City: Yankton, S.D.

Age: 24

What is the story related to mental health, suicide, and/or resilience that you’d like to share?

My story is related to social media. I was working as a teacher and 2 years ago I decided to make a TikTok video and post it. At the time, I had 6 followers. Over the next week, that video has 41 million views. I then started making TikToks consistently, and since then I have grown my social media following to over 1.6 million followers. Through that journey, I learned how important it is to be resilient. Although most interactions on my accounts are positive, I still have people leaving negative comments and hate on my videos. I’ve had to become resilient and persevere through people trying to tear me down.

What resources have helped you to address this challenge?

Having a solid group of friends to turn to, books and YouTube videos about resiliency, self-affirmation.

Based on your experience, how can we work to build resilience in ourselves, our loved ones, and in our communities to better face life’s challenges?

It’s important to be confident in ourselves. When you have confidence, you can become much more resilient because you are confident in who you are as a person. Resilience is built by reaffirming who you are and why you are capable of succeeding.

What is one thing related to mental health, suicide, or resilience that you wish everyone could understand?

Life is challenging. There will be seasons of life that are more challenging than others, which is why we need to be able to persevere through challenges.

Find Gabe on TikTok and Instagram.
Check out the latest episode of Great Minds with Lost&Found featuring Gabe Dannenbring:

You can also watch the podcast episode: