#11 - You Are Not Alone - Marie "Mxiety" Shanley

Marie "Mxiety" Shanley joined me for a conversation about mental health, depression, streaming on Twitch/Mixer, and how to get help when you are struggling. She shares her own story of overcoming debilitating depression, PTSD, and anxiety.

Since getting help, Marie felt compelled to create a place that connects people who are currently struggling with people who have struggled, so nobody ever has to be alone in their time of need.

She has built a community on streaming platforms Twitch, and now Mixer, where she talks with her audience about mental wellness two nights a week. In addition to this, she's written extensively about her mental health journey and experiences on her blog here.

Please do check out Marie's website, stream, and social channels, which you can find here: Website, Twitch, Mixer, Twitter, IG, YouTube.

Here are some links to a handful of her very helpful blog posts on a range of mental health topics:

3 Things you can Do Right Now if You're Anxious

List of Things to do When You're in a Depression Low

List of Warning Signs that You Might be Falling Back into Depression

Marie's current streaming schedule is every Wednesday and Thursday night at 7 PM ET.

Some of the things we talked about in this episode:

1. Mxiety is a streamer on Twitch and Mixer. However, she doesn't play video games like you may expect. Her show is about mental health and wellness. She's apart of a surge of content creation meeting demand for mental health and wellness on streaming platforms by creating community around the topic and sharing personal experiences.
   
2. Marie tells us about her mental health journey. One day Marie found herself sitting in a corner, struggling, rocking back and forth because of the pain she felt due to debilitating depression, anxiety, and PTSD. She shared with us about how she got to that point, and what she did to get better.
   
   
3. We talk about how we label ourselves by our weaknesses and struggles. We talked about how and why we came up with labels and why we continue to use them both for the benefit of ourselves (or detriment) and because of how others expect us to label ourselves.
   
4. Is there anything that could have led you to get help sooner? Marie talks about trying therapy, and going to a school counselor, which didn't seem to work for her at first. She tells the story of experiencing suicidal thoughts and going to see the college counselor, who couldn't help her in her time of need.
   
   
5. We talked in detail about the extreme stigma around suicidal ideation. We discuss how hard it is to be open about this topic. Marie talks about how after 7 years of therapy, finally had a therapist who seemed to handle it appropriately and talk through it, instead of upending her life. We agreed that there is some work we must do as a society around how we respond to people who have these thoughts.
   
   
6. Marie shares with us about where she finds support and what her support network looks like for her struggles. She talks about this by framing her current network against her old network, which was basically no support at all. She gives a list of things she tries to do daily, weekly, monthly, etc. in order to manage her mental wellness, which she has also discussed on her blog here.
   
   
7. We talked about how she got into streaming and building a community of people interested in mental wellness. Once she found support in a local community, she wanted to create a place where people could find a sense of community when they are struggling.
   
   
8. Marie talks about her streaming community and how many different people, with so many different struggles from all over the world have joined her community and engage in the conversation she creates space for several times a week on her stream, which you can find here on Mixer and here on Twitch.

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