What Have You Created Out Of Depression Or Anxiety?

Show us the projects that've helped you make it through.

When you're living with depression, anxiety, or any sort of mental health condition, making stuff can be the last thing in the world you want to do. But sometimes it helps!

Alanna Okun / BuzzFeed

Whether your outlet is writing or crafting or glass-blowing or making messes.

Maybe you assembled the perfect meal.

Alanna Okun / BuzzFeed

Potatoes are the only food group.

Maybe, miraculously, you ensured that a plant did not die.

Alanna Okun / BuzzFeed

Maybe it even flourished.

Maybe you let yourself feel it.

Alanna Okun / BuzzFeed

This is a project I started during a heightened period of anxiety, when I noticed that the same anti-mantras kept swirling around and around in my head. Usually I would try to ignore or outrun them, but that often made them louder. To combat this, I decided to try and control them with embroidery (as one does). Spending an hour or two stitching a sentence — bringing it into the physical world however you choose — is one of the most efficient ways to realize how little power those words really have. (Not to mention how contradictory they are — how can I be too much and not enough at the same time? Anxiety is super dumb!!)

This method might not work for everyone but now when one of my toxic strings of words worms its way back into my head, I can at least picture it in my own tiny handwriting instead of as a terrifying shapeless mass.

What's something you're proud of creating because of or in spite of your struggle with mental health? Tell us your story and show us your creation in the dropbox below, and you could be featured in an upcoming BuzzFeed Community post.

The patch in the thumbnail is available on Etsy.