 I can reach out to literally hundreds of thousands of people but I don't want to try a single one. There are several people I would enjoy talking to but I'm sitting here doing nothing, feeling sad. When I'm sufficiently hungry I can't help but get up to eat. When I'm sufficiently lonely I seem to do the opposite. What terrible evolutionary trait is that? I am painfully sad. I don't want to do anything. I want to be unconscious so I don't feel sad anymore. Boy in a band just made a little bit of a comeback but I'm still pretty worried about him. So in this video we're going to be talking about how do you help a depressed friend? 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're new to my channel, my channel is all about mental health and what I try to do is pull different topics from the YouTube community to try to teach you how to improve your mental and emotional well-being. So if you're into that kind of stuff, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell because I make a ton, a ton of videos. And before I start talking about Boy in a Band, let's talk about another British musician, my friend Kay. So those of you who have been around for I don't know a week or two, my friend Kay from the YouTube channel BipolarPug, she's a musician as well, she works in mental health, she has a mental health channel and she did a video for me about how an abusive relationship kind of destroyed her confidence when it came to music. So we started a series where I'm kind of talking with her and coaching her through the process of getting back into music and we just put up our first episode. It's over on her channel. I will link it down in the description. I'm also going to try to put it up on a podcast form because I know a lot of you have wanted that. But anyways, we talk about a ton of things about like confidence, accountability, time management, setting goals, all that. So make sure you check it out. Again, I'm going to link it down below. All of the episodes will be up over on her channel. So if you don't want to miss them, go subscribe to her and turn the notifications on. All right. So anyways, let's talk about our buddy Dave from Boy in a Band. And if you're new to my channel or you're still not sure how this whole thing works, this video isn't necessarily for Dave of Boy in a Band, it's not necessarily for his friends. I just get, I get a lot of you asking me, how do you help a depressed friend? How do you help a depressed friend, right? And that's what I want to talk about in this video. So Dave is somebody, I made a video about him a while back. I'm going to link it up in the info card. But Dave is somebody who I found. I can't remember which video of his I saw maybe about a year ago, right? And I saw it, it might have even been the I-Dubs collab where I learned about him. And then I just sort of binge watching his stuff. He has so, so many good videos. And he's such an intelligent guy, well-spoken. He's funny. He's known as like the nicest guy in the community. And he struggles with depression and he had a video called like the happiness experiment. I suggest everybody checks out. It's really funny and it's just interesting and I think a lot of people can benefit from doing something similar. But anyways, go check out my last video because I talked about Dave's last comeback and just some kind of tips if you can relate to the things that he was dealing with within his depression. So I was excited for him to come back and he came back and he only made like two videos. Like he did two videos on his channel and then he did two collabs. Like so it was like two songs with I think Jayden draws. I think that's her name as well as one of my son's favorite channels which is The Odd Ones Out. And by the way, like my son is obsessed with the song that Boy In A Band did with The Odd Ones Out. But anyways, so I was excited for Dave to come back and he just he disappeared again. He disappeared and I'm like damn and I've been worried about him. Like he's somebody with depression and like I'm like what's going on? Like what's what's happening? And yesterday I saw he posted an Instagram post for like the first time in forever saying that he's working on something and something exciting and I was like okay cool and this is why I wanted to make this video now. But anyways right before recording this video I saw that he and Rumi just did a collab with PewDiePie. So they did a collab around his channel. But I went over to Dave's channel to see if he uploaded something like maybe they were all going to upload it at the same time. But as of recording this right now it doesn't look like Dave has uploaded anything. So again, so let's talk real quick. This is just simply about how to help a friend who's struggling with depression and we're going to be talking about tough love, okay? A lot of you have met tough love Chris and I was talking about this while we were live streaming and this is just something that you know is is effective. And I will say this, it's important to find the balance between compassion and tough love. Something that you know doesn't work is shaming somebody and putting them down. That's why like the Nicole Arbor video about depression was absolutely terrible. Like there's a balance you got to find. So let me talk about myself and I think this will help you guys kind of understand what I'm talking about. I'm going to talk about my personal experience. Like I know a lot of you know that I'm a recovering drug addict and alcoholic, but let me tell you about my favorite type of party. My favorite type of party is a pity party. I love just sitting in my own head thinking about how sad and lonely and depressed I am and how everything's terrible. Everything's useless. Why even get out of bed? All these things I could sit in that forever and like not literally forever, but days, weeks, like can you relate to that? So when I actually got sober, I moved into a sober living house. If anybody out there is trying to get sober, you know somebody who is, I always recommend sober living. And one of the biggest benefits of that is when I got sober, I was so depressed. Like people took away the one thing that was bringing a little bit of joy, a little bit of joy to me, which was my substances, right? And I was just so depressed. I had laid in bed and I was isolating and I didn't want to do anything. And the beautiful part about living in that sober living house was that I had guys in that house who would open up my door, see me curl up in a fetal position in bed after laying there for hours and hours stuck in my head. It said, Chris, get your butt up. We're going to go do something, right? We're going to go get coffee. We're going to go hang out. Come downstairs. Watch TV with us. Come outside. Let's play ping-pong or whatever it is. And I'd be like, no, I don't want to. And they're like, no, you're getting up right now, right? And that was the tough love I needed. I needed people who would come up to me and say, quit feeling sorry for yourself, right? Like if you guys wonder where my like intro phrase comes from, we talk about the problem, but focus on the solution. It's because I had people who would help me get out of the problem on a daily basis and get into the solution. They were not going to let me sit there and sit in my self-pity and wallow and think about how miserable I am and how I screwed up my life. They wouldn't let me do that. Now, they were very empathetic. They understood that. They understood what I was going through. They were compassionate towards that. But at the same time, I needed somebody to kick me in the butt and say, get out of bed. Go do something. We were doing the live stream and somebody named Emily in there. She was talking about how she has friends who will come over and pick her up and they will like toss her in the shower, right? Like we need people like that in our lives. So this transitions into how do you help somebody? Like my whole channel and what I'm trying to do and help you guys with your mental health, these are things that have helped me. Like I only give you guys advice that has helped me. So since these things help me, that's what I try to do to help others. So when I see somebody like Dave, right? Like I'm sitting there. I'm watching and he talked about in his last video about how like when he gets depressed, he doesn't want to talk to any friends. He doesn't want to do any work. I'm sitting there and my head is just just going crazy. I'm like, Dave, where are your friends? Where are your friends? Like I know like, you know, some of his friends live in other countries and things like that. But like his sister and stuff. I'm like, is there anybody going over to Dave's house and saying, listen, bro, like get out of bed, like get out of bed right now. And I know some of you watching this. So like, that's mean Chris. Hey, again, it's compassion, balanced with tough love. Sometimes we got to give ourself that tough love too, right? But I just can't help but think like where are Dave's friends who are doing this? So when it comes to you, you and what you need to do, like, are you feeding into your friend's depression? Are you feeding into their their self pity? Are you enabling their depression? Right? Like it's important that we sit down when we listen, we listen and we understand their problems and what they're going through. But what are we doing to motivate them to do something? I made a video yesterday about Emma Chamberlain and doing small little baby steps. Maybe it's cleaning or a hobby or taking a break or whatever it is. Like where is the person in your life? Right? Who's going to help you do that? Okay. That's one of the reasons that K, and I started this series because we need people to do that. Part of what we talk about in that is like, I'm having her keep me accountable to go to the gym too. So I gave her some goals for the week, which I'll find out in that podcast episode. But she also has something to keep me accountable for too. Because it's kind of hard for me to tell anybody to do anything if I'm not doing it myself, right? I've told all of you to keep me accountable too. And you're doing a great job. I have been eating healthier. My knee has been jacked up, but it's feeling better. I'm going through the gym this week. I swear to you, I will document it, whatever. But give me that tough love too. I need that. So one of the comments in the live stream, dang, I already forgot the name. I think it was Rinmara or something like that. But anyways, they were talking about like, well, what if the person doesn't want your help? What if you keep going over and trying to help? And yes, we need to talk about that real quick. Like there is a balance. There is boundaries that you have to set up. So like the way I envision this, right? And this is something I've done with friends before. This is something I've done with some of you who DM me. Like if it was me and I had a friend like Dave who's a boy in the band, I'd go over to his house and say, yo, what are you doing? Or I'd be calling him or texting him or whatever. What are you doing? Like get up, go do something like let's talk, let's do something. Maybe it's just me and you having a conversation, whatever it is, right? But if I like showed up at their house or I was like on the phone with them or whatever, like I limit the time. I give them maybe like 10, 15 minutes. Like to just sit in their self pity and talk to me about their problems. Like I do not let people just let me be a banker for their emotions because it will bring me down to I cannot become like this kind of codependent person where I can't be well unless they're well. I can't do that. So there's a certain point where I'm trying to help them. And if they don't want to receive that help, that's when I got to set up the boundary and it sucks. It really does suck. But that's why we need a larger support group because maybe I had to set up a boundary with somebody, but this person's coming in. For example, my best friend who has been sober for over three years, I had to set up a boundary with him because I was tired of trying to help him. But then that's when his wife came in and I started talking to his family as well and they came in and gave him that nudge. All right. So we kind of switch, but do not get sucked into that and do not keep trying to fix them. Do not keep trying to help them if they are not receptive. What I mean when I say I do that for some of you, some of you DM me regularly and all you do is tell me about your problems. And I have chat logs. Like if last week I told you to join like the rewired soldier Facebook group or I told you to like look up a therapist in your area or I told you to go to the doctor and then like the next week you DM me with more of your problems. If I ask you if you did any of the things that I told you to do and you said no, guess what? I don't got time for that. So that's where you find this balance between giving your friend tough love, trying to help them with their depression, but also setting up your own boundaries. Okay. So the last thing is something that I recommend a lot of you do. Like when people hit me up in DMs and talk about depression or lack of motivation or they don't want to do anything or whatever it is. So this is advice you can give to somebody else, but it's also for you too. What I do, what I do, I listen to my man Gary Vaynerchuk. Okay. And I find it very beneficial when I'm in self pity or I'm lacking motivation or whatever it is. And I'll just, he had, he posts daily videos. He has a podcast. He's on, you know, uh, Instagram and Snapchat and Twitter and what I do when I'm feeling down and self pity and lack of motivation, I put Gary Vaynerchuk in my ears just so he can talk crap to me. Right. And it's that talking crap. He's kind of like me, right? He gives tough love. Like he cares about you and he just wants to see you succeed. So whenever I just want to sit on my butt and do nothing, I put him in my ear and it like reminds me to get off my butt and go do something. Right. It reminds me that it's not about me, all about me. I have people that I need to help through my YouTube videos or through my job at the treatment center or with my son or with Tristan or whoever it is with my fucking cat. Right. So Gary Vee is like my, I say that he kind of refills my motivational fuel tank. All right. But anyways, I would love to hear from you down in the comments below. Like, let's talk in two different ways. Does tough love work for you? Right. Or does it not? Have you tried this before? Like just give me your thoughts and your opinions down in the comments below because I do want to do more videos like this because maybe I can provide you with some suggestions because tough love, it, it's a technique and even I screw it up sometimes. So if you have questions, comments, concerns, leave them down in the comments below. Okay. But anyways, that's all I got for this video. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you're new, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell because I make a ton of videos and a huge thank you to everybody supporting the channel over on Patreon. You are all amazing. And again, go subscribe to Kay over at bipolar plug. The link is right up there. And then our first episode is right down there. As soon as this video ends, click on that, go check it out. All right. Thanks so much for watching. I'll see you next time.