Invisible Battles: Mental Health, Medals, and Meaning with Rebecca Rusch | EP10 Speak Up, Stand Out Change Lives Podcast
- Rebecca Rusch
- Sep 17, 2024
- 1 min read
“One of the most exciting things about this journey is I’ve learned how to train my mind the same way I’ve trained my body... understanding how you can build different neural pathways just like you build strength in your muscles.”
— Rebecca Rusch on learning how to rewire her brain during recovery for the Stand Up, Stand Out, Change Lives Podcast
I recently recorded an episode of Whitney McDuff's podcast, Stand Up, Stand Out Changes Lives, where I opened up about a deeply personal journey I’ve been on for the past couple of years. Following a bike crash, what I initially thought was a minor injury turned into a long, difficult battle with an undiagnosed concussion. In this episode, I talk about the physical and emotional challenges I faced—everything from constant headaches and depression to the fear of losing my ability to perform and work. I also shared how therapy, mindfulness practices, and even psychedelic-assisted therapy played pivotal roles in my recovery.
Whitney and I dive into the importance of vulnerability, mental health, and how this experience has been another chapter in my lifelong journey of self-discovery, much like my expedition in Blood Road.
This is a really important conversation about invisible injuries and mental health, and I hope it can offer support to others who may be struggling.
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One thing I kept thinking about while reading this is how hard it is to explain “brain fatigue” to people who haven’t felt it — like you can be motivated and still just… out of bandwidth. Did you find any practical way to communicate your limits to clients/partners without feeling like you were constantly defending yourself? Off-topic, but I’ve noticed even little confidence boosts (like trying a new look) can help on rough weeks — I’ve seen stuff like this site come up when people talk about that.
The “rewiring” analogy makes so much sense — especially after something like a concussion where the timeline is fuzzy and progress doesn’t show up in obvious ways. I also liked that you didn’t gloss over how emotionally isolating it can be when the injury is invisible. Weird little aside: the way you described trying to find meaning in the mess reminded me of those Ghibli style portraits people make from regular photos — same life, but a different lens can make it feel possible to look at it again.
I’m glad you talked about the fear piece — not just pain, but that quiet panic about identity when your body (and brain) won’t cooperate. Also appreciated the framing of vulnerability as a skill, not a personality trait. Kind of unrelated, but the “speak up / stand out” theme made me think of how people try to hrefgo their way into being seen online, while the harder part is being honest about what’s actually happening.
Invisible injuries are brutal because everyone expects you to “look fine,” and meanwhile you’re budgeting energy for basic stuff like light, sound, and getting through a workday. When you mentioned therapy plus mindfulness plus psychedelic-assisted therapy, it sounded less like a single miracle fix and more like a long menu of small supports — that felt honest. Total tangent, but the whole “reduce mental math errors under stress” thing made me think of a mEq to mg calculator I’ve seen in a clinical context — sometimes just offloading one tiny piece of cognitive load matters.
The part about depression showing up alongside the headaches hit hard — it’s reassuring (in a grim way) to hear someone high-performing describe that mental spiral without trying to “power through” it. I’m curious if mindfulness felt helpful right away for you, or if it only started working once the symptoms calmed down a bit. Random association, but the idea of rebuilding pathways reminded me of how you learn patterns over time in BlockBlast — it’s never linear, you just keep stacking small reps.