Why Robin Williams’ Depression Is Everyone’s Business

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Like many people last Monday, I felt deeply saddened by the news of Robin William’s death. But unlike most people, and because of my work as a psychologist, I know that no matter how the media is portraying depression, it’s still very misunderstood.

It’s not a deformity.
It’s not a plague.
It’s not a problem.

It’s just chronic pain manifested.

Depression is clinically understood as a disease, but it’s also something that happens to someone. It’s inaccurate to say, “He’s depressed,” because that’s not what defines him. That’s not who he is. Robin Williams didn’t choose to be depressed; he developed depressive symptoms. It happened to him.

Nobody chooses to be depressed. They don’t choose to be in pain. But in our culture, we can’t (and don’t) talk about pain. We can’t talk about our emotions and feelings without the shame of feeling weak. And that’s not an environment that promotes a healthy comeback from depression. It doesn’t encourage our natural human expressive functionality to just feel our emotions.

People who develop depression symptoms – whether they’re mild, moderate or severe, and if it’s reoccurring or not – are typically sensitive and very feeling of the atmosphere as children. They can sense painful feelings within their family and in their surroundings, but grow up seeing those emotions never fully expressed and instead de-pressed, pushed down, never brought to the surface and compassionately received. Even though everyone knows that pain is present and it’s there, children who are sensitive by nature are taught that it’s unacceptable to feel it; they absorb the process they witness from those around them.

As parents, we turn away from our kids so they don’t see when we’re experiencing pain. With good intentions you tell your kids: “Don’t cry,” “You’re too emotional and sensitive,” “You shouldn’t feel that way,” because you don’t want them to suffer from the pain; and yet, we never give them the space to acknowledge their feelings and share them in order to understand them. We aren’t giving them a model to express emotion, to acknowledge and soothe the pain. We’re avoiding our responsibility to lead by example, to give them the tools to self-soothe.

By unknowingly doing this, we don’t allow children to accept that pain is simply part of being human. We’re sending a profoundly confusing message: Your innate response to pain is defective. They begin to fear expressing emotion because they’ve been conditioned to think it’s impossible to survive feeling them.

Emotional Survival 101 Fail

When the depth of our emotions and feelings aren’t felt and expressed to someone, or shared with someone, we are essentially cutting off love and compassion. We are cutting off the design of our very survival.

Our essence, the core of what makes us human, is to feel secure and comfortable to share who we are (the human experience) in a space of unconditional love. Whether that is our immeasurable happiness, our profound sadness or our striking fears, feeling is the primary human expression; it’s what makes us who we are in those moments. It’s feeling what we’re designed to feel. But we cut it off. We numb it out.

People with depression internalize their pain out of fear of being perceived as weak or vulnerable. They’ve been conditioned to, after all. Emotions become too overwhelming to control, so more often than not, people suffering from depression turn to a landscape that they can control. They find other ways to anesthetize pain and turn to alcohol, drugs, food or even their weight. The range of human creative coping processes can include comedy, cookies, cocaine, mania and more.

What works is actively connecting to other people by expressing who you are and what feelings you’re experiencing. Cry when you feel sadness, joy, love and when something is so funny you feel tears streaming down your face – after all, being human is a full spectrum experience that can be highly meaningful as well as amusing.

When you address the issue, when you notice that you feel something and share how you’re experiencing it with somebody, it communicates something about you and creates intimacy. It connects you to another human being.

You feel empathy. You feel compassion. You feel love. (It’s all the same.)

And that’s what we all need when we’re in pain, more love. Love for our self and enough love to treat our self humanely. We should learn to accept our pain as something normal, as a natural human response, and not what makes us damaged. We didn’t come off the assembly line with missing or defective parts.
So, as we mourn the loss of Robin Williams, I encourage you to remember that he was a human being first. And after everything else: the comedian, the actor, the philanthropist, the mentor, the husband, the father and the friend; he developed depression symptoms because of the way he experienced being human.

Robin made us laugh (a natural pain reliever) and was known to literally keep the jokes coming. If you think about how a good-hearted joke releases the tension during an interview, it’s consistent with how he didn’t “break character” of the funnyman. He was transforming the atmosphere. Relieving all of our own pains through laughter. This was his methodology and his gift to the world.

I invite you to reflect on a wonderful human being’s passing as an opportunity to recognize that everyone – every human being, no matter how wealthy or successful they seem – experiences some level of pain that may not be fully expressed. Show them some empathy, give them some compassion and make them feel loved enough to share their true self and their emotions. Share how you experience the same pain. Connect to them. Create that intimacy.

You never know. You could be helping them alleviate some of their pain as well as some of yours.

Bio:
Dr. Tracy Thomas is a psychologist who works with top executives, leaders and celebrities. Her approach includes a unique hormonal evaluation to uncover hidden imbalances that rarely get detected and are obstacles to optimal wellness and success. Want to start existing with greater ease and enjoyment? Get Dr. Tracy’s free report, “Enjoy Existing: Mindset Shifts for Every Day” by clicking here.

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