We recently connected with Christine Marie Frey and have shared our conversation below.
Christine Marie, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
When I was 12 years old, I began experiencing severe mental health challenges including depression, anxiety, psychosis, and bipolar disorder. By the time I was 13 years old, I had not only lost all of my friends and had been hospitalized, but I was also expelled from school due to the stigma that surrounded me. Despite being treated like a burden and a lost cause, I knew I had the ability to make a positive difference in our world.
In the moments when I felt most alone, I had to remind myself that I have worth. I had been labeled as sick, crazy, psycho, and mentally ill. However, in reality, I knew my brain was special. I had great insight and could think in incredibly creative ways. With management and maintenance, I knew I could achieve extraordinary accomplishments.
My mom created a new positive term when I was 13 years old that we used to replace the term “mental illness.” We started calling mental health challenges “Brain XP.” We both believe that young people who struggle with mental health challenges think in such expanded ways, and that by raising more understanding of mental health, the fear and stigma would decrease. Brain XP stands for Brain eXPanded, and this is our new positive way of looking at mental illness.
When I was finally ready to share my mental health story, at 16 years old, I wrote an autobiography called “Brain XP: Living with Mental Illness, A Young Teenager’s Perspective”, which became an international award winning book when I was 17 years old.
Brain XP started as a little term that made me feel better about my mental health, but it has now become so much more. After seeing the success and incredible feedback from the readers of my book, I decided to start up an entire mental health project & community for teenagers called Brain XP. This project & community is now helping so many young people across the globe, and I am excited for all that is to come.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Christine XP (born Christine Marie Frey) is an extraordinary rising youth mental health advocate, and she is the founder of the Brain XP Project. At the age of 16, Christine XP wrote and self-published her autobiography “Brain XP: Living with Mental Illness, A Young Teenager’s Perspective”, which has since become an international award-winning book. She is an award- winning mental health advocate, an engaging motivational speaker, and a musical recording artist & performer.
The Brain XP Project is the new center of teen mental health. Here at Brain XP, we provide peer-based mental health resources that strictly come from lived experience. From blog posts to music video to podcast episodes and more, Brain XP offers free and easily accessible mental health materials for youth, teens, caregivers, and families. The Brain XP Academy and the Brain XP Community are components of our overall project as well. The Brain XP Academy offers Brain XP trainings, courses, live presentations, and other programs to help educate youth, teens, caregivers, families, and general audiences about mental health. The Brain XP Community is our all-inclusive online social media community. We focus on teen mental health, but you do not need to be a teenager to enter into our community. We have different platforms for our different community members, and you can read more about this in our community tab on our website. The Brain XP Project is the new movement for teen mental health! Utilize our resources, interact in our community, and learn from our lived-experience peer based educational materials. You do not want to miss out on this new wave of teen mental health advocacy, so stay in touch with us and keep checking back here on our website for new info and more opportunities to participate in our project.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
The creation of the Brain XP concept was truly a journey. It all started with a 16 year old girl who lost all of her friends due to the stigma surrounding her mental health challenges. This girl goes by the name Christine XP (born Christine Marie Frey) who is the Brain XP Project’s founder. Christine XP was a straight A student with tons of friends, and she was extremely interactive, outgoing, and happy. When she entered middle school, she noticed that something felt different inside of her, but she couldn’t pinpoint what was wrong. Little did she know that these feelings would end up changing her life so drastically and so fast. At 11 years old, Christine XP realized that the feelings she was experiencing were symptoms of anxiety. At 12, she began experiencing symptoms of depression, psychosis, and bipolar disorder in addition to her anxiety. By the time she was 13 years old, Christine XP had been expelled from school due to the stigma surrounding her. She lost all of her friends in her support network, and she felt hopeless. One day when Christine XP was 13 years old, she and her mom Debbie went for a walk with their dog Sparky. Christine XP felt immense rage building inside of her. This rage came from being labeled as mentally ill by her former friends, other parents, and school administration. On this 20 minute dog walk, Christine XP confided in Debbie and told her that she hates being called mentally ill. Debbie and Christine XP started brainstorming different terms that they could use to replace the label of mental illness, and it was then that Debbie came up with the term Brain XP. Brain XP stands for Brain eXPanded! This is our new positive term for teen mental illness. Brain XP acknowledges that teens who struggle with mental health challenges think in creative, intuitive, and insightful ways. It is almost as if their brains are expanded. We do not label struggling teens as sick, crazy, or psycho. Instead, we shine a positive light on struggling teens because we believe that with management of symptoms and maintenance of healthy minds, struggling teens can thrive and achieve incredible accomplishments!
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
Sharing my real-life “lived experience” as any regular teenager. The majority of schools in the United States do not teach young people about mental health. We have PE (Physical Education) & Biology (how our physical body works) – but we are NEVER taught how to handle the pressure & stress of being teenagers in today’s increasingly competitive, academic and technologically-based environment. We need education in mental health, problem solving, coping skills, time management, conflict resolution, & independent living skills to support our transition into adulthood. Absent that education, we reach out to each other, our friends, to get that support, but our friends are struggling too. So, we need to educate ourselves in these skills. I am a young person who has lived through my mental health challenges, and continues to do so, with a wealth of coping & management skills. I reached out to other young people using social media and found thousands of young people just like me who are seeking the same support! In addition, I reach out to schools, care-givers, & professionals by speaking at public conferences and events.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.brainxp.org
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/brainxpproject/
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/brainxpproject/
- Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/christine-marie-frey/
- Twitter: twitter.com/brainxpproject
- Youtube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCCt_FVZMlylbUPReg4aJpew