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Woman beats depression by leaving her comfort zone and doing something new every day for a year

Here's a list of some of the new things she tried.

via Pixabay

A woman happily embracing life from a balcony.

Like many of us, Jess Mell, 34, an insurance adjuster in England, had a hard time during the pandemic. During the first two years of lockdowns, she suffered from anxiety and depression, so on December 27, 2021, she decided to fight back by getting out of her comfort zone.

To overcome her mental health problems, she challenged herself to try something new, every day, for 100 days. The challenge was so effective at improving her mental health that she extended the challenge to a whole year.

“The first 100 I did one new thing every day—for the rest of the year I decided I’d do 365 new things in 365 days,” she said, according to The Metro. “I could do ten things in one day if I was free.”

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Health

30 things people don't realize you're doing because of your depression

Do any of these speak to you?

This story was originally published on The Mighty and originally appeared here on 07.21.17


Most people imagine depression equals “really sad," and unless you've experienced depression yourself, you might not know it goes so much deeper than that. Depression expresses itself in many different ways, some more obvious than others. While some people have a hard time getting out of bed, others might get to work just fine — it's different for everyone.

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Health

After she asked for a mental health day, a screenshot of her boss' response went viral.

This is what leadership should look like. 💯

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Madalyn shared with her colleagues about her own mental health.

This article originally appeared on 07.11.17


Madalyn Parker wanted to take a couple days off work. She didn't have the flu, nor did she have plans to be on a beach somewhere, sipping mojitos under a palm tree.

Parker, a web developer from Michigan, wanted a few days away from work to focus on her mental health.

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Health

The case for grace when students are struggling with their mental health

Why 'real world' arguments against accommodations fall flat.

Photo by Andrik Langfield on Unsplash, Cameron Mozafari/Twitter

A college professor shared why he accommodates students experiencing mental health struggles.

If you've ever battled anxiety or depression or have lived with someone who does, you know how debilitating it can be. No matter how much you want the brain to cooperate, sometimes it simply won't, and it's not possible to reliably predict when that's going to happen.

I've spent years helping my college-aged daughter figure out how to best manage a severe anxiety disorder. She's a bright young woman who really wants to do her best, but the anxiety monster in her brain makes that difficult. I've watched her knock out an impressive paper for a class in a short amount of time and I've watched her sit at the computer with a stack of sources struggling for hours to get her brain to put two coherent sentences together. Same person, same capabilities. It's not that she doesn't want to do the work or that she isn't trying, it's just that she's in a constant battle with her anxiety monster, and sometimes the monster wins.

I liken it to a person who has a bum knee that gives out at random times. They may have exercises and therapies to try to keep it from going out, and some days they can walk around just fine. But they may have chronic pain people don't see and sometimes things happen that can't be predicted—a wonky staircase, a longer-than-anticipated trek, an icy sidewalk—that can throw things off and suddenly make them incapacitated.

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