I’m Danielle Ruhl from Love Is Blind, and here’s a piece of my mind
DANIELLE TALKS SELF-CARE, POSITIVE THINKING, AND HOW SHE’S BALANCING HER NEW PLATFORM WITH HER MENTAL HEALTH
By Kristina Benoist
Welcome to our Piece Of My Mind series where experts, advocates, and amazing people from all backgrounds and professions share a snapshot of their mental health. We dive into their self-care routines, how they balance their work with their mental health, and how they manage those really bad days. We’re sharing this piece of their mind so that you can hopefully find some inspiration in your own mental health journey moving forward.
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You may know Danielle Ruhl from the popular Netflix dating series, Love Is Blind.
From the very beginning and throughout the show, Danielle was open and honest about her struggles with mental health. Since then, Danielle is using her platform to talk about her own mental health journey and has become an incredible advocate for mental health on a broad scale.
We sat down with Danielle to find out more about how she’s learned to manage her mental health, how her life has shifted over the past year, and what it was like for her to have her mental health experiences up for discussion on social media.
This is Danielle Ruhl, and here’s a piece of her mind
IDONTMIND (IDM): How is your mental health today? What’s your headspace like?
Danielle Ruhl (DR): It's good overall. I think being on a TV show, like the initial shock of everything, can put you at a little bit of a low. But right now I’m trying to focus on the positives. Being able to use my platform to speak about the things that are really important to me has kind of shifted my entire mindset. It’s so gratifying that it kind of pushes out any of the negativity.
IDM: What does a normal day look like for you right now?
DR: Right now it’s a little stressful because I'm working full time. I'm very passionate about my career, but also trying to launch my own platform to communicate with those who reach out. At least I love my job. I love being able to talk with other people, but then it does sometimes eliminate time for myself. I think I've started prioritizing getting back in my old routine, which has helped drastically in kind of normalizing how I've been feeling.
“The more you talk about it, the more you understand that so many other people have the same feelings and it’s not just you going through it.”
IDM: What was your first experience really thinking about mental health?
DR: So I started having suicidal ideations at the age of 8, and that's really when I started noticing that I felt different than other people did. But I had no idea that depression or anxiety or any of these words even existed. I would kind of get mad at myself because I couldn't shake the feeling. Knowing that I had an overall happy childhood and loving parents, and my sister and brother didn't seem to struggle as much — I just kept thinking negatively of myself because I didn't know why I felt the way that I did.
Those feelings only progressed because I didn't openly talk about them until college. The more you talk about it, the more you understand that so many other people have the same feelings and it's not just you going through it. I found that the more I talked about it the better it was. So even after college, I would be open about it with new friends that I would meet because I wasn't ashamed of it anymore. I didn't have to hide anymore.
“I know it may sound strange, but one of the things that I really enjoy is my skincare routine. Those small parts of my routine really positively impact my mental health.”
IDM: I can imagine that your life has changed pretty dramatically over the past year. How have you managed to take care of your mental health even with all of the changes in your life?
DR: Absolutely! One thing that's really helped me, in general, is structure. So I think taking time every day like, I'm going to wake up, I'm going to journal, I'm going to have an hour to work out. And then after work, I'm going to give myself just some time to hang out with [my husband] Nick. And it bugs me so much when I lose the time to be able to do those things. And now I'm like, “Danielle, you do have the time, you're just not getting back into your structure. You're not getting back into your schedule.” So now that I'm doing that again, you know, it's really beneficial.
“It was tough after the show was released. There were threads of people diagnosing me with every single disorder in the book...I felt like I was getting bullied for having mental health issues.”
IDM: What are a few ways that you self-care? How did you find them, and how did you realize that they worked for you?
DR:
WAKING UP EARLY
Waking up an hour or two hours before work to be able to just sit, drink my coffee, and write is key to taking care of my mental health. I wake up early and then do my skincare routine. I know it may sound strange, but one of the things that I really enjoy is my skincare routine. Those small parts of my routine really positively impact my mental health.
SONGWRITING
Everyone has different outlets. I connected with someone, and whenever she's feeling anxious or depressed, she starts painting. Because I like to write, I started to write songs. I write down my feelings in the form of a song. And then I can go back and reread that or listen to the voice note. I think that it helps me think like, “Wow, I'm feeling the same exact way when I wrote this song.”
WORKING OUT
I think that one of the biggest things is that I completely gave up working out at one point, and it just made me scared to get back into it. It really does release your endorphins and ultimately makes you feel better – not only because you're working on your physical body, but it impacts you mentally, too. I just have to remember that it's baby steps to get back into it. I really like cardio! Where you can listen to music and get lost in positive thoughts. I feel like when I'm working out I don't have to sit with some of the anxieties that I might have, you know?
JOURNALING APPS
I use two journaling apps every day. One of them is more focused on mindfulness, and one of them is tracking anxiety. I usually use both of them together. I log how I'm feeling on a scale of one to 10 and I write down why. Sometimes when you're experiencing anxiety or depression, you don't even necessarily know why you're feeling that way. So this app just really helps me dig into the source. Immediately after, they ask a prompt about something positive, like what am I grateful for today? So I think that it starts with helping you uncover why you're feeling a certain way and then ends with positive affirmations about yourself, your life, or other positive things that are going on. I think tracking how you're feeling is really important because it helps you start putting together the correlation between certain times of the year or certain situations that increase your anxiety.
IDM: When Love Is Blind was released, it was all over social media. I can only imagine that some of the things that people were posting weighed pretty heavily on your mental health. How have you learned to balance that while taking care of yourself?
DR: Obviously, you know, it was tough after the show was released. There were threads of people diagnosing me with every single disorder in the book. And that was really difficult because I've been working on this with my therapist and psychiatrist for years. I felt like I was getting bullied for having mental health issues.
It was really hard to go through that at first, but then being able to connect with others that have gone through the same exact situation made things so much better. There have been people I've talked to that have said, “I didn't necessarily understand how I was feeling until you started posting about mental health or until I watched you on the show.”
“No matter what, there are things that I should be thankful for. Even when I feel like everything is crashing and burning.”
IDM: Is there anything that you know you should be doing and you just can't get yourself to do it, or you just don't make time for it?
DR: When I would find myself getting into a depression, it would be really hard for me to go on about my day. There were times when just going outside, even though it looked beautiful out, would feel so hard. And then I started kind of slowly getting back into my routine. Gradually, as I started bringing back just things that I enjoy back into my life, I found that I started feeling better. And you know, it's just kind of like taking baby steps — getting back into my routine, and not letting myself just forget about the things that can make me feel better. Even if at the moment it seems impossible.
IDM: So on a really bad day when you wake up and you just know that you aren't feeling right. What do you do first to start getting your mental health back in a good space?
DR: I think it starts with me just writing down all the positives about my life. Like yesterday I did a presentation that went really well. My mom came up to visit this weekend, and it made me happy. I can breathe, I can move, I can eat. If I can't think about anything personally, I write down something simple like the sun is shining. It's all about reframing your mind. No matter what, there are things that I should be thankful for. Even when I feel like everything is crashing and burning.