Oct 1, 2019
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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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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