Related Resources
For Self-Advocacy
How to Partner with Your Brain to Create Healing
Healing with Self-Compassion: A Guided Meditation
How to Build a Healthier Relationship with Difficult Emotions
A Guided Meditation to Rewire Your Brain for Confidence
Self-Advocacy Starts Here: Redefining Mental Health from the Inside Out
By Dr. Kate Truitt
What It Really Means to Advocate for Your Mental Health
When we hear the word advocacy, most of us instinctively picture bold, external acts—marches, megaphones, policy reform, public declarations. And yes, those are important. But the kind of advocacy I find most powerful—the kind that truly rewires our brains and shifts the world one nervous system at a time—doesn’t happen on stages. It happens in bedrooms and bathrooms. In traffic. On the floor of your office, in the pause between breaths. It happens in the quiet.
Mental health advocacy, at its core, is about how we choose to meet ourselves in the tender, gritty, unglamorous moments. It’s not reserved for professionals or public figures, nor is it defined by how loud or visible our actions are. True advocacy starts in our relationship with ourselves. In how we choose to talk to our brain when Amy, our ever-diligent amygdala, pulls the alarm. In how we show up when shame whispers, “You’re too much,” or “You should have it together by now.”
Advocating for mental health means choosing—again and again—to live in partnership with your brain. To create spaces, internally and externally, where it’s safe to feel. To recognize that being human comes with jagged edges and that our healing isn’t linear, polished, or neat. It’s layered, like sediment reshaping the foundation beneath our feet.
Compassion Is Advocacy in Action
In my work and in my own life, I return often to one simple truth: Compassion is the heart of mental health advocacy.
And not the soft, indulgent kind of compassion some folks might dismiss—but the kind that’s fierce, focused, and scientifically sound. The kind that says, “I see you, even in this.” When we meet our nervous system with curiosity instead of criticism, when we pause to co-regulate instead of powering through, we aren’t just practicing self-care—we’re building brain pathways that support long-term emotional resilience.
This work starts at home. Literally, and neurologically. Each time we soothe instead of scold, each time we validate instead of minimize, we are modeling what trauma-informed care looks like in real time. Whether it’s saying, “I’m going to take a breath before I respond” when your patience thins, or kneeling down to meet a child’s overwhelmed gaze with, “I see that this is a lot for you right now,” you’re shaping safety. Not just for others, but for your own brain, too.
You see, Amy’s job is survival. She doesn’t distinguish between an actual threat and the memory of one. But when we intervene with presence—when we breathe deeply, soften our inner voice, or place a hand over our heart—we give her something new to learn. And the beauty of neuroplasticity is that she can learn. Again and again. That is advocacy.
Neuroplasticity: The Science That Says You’re Not Stuck
I say this often, because it’s both radically hopeful and biologically true: Your brain is not fixed. It’s adaptive. Neuroplasticity means that every experience you have—every thought, every emotion, every intentional moment of self-kindness—literally reshapes your brain’s architecture (Truitt, 2024).
So when your system responds with a panic attack, a shutdown, or that familiar compulsive urge to people-please, it’s not because you’re broken. It’s because your amygdala is doing exactly what it was designed to do: protect your core values of safety, belonging, and success. These responses are your brain’s well-rehearsed strategies for survival—strategies shaped by experience, not by failure. And here’s the empowering part: with consistent, compassionate practice, your brain can learn something new. That’s the gift of neuroplasticity. If you’d like to dive deeper into how the amygdala’s core values shape our behaviors—and how we can partner with them for healing—watch this short video below.
Each time you interrupt a shame spiral with the words, “It’s okay to feel this,” or you remind yourself, “This moment is safe, even if my body isn’t sure yet,” you’re not being indulgent. You’re being neurologically strategic. You’re rewiring your brain for safety and resilience—two ingredients essential to healing (Truitt, 2022).
This is what we call Brain Partnership. It’s a core component of my NeuroTriad Model, and it begins with recognizing that your brain isn’t your enemy—it’s your teammate. When we treat our symptoms as signals, not shortcomings, we create space for healing to unfold with compassion and clarity.
Everyday Advocacy: Small Moments, Big Shifts
Mental health advocacy doesn’t require a soapbox. But it does ask for your presence.
It looks like giving yourself permission to rest without guilt. It looks like asking your partner, “What’s been feeling heavy this week?” instead of defaulting to logistics. It looks like modeling rupture and repair with your children—naming when you’ve made a mistake and showing them what reattunement looks like.
At work, it might mean speaking up when someone uses shaming language, or gently redirecting a conversation that’s veering into emotional invalidation. You don’t need a title to lead in this space. Emotional safety is created through presence, not hierarchy.
And in your community, it could be as simple as normalizing the language of healing. Saying, “My nervous system was a little fried, so I took a walk” instead of pretending everything’s fine. Or offering a grounding technique to a friend in distress, not because you’re trying to fix them, but because you’re honoring their capacity to navigate hard things—with support.
These micro-moments aren’t just niceties. They’re neurobiological recalibrations. They’re how we shift cultures—at home, at work, and in the world.
Your Story is a Map for Others
If you’ve read my memoir Keep Breathing, (download Chapter 1 for free here!) you know that I didn’t write it because I had a tidy, well-processed trauma and grief story. I wrote it because I survived something unimaginable and discovered, in the wreckage, that science and love can live in the same sentence. That our stories—especially the messy, nonlinear ones—are powerful tools for connection and regulation.
Storytelling, from a brain-based perspective, activates the prefrontal cortex and helps integrate emotional experiences into our broader sense of self. So when you say to a friend, “This memory brought something up for me—I just need a moment,” you’re not just sharing. You’re healing. And you’re giving permission for someone else to do the same. Click here to listen in on my podcast interview on the Betrayal Podcast to go deeper on the role of trauma-informed storytelling in self-advocacy and healing.
You don’t need a book deal or a social media following to be an advocate through story. You only need truth. You only need to say, “I’m still here,” and let that be enough.
Advocacy, One Nervous System at a Time
This Mental Health Awareness Month, let’s expand our definition of advocacy. Let’s remember that healing doesn’t have to be loud to be real. That every time you breathe through a hard moment instead of dissociating, every time you ask your child what their emotion feels like in their body, every time you give yourself permission to cry, rest, or laugh again—you are changing the world.
Because healing isn’t abstract. It’s practical. It’s embodied. And it’s contagious.
You don’t have to do this perfectly. You just have to show up—with your whole, beautifully human self—and choose compassion. That choice, over time, becomes your revolution.
And I’m right here, walking with you.
References
Truitt, K. (2022). Healing in your hands: Harnessing neuroplasticity to heal the past, create the present, and build your future. PESI Publishing & Media.
Truitt, K. (2024). Keep Breathing: A Psychologist’s Intimate Journey of Rediscovering Love, Life, and Self Through Havening. Bridge City Books
Like this post? Please share it with your colleagues & friends.
