“I think the best mental health advice that I’ve ever received is that faking or pretending is the worst thing for my mental health, personally. Saying the truth and being vulnerable and talking about it is basically what my therapist says to me in every session. Obviously, the therapy works because I do these things, I end up having the conversations or whatever. Just telling the truth about how you feel, like, ‘I feel f*cked up today. I feel super sad today. I feel depressed. I’m feeling a little panicky.’ That really helps so much, and finding people that you feel safe to say that around is the most relaxing thing.”
Stories
12.28.23
12.28.23
20 Real and Relatable Things Famous People Said About Their Mental Health
Thanks for speaking up, y’all.
Photo Credit: Wondermind
Not to get all “they’re just like us” on you, but even with tons of followers and fans, public figures have their own mental health hurdles to clear. We’re all just people out here being people—and these great mental health quotes from some pretty notable folks are proof of that.
We’ll take all the advice we can get from anyone willing to be honest about their mental fitness and the challenges they face, so we asked these notables to share their wisdom.
Check out some important reminders and real talk worth saving or sticking on your mirror. Take what works and leave the rest.
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1. Camila Cabello wants you to be real with people.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Camila Cabello2. Cleo Wade says it’s more than OK to cry.
Photo Credit: Liza Voloshin“In sadness and grief, I think it’s really important and feels good to locate your own tears if you can. … I realized just how much the world tells us not to cry. Your parents will tell you not to cry, and your teachers will tell you not to cry. And then you’re not supposed to cry at work because that’s inappropriate. And it’s like, where are we allowed to have this emotion? And why does our body want to have it? I wrote this poem that says, ‘The tears, they shed and shed. It is a gift.’ It is a gift to be able to release what I can no longer hold. … Our body is releasing stories. Our body is releasing these narratives and ideas and these weights that are keeping us stagnant or stuck.”
3. Hunter Hayes says you have more power over your emotions than you think.
Photo Credit: Andrew Zaeh“[In] my top three greatest hits of what I’ve learned in therapy is how much power you have to give. … I am of the belief that we have so much more control over our feelings than I think we give ourselves credit for. That’s not to say that you can just flip out of being sad. But I think that you can set yourself up for success to be happy and create happiness and create good energy in the world around you and create the things you want more of in your life, you know? My wish is for more people to know how powerful they are in creating those things.”
4. How Sohla El-Waylly believes in herself through failure.
Photo Credit: Justin J Wee“It’s like a self-perpetuating kind of thing, you know? You fail, and then you try again on something small. And then the more you get back up, the more you realize it’s easy to come back from stuff. I feel like the more times I fuck up, the more I realize that I can get over anything. And the bigger the failure, the more confidence it gives me, because I know no matter what, I can always bounce back like a cockroach [laughs]. I think every time is very scary, but what’s the other option? There’s no other route but to just keep moving forward.”
5. Alan Bersten on self-forgiveness.
Photo Credit: Alan Bersten/BERST10 Fitness“You have to be able to forgive yourself for things. No matter if other people forgive you, if you don’t forgive yourself, you won’t be able to grow and move on. It’s allowing yourself to realize that people make mistakes—that you can make mistakes—and just accept that and grow from that. As long as you keep pushing forward, everything’s going to be OK.”
6. Taraji P. Henson’s therapist tells her to stay patient.
Photo Credit: kate spade new york“The one thing that she brought to my attention that I still do [sometimes] but I’ve gotten better at is writing scripts before something happens. I have already written the beginning, the middle, and the end. I’ve written the entire script, and, a lot of times, my script is wrong. … I’ll write the script in my head [about] a breakup or a relationship without letting it unfold. You know what I mean? So I’m already making up what’s going to happen before it even happens. That’s a lot of work. That adds to my anxiety. Literally, when I feel myself starting to write the script, I go, Put the pen down, breathe. Nothing has happened yet. You have to wait until it unfolds. I’m so busy trying to write the ending.”
7. JoAnna Garcia Swisher says she accepts grief as a part of her.
Photo Credit: Danette Anderson“It’s so deeply painful that you want to kind of get through it. And it’s hard because you never really get through it. It just changes everything. Grief is so tricky like that because it manifests in so many different ways for so long.
One of the biggest things that I have tried to do is know that this is just a part of me now and allow it to enrich my life and be OK with all the different ways [it shows up]. Sometimes it manifests itself in deep joy, great joy, great gratitude. I have so much gratitude for my mom and my dad, and I think losing them will inform the rest of my life. It has changed the rest of my life, and there will be deeply sad moments and deeply emotional moments, but there’s also these moments of just utter gratitude for what they gave me, the time that I had with them.”
8. Camilla Luddington on getting the help you need.
Photo Credit: Sarah Krick“I think it’s really important for [my kids] to know to not be ashamed of seeking help or taking medication…any of those things that can reset your mental health. That’s why I like talking about this because I feel like there’s still a stigma, and I just want to be able to be open and [want them to] understand: Hey, mom has anxiety. I had PMDD after my son was born, which I had never experienced before and didn’t know could happen. I want them to know that it doesn’t [show] weakness to seek help.”
9. To Alyson Stoner, it’s all about perspective.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Alyson Stoner“A former mentor in my life, who I trust, used to talk about life as a spiral staircase and healing as a spiral staircase. Sometimes when you’re going around the spiral, whether you’re going to a higher or a deeper level, it can look like we’re looking at the same problem we’ve seen a million times. However, you’ve changed since the last time you’ve seen it.”
10. Amanda Seales encourages you to slow down.
Photo Credit: Jerome A. Shaw“If you’re a very hypersensitive person like myself, and you’re also able to identify your feelings very quickly, you can trick yourself into thinking, I need to respond immediately because I know exactly how I feel right now, and they’re gonna know how I feel right now too. But when you practice the pause, it allows you to just fly further away from something and see the bigger picture. … And if you don’t have to respond immediately, it gives you a moment to process like, OK, what do I really want to do with this? But we live in such a time of urgency and immediacy that it makes you think that you have to be. No, just give it a beat. Let it go through your nervous system. Let it take a ride or two or three before you spit it back out.”
11. Alex Toussaint is a big fan of gratitude.
Photo Credit: Isaac James“The ability to wake up and be blessed with another 24 hours—that simple blessing is something you can count before you even touch your feet to the ground. If you count certain things in your life that you’re grateful for before the day even gets started, you start to identify … the things you do have versus the things you don’t have. Once you get into that flow, you start to identify throughout the day things that make you feel good, things that you accomplish, things that provide you a certain level of, Oh, I am worthy. I am great.”
12. Skyh Black wants you to talk about your shit.
Photo Credit: Tyren Redd Photography“We take on so much—excuse my language—shit every single day. And how do you unpack that? Think of yourself as a house, right? If you keep putting things in the house and never clean it out, you’re a hoarder and there’s no space to move around effectively. For me, especially as a man and especially as a Black man, it’s never discussed. It’s never talked about. It’s almost taboo, and I don’t know why because we need an outlet. Everybody needs somebody to talk to.”
13. Drew Petersen says anyone’s worthy of therapy.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Drew Petersen“I think that there are a lot of people who are curious about therapy, who are questioning their self-worth and questioning if their struggles are valid [enough] to need help from another person. And ultimately, if you’re a human being on this planet, you are worthy of help and love and understanding and a place to be yourself. That’s it.”
14. David Archuleta wants you to be open to it all.
Photo Credit: Zach Schmitt“Allow yourself to be heard. Let your emotions come through and find a channel for them. … Allow yourself to grieve when you need to. Allow yourself to laugh when you need to. Allow yourself to talk when you need to. Allow yourself to transition and change when you need to.”
15. Devery Jacobs knows that mental fitness is completely unselfish.
Photo Credit: Ryan Pfluger“I wanna tear down the idea that focusing on mental health is selfish. I think that’s one of the biggest roadblocks I’ve experienced. Also speaking with people—particularly women of older generations—they feel that being selfless means they need to give their all and abandon themselves and only focus on those around them in order to be a good woman or a good mother or what have you. I just wanna stress how it’s untrue. It’s not true that it’s selfish to focus on oneself. Actually, it’s integral to making sure that we can have long lasting lives and are able to do a better job at sitting with people and and honoring ourselves. … It is so important and can be the greatest gift that one can give themself.”
16. Kyla Pratt thrives when she says no.
Photo Credit: Ben Cope“For so long, we all sit back, and we don’t recognize [we’re] trying to be people pleasers and trying to make things easy for everyone else. Sometimes we don’t recognize what that’s doing to us. Practicing saying no is one of my favorite things to do now. I have no problem with it; I feel no guilt. One of my favorite things I always say whenever I’m feeling a little overwhelmed is, ‘You only can do what you can do, and that’s OK.’”
17. Holly Robinson Peete’s reminder to herself is a reminder to us all.
Photo Credit: Riker Brothers“Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’ve come this far. You’ve done a lot. You’ve been strong. You’ve seen the peaks of the hills and the valleys. You’ve done a lot, and now it’s time to just take it easy on yourself.”
18. ALOK says to never underestimate the healing power of friends.
Photo Credit: Celeste Sloman“I’m a firm believer in the power and poetry of a dinner date with a friend. It’s my primary means of grounding myself. Just being able to have one of those languid, 2-, 3-, 4-, 5-hour conversations where you’re just synthesizing all the things you’ve been thinking and feeling.
What’s so important about that is having people in my life mirror back to me that they’re rooting for me, so that I’m remembering I’m not in this alone. Having people who don’t require me to be one thing and grant me permission to be figuring it out … is one of the most powerful embraces I’ve ever had. It continually gives me the stamina and the fuel to keep going because it feels like most of the time I’m drowning. But when I’m having a real heart-to-heart with someone who I love, I remember, OK, I can do this. That’s why I feel mental health is a collective project—it requires this coming together. We can’t just heal in silos. We need each other.”
19. Rebecca Black’s advice to her younger self speaks volumes.
Photo Credit: Sarah Pardini“You’ll never regret being nice to yourself, even if it’s in the littlest moments of allowing yourself to wear what you really want to wear or do what you really want to do or say what you really want to say or not say what you don’t want to say.”
20. Naomi Osaka’s short but sweet message.
Photo Credit: Zoey Grossman“It’s always OK to admit things are hard, that things aren’t OK sometimes, but always know that there are people out there who can relate to you and what you’re feeling.”
Wondermind does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Any information published on this website or by this brand is not intended as a replacement for medical advice. Always consult a qualified health or mental health professional with any questions or concerns about your mental health.
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