If you’re looking for mental health quotes, sayings, and mantras to keep you grounded, this post is exactly what you need.
If you met me IRL, you’d probably (hopefully?) never know I suffer from anxiety, and would likely assume I’m just a high maintenance, high strung, Type A personality. All of those things are in fact true, LOL, but what you may not realize is that each of those traits of mine are the result of years of living with high-functioning anxiety.
One of the biggest hurdles for anyone suffering from mental illness is overcoming the stigma. It is the number one reason why people living with mental illness do not seek help.
Whether you’re going through a rough patch in your life and your mental health needs a little TLC, or you have a diagnosed mental illness that requires you to stay in the fight on the daily, I hope these mental health quotes help you feel grounded, and less alone.
What Is Mental Health?
Our mental health is a combination of our emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It impacts so many parts of our lives – how we think and feel, how we interpret and handle stress, and how we interact with others. It also impacts how we feel about ourselves. Taking care of our mental health is so important because it helps us manage the inevitable ups and downs of our lives in a healthy way, and also ensures we can develop and nurture positive relationships with others.
It’s important to note that mental health and mental illness are not the same thing, despite the fact that they are often used interchangeably. A person can have poor mental health without an underlying mental illness, and vice versa.
33 Mental Health Quotes to Keep You Grounded
“If you are broken, you do not have to stay broken.”
—Selena Gomez
“If you’re going through hell, keep going.”
—Winston Churchill
“What mental health needs is more sunlight, more candor, and more unashamed conversation.”
—Glenn Close
“You don’t have to control your thoughts. You just have to stop letting them control you.”
—Dan Millman
“Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times if one only remembers to turn on the light.”
—Albus Dumbledore
“Sometimes the people around you won’t understand your journey. They don’t need to, it’s not for them.”
—Joubert Botha
“Healing is hard, staying wounded is harder.”
—Unknown
“Your present circumstances don’t determine where you can go; they merely determine where you start.”
—Nido Qubein
“Tough times never last, but tough people do!”
—Robert Schuller
“The best way out is always through.”
—Robert Frost
“Change what you can, manage what you can’t.”
—Raymond McCauley
“In any given moment, we have two options: to step forward into growth or to step back into safety.”
—Abraham Maslow
“Self-care is how you take your power back.”
—Lalah Delia
“Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves”
—Henry David Thoreau
“If you can’t fly, run. If you can’t run, walk. If you can’t walk, crawl, but by all means, keep moving.”
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Change what you can, manage what you can’t.”
—Raymond McCauley
“There is hope, even when your brain tells you there isn’t.”
—John Green
“Don’t believe everything you think.”
—Unknown
“Fear is a liar.”
—Unknown
“Your illness is not your identity. Your chemistry is not your character.”
—Rick Warren
“This feeling will pass. The fear is real but the danger is not.”
—Cammie McGovern
“Mental health problems don’t define who you are. They are something you experience. You walk in the rain and you feel the rain, but, importantly, you are not the rain.”
—Matt Haig
“You don’t have to be positive all the time. It’s perfectly okay to feel sad, angry, annoyed, frustrated, scared and anxious. Having feelings doesn’t make you a negative person. It makes you human.”
—Lori Deschene
“Promise me you’ll always remember: you’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.”
—Christopher Robin from Winnie the Pooh
“Just because you don’t understand it doesn’t mean it isn’t so.”
—Lemony Snicket
“My dark days made me stronger. Or maybe I already was strong, and they made me prove it.”
—Emery Lord
“We are not our trauma. We are not our brain chemistry. That’s part of who we are, but we’re so much more than that.”
—Sam J. Miller
“There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in”
—Leonard Cohen
“Worrying does not take away tomorrow’s troubles, it takes away today’s peace.”
—Unknown
“Nobody can save you but yourself, and you’re worth saving. It’s a war not easily won, but if anything is worth winning then this is it.”
—Charles Bukowski
“There isn’t anybody out there who doesn’t have a mental health issue, whether it’s depression, anxiety, or how to cope with relationships. Having OCD is not an embarrassment anymore–for me. Just know that there is help and your life could be better if you go out and seek the help.”
—Howie Mandel
“Mental health…is not a destination, but a process. It’s about how you drive, not where you’re going.”
—Noam Shpancer
“Don’t let your struggle become your identity.”
—Unknown
If you’re going through a difficult patch in your life, or you suffer from a diagnosed mental illness that causes periodic ups and downs in your life, I hope this collection of mental health quotes helps you feel grounded, and reminds you that you are not alone.
