Chris Wood shares his experience with depression and tells what helped him out of the dark times

Chris Wood shares his experience with depression and tells what helped him out of the dark times

Eight years ago, Chris Wood - writer, director (The Stew), actor (Supergirl, The Vampire Diaries) - lost his father to mental illness. His death was, in part, the result of a manic episode - whose symptoms, according to Wood, came out of nowhere. “Your personality has changed. It all started with quick thoughts, and he talked a lot, ”says Wood to Thrive. "His opinions were changing and he just didn't look like him." His father refused to discuss the signs of his declining mental health, explains Wood, which prevented him from getting the help he needed.

Driven by this tragedy, Wood launched IDONTMIND, a mental health and lifestyle brand awareness campaign that works to defeat the stigma surrounding mental illness. To fulfill its mission, IDONTMIND features on its website, everything from how to deal with serious mental health conditions to strategies to manage day-to-day stress.

And new research shows that, in general, we are very bad at this. A new survey by Thrive Global with more than 2,000 Americans aged 18 to 85 shows how desperately people want and need this knowledge: 91% of respondents said that not knowing or ignoring their personal signs of excess stress had a negative impact on their mental well-being, 72% want to know more small daily steps to improve their mental health and almost half said that when it comes to managing stress, they don't know where to start.

As there is power to share our stories, Wood is opening up to Thrive about his mental health journey, the daily steps he takes to care for his emotional well-being and the launch of his organization, IDONTMIND.

Thrive Global: Can you share a little bit of IDONTMIND's backstory?

Chris Wood: About eight and a half years ago, I started this incredibly difficult year that left me juggling with sadness and depression. My coping mechanism at the time was to turn it off and not talk about it. When people asked how I was doing, I ended the conversation. I was not open to discussing this. For a few years, that was how I acted. It was terrible. I didn't really start to heal until the first time I decided to be honest about what I was feeling and what had been going on.

Instead of pushing people away when they asked me how I was doing, I started to reply, "Oh, I don't care, I can talk about it." Just that little change in my response - starting with something that was open and that said, “No, I am not going to let this weigh me down any more. I'll talk about it ”- everything changed. I was not admitting that there was a problem. I was not embracing the truth of my suffering for losing my father.

The irony was that what happened to my father - that manic episode caused by stress, overwork and lack of self-care - was exactly what I was doing to myself in the process of losing him. Moving fast, I was starting to work with mental health organizations and just wanting to give back and find a way to be a voice in that space. I realized that every approach I was looking at was aimed at insiders, people who already know that mental health is a problem. I realized that the people we need to reach are those who are not yet thinking and talking about [mental health]. That was the idea of ​​building my own organization: this awareness that there was a hole, and nothing that I saw was filling that need.

TG: How do you view bereavement related to mental health?

CW: It's something I think about a lot. It's funny, my example of grieving was also related to mental health. But the sadness itself is obviously emotional and mental. Recovery from loss, no matter what the cause, is a complicated and inconsistent process. There is no formula for doing it correctly. Yesterday [the eight-year anniversary of Wood's father's death] came and went. For the first time when the birthday came, I didn't feel like a puddle on the floor. It was almost like, "Wow, this is kind of sad. I no longer have that person in my life." That's how sadness happens - it goes in and out.

TG: What are some of the things that cause stress?

My main stresses are, in fact, things that are probably not uncommon for anyone working in the entertainment industry. The inconsistency of employment, the next opportunity. I work in a profession where you are constantly out of work until your next job. The perpetuity of a current project that ends and the uncertainty of whether or not there will be a next one. I have this deep, strange desire to create lasting things and to look for meaningful things. Sometimes this is a stressor - I need to do more. I need to be better. I need work

r more.

TG: What are the signs that you are starting to reach your breaking point?

CW: I have a lot of fun with self-esteem in those moments. I am very, very hard on myself. I am much more cruel to myself than anyone else in my life, which my wife always likes to remind me of. "Be as kind to yourself as you are to me, and you'll be doing better," she says. Depression is my struggle. When it comes into play, existence is difficult. Wanting to get out of bed is difficult, being human is difficult. It is like that for me. They are only severe feelings of worthlessness. I am very sad, because I begin to feel that my only impact on the world is negative. I know this is not a reality when I'm feeling good. But when I'm stressed and when that button is pressed, that's where I go.

TG: How do you learn to take care of your mental health every day?

CW: The biggest lesson I learned was that I can't handle things inside. That was what was preventing my suffering from turning into evolution. It was just staying in that first dark stage of pain and anger. How does a wound heal until you start treating it? I think the biggest thing was opening up. In talking about things, I was able to find other solutions that also helped. For me, exercise is a big component of my mental health. When I can't exercise, that's when I get bad. It's a switch for me. I think people need to be more active. If you are not dealing with something, stay active. If you're dealing with something, go out and take a walk. Another thing I do when I start to feel sad is to meditate. I try to do six 10-minute sessions in one day. I try to eat healthy. I walk my dog ​​five or six times a day. The biggest thing I learned is to take the time to take care of yourself. Invest in yourself, because you only have one life. This is where your efforts should go. This will help you to accomplish all the other things in your life.

TG: What are your hopes for the movement you are creating with IDONTMIND?

CW: I have a super simple goal to change the world. Honestly, that is the goal. In fact, the goal is to live in a world where the stigma dissolves. People are able to communicate about mental illnesses the way they communicate about physical illnesses. Being able to say things like "I'm just having a bad day" and it's being understood. Mental health days at work are a real thing, which is really getting more moving now in the US. There are reasons why other cultures adopt the concept of naps, or two-month vacation periods. We are a little behind in our society. We work, we work, we work and we don't rest. So people run out. It is an impossible study to actually track in the early years, but analyzing the question: how are these diseases so prevalent in our world, how are they a potential result of living with continuous stress? What happens when we attach the same importance to our emotions as some people go to the gym? The goal is to reprogram our thinking as a society.

IDONTMIND is an official program by Mental Health America, the nation's leading nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting the overall mental health of all Americans. With more than 200 affiliates and associates in 42 states, 6,500 affiliated employees and more than 10,000 volunteers, MHA brings more than 100 years of experience and knowledge to IDONTMIND.

dad Huxley and litte Chris