with mental health problems, it’s always important to ensure you’re getting enough nutrition. That means paying attention to how you’re eating and eating well. Unfortunately, without a blood test, you cannot decide if you have nutritional deficiencies. However, if you do, your doctor will likely prescribe remediating diets or supplements that can help you to recover more quickly. Otherwise, your best bet it to eat a healthy diet following the guidelines of something like myplate.gov.

If you’re struggling with mental health, making those decisions and consistently making good choices around food can be extremely difficult. For that reason, it may be a good idea to ask for help, to look into living in supported or shared living facility, or to ensure you have friends and family to help. Many people also benefit from meal prep and similar tactics. It’s also important to note that eating well is always more important than taking supplements, because supplements are rarely absorbed properly and may not help at all – while they cost a great deal.

Getting Help

If you’re struggling with mental health you can always reach out and ask for help. Often, that starts with your doctor, where you can get blood tests to check nutrition and recommendations into therapy and treatment.

Here, treating mental health disorders with comorbid nutritional deficiencies is often a multi-disciplinary approach. For example, you’ll typically receive:

CBT or another traditional mental health treatment to help you manage and cope with the mental health problems
Nutritional therapy to help you recover from the nutritional deficiency as quickly as possible
Life skills therapy and training to ensure you have the skills and the habits in place to take care of yourself and to eat healthy meals

Good treatment should take a whole-body approach of looking at your body and your mind, taking time to allow both to heal. And, that can take a long time. That’s especially true if you have intestinal inflammation that reduces your ability to absorb nutrients. Recovering from nutritional problems can take months or even years. Mental health problems may also never go away and you may instead learn skills to cope with them and mitigate them.

However, getting treatment will ensure you have the tools to live your life in as happy of a way as possible.

Redeemed Mental Health is a mental health & dual diagnosis treatment center offering PHP, IOP, and individual levels of care. Contact us today to begin your journey of recovery!