Anxiety will get you out of bed, depression will keep you in it

January 02, 2017 10:11 AM

My bouts of sadness come and go.

But the good news is, they’re never debilitating, and they’re always seasonal and situational.

And that’s how I know it’s not a mental illness. Because there’s rarely an inability to create a future in my mind. I never get so low that it becomes impossible for me to see anything beyond it. And I always believe in my bones that there is a tomorrow that can turn it all around.

As my therapist friend once said, anxiety will get you out of bed, depression will keep you in it.

In fact, I’m secretly grateful for my bouts of sadness. Those are the moments when the magic is trying to enter.

Frankl once observed that as soon as a painful fate cannot be changed, it not only must be accepted, but transmuted into something meaningful.

It’s a two part process.

First, notice and name my feelings of sadness, honoring them with the attention they deserve, and second, start creating things with whatever energy is inside of me. Get to work expressing the same thing again and again until I have gone through it to the other side.

Because even if it’s blocked energy, it’s still energy, which means I can use it. Not to communicate my values or grow my platform or have an impact on the audience, but to simply feel something inside of my body that needs to come out. Period.

Sadness may not be the best way in for art, but art is certainly the best way out of sadness.

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Are you depressed or just sad?

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Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com