Reto

I've recently come across this quote by Jim Carrey:

Depression is your body saying f*ck you, I don’t want to be this character anymore, I don’t want to hold up this avatar that you’ve created in the world. It’s too much for me. You should think of the word ‘depressed’ as ‘deep rest.’ Your body needs to be depressed. It needs deep rest from the character that you’ve been trying to play.

I have had trouble with depression almost my whole life and what I have found is very different from the understanding of #depression Jim Carrey seems to have.

To me depression is a state of hopelessness. It's not my body telling me something. It is my mind losing hope, which is often caused by circumstances – but it doesn't have to be.

The depression can affect my body in that I get various psychosomatic symptoms from it, like headache or dizziness or weird feelings in my belly or sleeping issues or tingling in the limbs. It's like an array of possible symptoms and sometimes it's hard to identify them as being caused by the depression.

Now my solution to overcome depression is not to rest from anything but to recover hope and that's crucial. If hope cannot be restored the depression will not go away.

Hope usually is lost when things get tough. When you feel like you are in a thread-mill or things only get worse and you don't seem to get anywhere, then hope fades – and a depression kicks in.

To be able to stay hopeful when things do not turn out as intended you need faith. Every obstacle that gets in your way is a potential stumbling block for your hope. It is essential to develop a strong faith that you can overcome an obstacle or a tough situation, a loss or a failure, a setback or tragedy.

As long as you believe that the things will turn out well in the end, you do not lose hope. And if you do not lose hope you will not get depressed.

And even if you have already slipped into a depression, do not worry about it. Just try to figure out what made you lose hope and how you can recover it and then the depression will leave you.

In Jim Carrey's scenario, an actor or performer is supposed to play a certain role. Maybe it's exciting in the beginning but it can become an obligation and even a burden later on. This is where hope vanishes and the depression starts.

To take a rest from playing that character probably can help you to regain hope, but it would be better if you could find a way to keep playing the character without losing hope.