 For those of you who don't know who Dave from Boy in a Band is, he's an incredible YouTuber and musician. He first blew up from his rap Don't Stay in School, which pointed out the flaws in our education system. He's gone on to make other great videos discussing this topic as well as some other interesting ones. He even had the opportunity to interview one of his favorite bands, Linkin Park. He's done a ton of collabs and is known as one of the nicest YouTubers around. Dave also struggles with depression and discussed it in his song titled I'm Not Dead. This is one of the reasons why he made the video and diss track towards Prince EA about depression. After Boy in a Band's collab with iDubb's content cop for Ricegum, he went MIA. Today, he released a video explaining the crippling depression he's been dealing with for the last six months. And in this video, we're going to discuss Boy in a Band's depression and some solutions in case you or someone you know can relate to this story. So make sure that you stay tuned. What is up everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul, where we talk about the problem, but focus on the solution. And if you are new here, my channel's all about mental health. And one of my favorite YouTubers, Boy in a Band, he's talking about depression today, so I wanted to chime in, give my thoughts and hopefully help some of you out there. Like I can't express how much I love what Dave does on his channel. Not only is he an incredible musician, but I just really enjoy the way that his mind works and he really thinks outside of the box. Like if you get the chance, go scope out his channel if you haven't yet, but he has a lot of very interesting subjects over there. So yeah, I first got into him, I think after the content cop on Ricegum, but then I started binge watching his stuff, and then he wasn't around. I'm like, how whack is that? Like I just found this guy and now he's not making content, but as I went through his content, I realized that he is somebody like me and like a lot of you out there who struggles with depression. So he recently came back and discussed depression and I just wanted to make this video. I have no clue if he'll ever see this. Maybe he will, maybe he won't, but I know a lot of you out there are struggling with depression or you know someone who's struggling with depression. So I hope to talk on some points that he explains in this video and maybe provide some solutions to you or someone you know. So please make sure that you share this video. It's day three of mental health awareness month. So let's get some awareness out there to help other people struggling with depression. All right. So let's get started. So first off, it was super brave of Dave to not only open up about his depression in his video, but he actually kept like a journal throughout these months when he was struggling with depression and he completely opened up about him on his video. Like that is huge. That is huge right there. And I wish more people were not only documenting it, but also sharing it so other people don't feel so alone. But as he's reading these and discussing what he was going through, he was showing some of the classic symptoms of depression. He discusses this feeling of lack of purposeness. He was lacking motivation. He stopped enjoying things. And this is something that a lot of us who struggle with depression can definitely relate to. Towards the end of the video, you know, he starts talking about how he pulled himself out of it. And some of the things that he talked about was, you know, friends, good reliable friends. He has his sister that he often brings in in videos. He also talked about reading this book about the latest studies on depression. I'm not positive, but I think, I think he's talking about lost connections by Johan Hari. I'm just taking a guess there. And if any of you haven't checked out my full book review and my video, the Lost Connections Depression Experiment, I'm going to go ahead and link it up in the info card. It was an amazing book. And a lot of the subjects in there and studies, they're very, very useful to anybody struggling with depression. So if you're somebody who's struggling with some of the symptoms of depression that Dave talks about, we're going to go through some tips as well as some suggestions that might be able to help you pull out of it. All right. So the first thing I want to talk about, like, like, obviously, I don't know Dave, okay, I just go based on what he has talked about in his videos. But something I want to talk about is, is therapy. Okay. Dave is a very, very intelligent guy. All right. He does a lot of research. He does a lot of reading. He knows depression inside and out. All right. But something that I often have to realize even myself and I teach to others is that we can't solve a problem with the same brain that's creating the problem. And a lot of us, based on our pride and ego, it's hard for us to kind of grasp that concept, especially when we live in a world where everybody's like, you can do it, do it yourself. But a lot of times we need support. And but more so, we also need an outside perspective. This is one of the reasons why therapy is so, so beneficial. Because we're able to get an outside, completely objective point of view on the situation that we're dealing with. They might be able to point out or bring up different things that we didn't even notice. If you watch my video that I made yesterday about anxiety, like, we might be having trauma responses that we don't even realize we're having. But when you're working with a therapist in a one-on-one situation, they can help identify things that maybe you were overlooking or they were happening on unconscious level. So I don't know if Dave has sought the help of a therapist, but I think it might be beneficial because he, like I said, he's very intellectual. And sometimes we beat ourselves up because we fully understand what's happening to us, but we can't manage to pull ourselves out of it. Something that I hope you all take from Dave's video. And if I didn't mention it, it'll be linked in the description below. So the thing I hope you take from his video is he was tracking his moods, okay? He was tracking his moods, his thoughts, his feelings and emotions. But my question is, I don't know if he was tracking his good moods too. Something that's very, very important when tracking your moods is to not only track the bad ones or the bad thoughts, but to also track the good ones. Here is why, okay? Because when you're having your roughest days, when depression is fully set in and it's saying things are awful, they're always going to be awful, they're never going to get better, okay? You're able to go back, you're able to go back into this mood journal and you're able to say, oh, here's evidence that things do get better. And here's the other thing too. It's from you. It's not from somebody else because a lot of us when we're depressed, we don't want other people saying, hey, it's going to get better. Hey, this too shall pass. But when you see in your own handwriting or if you typed it out on your phone or whatever it is, when you see that you're the one who actually put in this information about your good days, then you're like, oh, okay, I'm just actually in a really bad, depressive funk. But here is proof that not all days are bad. This leads to the next point. When we're able to look at our good days because they've been documented, right? We're able to look at it and say, okay, what did I do? What did I do on that day? What was different that day than it is today? Okay, we have to get very inquisitive about our own experience. We have to say, okay, what am I lacking today? What am I not doing today? I go through my own depressive funks, right? And I go through kind of my list of different tools and strategies that I use. And sometimes I'm like, oh, I haven't meditated today. Oh, I haven't tried to accomplish a small goal today. Oh, I haven't done anything to kind of progress today. And then I can look at that and say, okay, well, I need to at least do this, right? And if any of you watched my other video about the book review for Upward Spiral, it talks about all these different ways we can actually start increasing various neurotransmitters in our brain, like serotonin, endorphins, dopamine, and all sorts of other neurotransmitters. So when you're tracking your mood and you look at your successes, you're able to analyze it and kick it into gear that day. So something that Dave talks about is he loves, he loves creating and collabing with other people. He loves this process. He can look back at the times he was working with his friends on videos, creating music or just creating other types of content, and he was genuinely happy. But the struggle he has is when he goes back home and he needs to edit it. This is very common. We are designed to be social creatures. We need to be around other people, okay? So what's the solution to this? So this is going to depend on who the person is, what your financial situation is, and all sorts of things like that. If you are in this identical situation, and I don't know how much money Dave makes or anything like that, you need to start looking at your setting. You need to start looking at your setup. Like, are you able to edit with your friends too? Are you able to complete the entire process with your friends? If not, can you edit in a public space, all right? Something about our brains and the way we work, we often cheer up just by being in an environment with other people, all right? This is social anxiety aside, but by editing or doing things like at a coffee shop where a bunch of people are there, this might help jumpstart your mood. But Dave has noticed this pattern of when he tries to get down and do the editing. A lot of times that's when his depression and lack of motivation sits in. So we need to identify that problem. We need to identify the trigger and say, okay, what are the other possible solutions? Like this is something like when you see a lot of YouTubers talking about depression or burnout and things like that, it's because so many of them are doing it like on this like deserted island just by themselves. The more we're able to connect and be around other people, it helps improve our mood and get us out of depression. That's what these social connections are for. Now, one thing that's a bummer is Dave lives, I believe, in England, right? And most of the people that he talks with from what I see are from other countries that they're around the world. Now, while social connection can happen online via email or Skype or social media or whatever it is, the way our brains work, there's something called mirroring neurons. We kind of need that emotional connection to happen when we're able to see each other's faces. Now, I don't think they've done enough studies on like whether or not this actually works when it comes to like FaceTime or something like that, but it definitely does when you're in the presence of somebody else. If you don't believe me, try this, okay? Go up to somebody you know, all right? Somebody in your house, a roommate, a friend, or dude at work tomorrow at school if you're watching this, go up to them and say, okay, you have one job, one job only, all right? Don't smile, okay? And then all you do without saying a word is that you simply smile and 99.9% of the time the other person will start smiling too. It's because that's the way our mirroring neurons work. So when you're around friends, family, loved ones, and having a good time, like you feed off of their emotions and also remember that's why you get rid of negative people in your life because they can pull you down too. Now again, this last topic I want to touch on, like, I don't know Dave. I do not know Dave, but I've touched on this before and it's about a disconnection from values. Throughout Dave talking about this, it seems like this is an assumption and you know what happens when we assume it seems like his value system needs to be reevaluated, all right? It seems like a lot of his values are based on subscribers, likes, views, and things like that. That's why you see a lot of YouTubers get depressed. Same reason with celebrities in any way because we attach ourselves to these values and then once we get to the top of that mountain, we realize that we're just as empty as we were before. So it's time for a lot of us to sit back and really reevaluate what our value system is. And once we start going after that, that value system instead is called Interistic Values, we start to see that we're a lot happier alive. So my suggestion to Dave would be is to not focus so much on the numbers, but on the fact that what he's doing is helping people. And I know he's seen it before because he talks about and reacts to it in different videos about how his videos are helping others. He sees the comments and everything like that. If you can hyper-focus on those things, then your value system starts to adjust and balance you out. That's one of the ways that a small YouTuber like me keeps motivated because I hyper-focus on all the comments that all of you leave me or the messages that you send me saying that I helped you. So regardless of how many subscribers I have, my values come from wanting to help other people, trying to be as altruistic as possible. But anyways, again, Dave is a great guy. I'm so glad he's back. I look forward to seeing his new content. I hope he stays vigilant about overcoming his depression. He mentions that he's doing another experiment video. And those are always really cool. So my best wishes are with Dave. And I hope this video helped you out. And if you're thinking it helps somebody else, please, please, please share this video on social media. Get the word out there. Hopefully some more people can find some solutions for their depression. All right? So again, Dave's video will be linked in the description. I'm also going to include some various resources for anybody else out there who's struggling with depression. All right? But that's all I got for you today. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. And if you are new here, I'm always making videos to help you out with your mental and emotional needs. So make sure you click that little round subscribe button. And if you want to check out some other videos on this channel, you can click or tap on one of those thumbnails. Okay? Thanks so much for watching. Stay vigilant about your depression today, and I'll see you next time.