Ira Khan: Depression Advice Doesn’t Always Help

“Different people feel depression differently!” Ira Khan talks about the advice she received after opening up about depression.

Transcript

00:00All of these people, when I told them about my depression, they said stop, stop being

00:06busy, stop jumping from one thing to the next to the next, just be, just slow down, keep

00:14busy, work hard, think positive.

00:16Hello, I've realized that I say hello to the camera in exactly the same way every time

00:21the camera comes on and it's becoming a thing and I'm trying to get out of it because I

00:25feel sweet when I say hello in the same way every time, but you know, big steps, you work

00:30on things that actually matter.

00:35Today's video is about something that was on my list to make a video about in any case,

00:40but also happens to be relevant to a lot of comments that I got on my first video.

00:48Keep busy, work hard, think positive.

00:57I don't know whether I should laugh about that or sigh or what I should say about that,

01:03but I'm going to let the people I know and my friends respond in the comments about how

01:10busy I kept myself and how much I would work out.

01:13What I want to tell you guys is that every single doctor I went to, and I think I went

01:18to about four at least, and my parents and my aunt who's a psychoanalyst and Kiran Adi

01:23and all of these people, when I told them about my depression, they said, stop, stop

01:31being busy, stop jumping from one thing to the next to the next, just be, just slow down.

01:39And what I mean by this is that I don't mean to say you guys are wrong and you're giving

01:44me bad advice.

01:45I mean to just show you that different people have different unhealthy behaviors and different

01:51unhealthy patterns and depression or mental illnesses or whatever it is affects different

02:01behaviors in different people, pushing different parts of their personalities into extremes.

02:10And so, I mean, finally it's about balance, so any behavior in an extreme I would imagine

02:16is unhealthy.

02:20So yeah, just to sort of show you guys that, how do you give someone concrete advice just

02:32like that on what to do, what to say to someone, keeping busy was the opposite of what I needed

02:47to do.

02:48Working out, well, I worked out a lot and now I'm scared of working out, which is really

02:55frustrating because I used to love working out and it's still very important to me to

02:59be strong, but now I'm scared of working out, so it's a little bit of a problem.

03:04Keep positive, that one's a little iffy for me because to be honest, I have never tried

03:10to stay positive, like to force myself to be positive.

03:14I think I'm relatively positive as a person, I'm not negative, also, you know, keep positive

03:20is so skewed as a term now, I don't know whether you need to stay happy all the time, which

03:27is obviously not great, you know, or what you mean by that, so I can't really comment

03:32on the be positive thing, I have to admit I have not given that a real shot because

03:36I find that when I do that, I go to that other extreme where I feel like I'm lying to myself

03:41a lot, but yeah, different people show their depression differently, I guess, and I don't

03:56know, so then when that happens, how do you give someone advice?

04:04What do you say to someone if they come up to you and tell you about their depression

04:10or their anxiety or their problems, what do you think?