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The Most Accurate Definition of Depression I Have Ever Heard

How could I not realize this?

Emilia Smith
2 min readSep 10, 2021
Photo by Rodolfo Sanches Carvalho on Unsplash

I often find myself unable to explain what depression truly feels like. It’s so complex and individual in nature that I can never give a short and satisfying description to someone who is genuinely interested in my mental health.

Jim Carrey might have helped me a great deal here. I recently came across a 2018 interview on YouTube in which he said:

“Depression is your body saying: (…) ‘I don’t want to be this character anymore. I don’t want to hold up this avatar you have created in the world. It is too much for me.’ (… ) You should think of the word depressed as deep rest. Deep rest. Your body needs to be depressed. It needs deep rest from the character you’ve been trying to play.

I was nothing short of utterly impressed. Those are very few words, but they so very accurately describe what depression is and what it does. That description is so simple, and yet so complex.

Depression is your body’s and your mind’s call to deep rest.

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Emilia Smith
Emilia Smith

Written by Emilia Smith

Telling my mental health journey. Talking about the hilarious everyday madness we call life. www.buymeacoffee.com/emiliajade

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