I noticed with teens when there’s a breakup or even when a team moves away or a divorce in the family or lost a job.

Those are situational depression. And that’s a normal process. And sometimes we can work, work our way through it, supporting ourselves, doing the things, leaning on the people that we love, talking about it and time that can resolve it if it becomes complicated or let’s say that it’s hereditary and we go through bouts of depression. Maybe we go through times where we’re okay, and then we’ll hit a real spike on the low, and then we don’t want to get out of bed. We don’t really want to take care of ourselves.

We don’t want to see people. And then that will sometimes resolve itself. But then we notice as we go along, we hit another down and we notice there’s a pattern of this that can be a hereditary depression. And noticing that it happens and that it will pass is very empowering. A lot of times, people, when they’re in deep depression, they feel like this is how they’re going to feel forever.

And that’s really scary. But knowing that this will pass a lot of times when I talk to kids, I have them remember their favorite memory, like, What’s the thing that you remember the most? And then maybe they’ll talk about, like, going to Disneyland, and I’ll have them talk about, so what did you like about Disneyland? They’ll be like, I love the rise. I love going up.

I said, Did you love the way it made you feel? And I’d be like, yeah, I love that. And then I’ll be like, So how long did that feeling last? And they’ll be like, well, probably a week after the vacation. I didn’t really feel that way.

And I said, that feeling you really wanted to hang on to. It was your favorite feeling. Depression is the same way. It’s the worst feeling, but it’s not going to stay. It will pass.

And just reminding yourself, this is just a cycle. And I’m not going to get stuck in this because I think what happens is people will feel a sense of hopelessness and they don’t know how far down it’s going go or if they’re going to stay in that pit. And that’s really scary to them and just reminding themselves that this will pass.