An Introduction

Hi there! My name is Erin and welcome to Manifesting Mindfulness, where I talk about mental health, psychology and self-improvement through a scientific lens.

The mind and all of its mysteries have been a lifelong passion of mine. A lot of my interest stems from my desire to understand my own experience with mental health, most notably my anxiety. And I know I’m not alone:

in 2018 the American Psychological Association found that 27% of Gen Z reported their mental state to be fair or poor, more than any other generation.

Even though it’s obvious that so many of us struggle with poor mental health, it can be an incredibly isolating experience, especially when it is not talked about openly and without stigma. We live in a culture where many gripe on the younger generations for their overly emotional nature, with outrage over new concepts like trigger warnings and safe spaces.

Of course, many of these issues deserve more nuanced discussions, but it is a common adage that "kids these days are just too sensitive".

Funnily enough, a study published in the Journal of Psychology and Aging showed that Baby Boomers are the most likely to be narcissistic and hypersensitive.

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But when it comes down to it, this pushback against “sensitivity” is partially a result of a lack of education about the realities of mental illness.

Depression is not just feeling sad, it’s struggling to do basic self-care tasks like eating or brushing your teeth.

ADHD isn’t just having a short attention span, it’s hyperfocusing on an enjoyable activity for hours while the necessary but mundane tasks of life go neglected.

Anxiety isn’t just feeling worried, it’s being overcome with an impending sense of doom and loss of control over the smallest of triggers.

When stigma like this becomes ingrained in the culture, those us of with mental health issues can stigmatize ourselves, refusing to acknowledge our struggle and neglecting to seek out help. Education has been shown to be one of the most effective tools in fighting this stigma. I want to explore both the psychological and biological realities of mental health, sharing information both to help those who struggle to better understand their own experience, and to expose those who don't the hidden struggles that so many face every day.

One thing I love about psychology is it’s endless applications, from business to counseling to evolution to education. This is because we, as human beings, are the common denominator. Everything we think and experience and create has to go through the lens of our own preconceived frameworks and perceptual biases. And the more I learn about psychology, the more I come to realize that

while we are all so connected in our common experience of being human, our perspectives by which we view the world are so varied -

so much that what is common sense to one person is lunacy to another. I think acknowledging this difference is essential in being able to understand, empathize, and communicate more productively with our fellow human beings, even those who you once thought you could never understand.

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The year I came up with the idea of creating this channel, 2020, was definitely … a year. A global pandemic, growing political polarization, outrage over institutional injustices, governmental instability and corruption, and social isolation have all contributed to a worsening mental state for, well, pretty much everyone. Mental health education is more relevant and needed than ever before. And while the common view of 2020 is that it was a raging dumpster fire of a year (which, admittedly, in many ways it was),

I have personally been trying to see 2020 as a year of growth.

All of the struggles I went through have changed me so much from the person I was in 2019. While I still acknowledge the hardship and loss that so many of us have gone through, I’m trying to practice finding the good in it, and how I can use my struggle as an impetus for my own self-improvement.

This way of thinking did not come overnight, especially considering my anxiety constantly seeking out the worst-case scenario in even the most innocuous of situations. This more positive mindset is one I’ve strived to cultivate over the course of 2020 with the help of my life coach, Myrna.

And while my generation is the most likely to suffer from poor mental health, we are also the most likely to seek out and receive therapy.

And that is something I am so happy to be a part of, the growing awareness and acceptance of the need for help, and the recognition that

being open about your struggles and sensitivities is not a sign of weakness - it’s a sign of strength.

Because when we choose to embark on the long journey of healing our nervous systems and taking responsibility for our own happiness, we are improving the entire world, one brain at a time.

So if you want to embark on this journey yourself, subscribe to get notified when I post and stay for a while - I’d love to have your perspectives in this growing conversation. This is a new thing for me, and I’m a 20 year old who's still in college, so I don’t and couldn't possibly know all there is to know, and I’m bound to make mistakes along the way, so I appreciate any thoughts and constructive criticisms.

In addition to reducing harmful stigma and spreading valuable information, my goal for this site is to be an outlet for my creative and intellectual cravings, somewhere I can explore the things I think about all the time and am always asking more questions about. Even more than that, this is a passion project, one that I’ve found that even in the very beginning stages of working on has been such a benefit to my mental health and happiness. So even if no one reads this, there has already been so much good to come out of it. And if even one person learns something that helps them understand their experience or feel a bit more hopeful than they did before, well, that’s more than I could ever hope of achieving.

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I’d like to leave you with something my life coach has talked with me about countless times, especially when my thinking falls into a rut of negativity and hopelessness.

The brain, she tells me, is plastic -

it is constantly wiring and rewiring itself with every passing second, being the most complex system we know of in the universe. And we all have access to this amazingly beautiful phenomenon right in our own skulls.

And while there are biological components to our mental health that are out of our control, we are not powerless under the influence of the its mechanics. We have the ability to consciously make small changes, in our thoughts, our beliefs, and our behaviors that contribute to this marvelous feat of millions of years of evolution that continues to adapt with our every experience.

And all of it starts with a simple awareness. I hope that I can be a part of your journey of manifesting this mindfulness in your own life.

Love and light, Erin.