2025 Joslyn Sorensen, Spanish Fork HS

Don’t Give Up!

I have come a long way. I am graduating high school in a few months and heading to college to study social work in the fall. I used to think I never would make it this far. My journey to recovery was difficult, but it was my strength and resilience that allowed me to make it through.

Junior High was a time of darkness and self-loathing. I isolated myself from friends and family and was obsessed with the idea of ending it all. I tried medication and therapy, but I didn’t let myself believe I could get better. I didn’t want to get better. Eventually I had to drop out of school completely to focus on my mental health. At the time it felt like the end of the world, but over time I’ve realized it was a necessary part of my healing. I needed to take time to prioritize my mind and put in more work into getting better.

I came back to school freshman year of high school. I was still in a bad place mentally and was using self-harm as a way to cope. It was unhealthy, but it calmed me down and reminded me I wasn’t better. I still had the concealed desire to not be alive. This ended up being a huge difficulty because no amount of medication or therapy could help me if I wasn’t willing to put in the work towards recovery.

It was that same year I got a new therapist. My therapist prior had left after two years of working with me. It was a hard change, but my new therapist taught me things that I still remember now. She talked to me, focusing on my self-harm. She told me to make a list of all the reasons why self-harm helped me cope. After I did that, she told me to find something I could do to replace each of the things. Soon enough, I had a routine for when I wanted to self-harm. I would first put on one of my pretty dresses and put on red lipstick, then I would pour a bowl of freezing cold water on my head, then I would blast music in my room and jump on my bed. I used this as my coping mechanism until I didn’t need to anymore.

I was making progress, but I still had a roadblock. I wanted to stay mentally ill. If I got better, that would mean I would have to keep waking up. I would have to keep going to school. I would have to keep working towards a future I didn’t want.

Throughout all of this, I had other friends who were going through similar things to me. It was weird to realize that although I felt so alone, there were so many people around me who were struggling just as much as I was. But talking with my friends gave me something I hadn’t felt in a while. It gave me hope, and it gave me what I felt was a purpose. I loved being able to use what I had learned and felt to help them through their hard times. I realized that I could do that as a career. I could become a mental health professional. But in order to heal others, I had to heal myself.

I started putting in more work towards my recovery. I wasn’t self-harming, and I now had a desire to work through my mental illness and stay alive.

The rest of high school didn’t come easy, and I still had very bad days. But I was able to work through them to get to where I am now. Over the last few years I have come so far and found so many things worth living for. My family, my friends, my future, but most importantly, myself. My recovery journey is not over, but I have tools and support to help me when and if I need it. Your recovery won’t be the same as mine, and it may be hard for you to find the motivation to get better, but it is out there. There is so much out there. Don’t give up.