Here is the full transcript of Ruth Koleva’s talk titled “Survival Mode: The Right Mindset to Get out of Depression” at TEDxAUBG conference.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
I’ve always been better at singing than talking. Maybe the reason for that is when I was around 10, my parents got divorced and I couldn’t really express my emotions communicating with people, so I turned to singing. That was my thing. That’s how I got away from the world that was surrounding me and it was really hard for me.
The Essence of Inspiration
That’s how I found out a very important emotion for me, which is called inspiration. Inspiration is not only the moment you’re motivated or mentally stimulated to do something; it’s actually an emotion itself. People nowadays tend to think that inspiration is just some smart thoughts that people post online and just use it as a Facebook show-off thing. “Yeah, that’s my favorite.”
“Your inspirational quotes have inspired me to unfriend you,” true story. Emotions themselves, they have a way to kind of kill each other, as funny as it may sound. Happiness can kill sorrow, jealousy can kill love, love can kill everything. Inspiration to me is the king of emotions because it’s stimulated by pretty much everything.
The Delicate Balance of Inspiration
The tricky part with inspiration is the more you feed it, the more it starts to give you. There is a tricky moment though. When you start to overfeed it with emotions, you kind of get addicted and it starts giving you less. It’s a very thin line the moment you realize that you’re falling into a bad pattern.
With inspiration, it’s very important to nurture it the right way, not give it too much drama because you know what happens when you give too much drama to your thoughts. The moment you kind of give it more, more, more and it starts giving you less, something not very particularly pleasant happens and that is called depression. It’s proven that maybe 80% out of all poets, actors, musicians, scientists, I mean pretty much every field, the greatest people, they all have some sort of mental problem. It doesn’t matter if they’re just drama queens or regular lunatics, including myself in that.
Depression: A Universal Struggle
That’s just a little picture I made with people that suffer from depression. You can see Abraham Lincoln, Van Gogh and even Angelina Jolie, modern-day celebrity. It’s a moment where it doesn’t matter how successful you are, it doesn’t matter how much you love what you do, you just feel empty. It’s a very dark place, depression.
I didn’t know much about it until I personally got into it. It wasn’t very nice because I’m a person who fulfilled my childhood dream. I do exactly what I want to do and I love music, that’s what I’ve always wanted to do. And then I got to a point in my life, because I was avoiding my problems, I wasn’t nurturing my emotions, I got to a point in life where I wasn’t happy.
The Journey Through Darkness
I didn’t want to sing anymore. I pretty much hated everything that was going on. Depression is something that has been going on probably from the time of Aristotle. It’s a very old thing and it’s connected very much with the arts.
The way I found to get out of that place is by putting myself into the survival mode. Not by dealing with zombies, but just trying to get out of my comfort zone and put myself into a place where I’m in the unknown. The comfort zone is a very interesting place. It’s the place where you might be happy, you might feel safe, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re in the right place.
The fear of change, the fear of the unknown, and the fear of being judged are the three most common reasons why people tend to stay unhappy or don’t want to put themselves in a position where they don’t know what’s going on. I see a lot of people that have a good job, they earn some money, but they’re very unhappy in their workplace. It’s sad, it’s simply sad because they want to make a change, but they’re afraid to. And I discovered my own way to fall in love again in what I do.
A Tale of Resilience
I always remember a story. When I was born in 1990, my mom got pregnant just before the communist fall. I was born in the biggest Bulgarian recession since the 1900s. When I was very young, I remember that we didn’t have any money. My grandparents, they were on the verge of being fired because they were cutting off places. Both my grandparents were doctors.
And I remember my dad, they were making these small dolls, which my dad was going and selling in Yugoslavia and Belgrade. At the time, it seemed very weird, but now when I think about it, my dad is a world champion weightlifter and the guy has Olympic medals. I was like, how did that guy make dolls? It’s weird to me, but that’s the moment where your ego doesn’t matter. That’s the moment you kill your ego in order to survive.
The reasons probably for them was they had twins, newborn that have to be put on the table. For me, I learned to just don’t put my ego and not be ashamed of anything that I need to do in order to make things right. So I got into a very dark place probably last year. I really didn’t want to do anything anymore in terms of music. I was sick of everything.
A New Beginning
So I bought a one-way ticket to a place. I went there, and I didn’t know what was I going to do. I was just completely in the unknown. The first week, it was very, very difficult for me, and then I hit rock bottom.