- Hey, everybody, happy Thursday.
And when it's on Thursday, I am on the website,
katimorton.com and I'm on YouTube.
And I know this week has been a little weird
and I haven't been in Twitter as often and
everything, because I was travelin',
was a travelin' girl.
And I was in New York and I got to meet a
bunch of you, and thank you all for coming out.
That was so cool to get to see you and to
hear, honestly, how different areas in the world
utilize my YouTube videos differently.
And in New York, a lot of you've told me
that you listen with your ear buds in while
you're on the train or whatever, versus a
lot of other people who sit at their laptops
at home and watch the videos that way.
And so it was just interesting thinking about
ways that we can change and maybe I do podcasts
in the future, stuff like that, that could be
really, you know, making it more user-friendly
for all of you wonderful people out there.
And I'm so sorry that a couple of you weren't
able to find us.
It was kind of dark in the Ace Hotel lobby,
because apparently lights aren't cool enough,
I don't know, and I'm sorry.
But I tried to put us kind of close to the,
like you came in the door and there was the
set of couches and we were just right to
the left of that, and an tried to make it
kind of close and I was the furthest person out,
so hopefully people could see my curlie do
and find, you know, be like Kati, and it was me.
So I'm sorry about that, but you know we'll
connect next time.
Won't be my last trip to New York, so don't worry.
So I'm actually only gonna talk about one
topic today, because I feel this topic is
really important and I want to give it enough time
and enough, you know, YouTube time.
So without further ado, let's start talking.
First question says, Hey Kati, I've just recently
found out about you and your videos and I think
your community is great.
We're great, aren't we?
I've been struggling with major depression, and
I find it hard to wrap my head around, feel so
embarrassed about it.
When I look around I see people in my life who
have it worse than me, and then I look at it
and nothing is terrible in my life, but why
(burbles) and I can't seem to understand why
I'm feeling like this.
I feel so stupid for struggling with depression.
How do I get over this feeling of being weak
and sort of ridiculous?
And I wanted to address this because I hear it
all the time from people, not only people who
struggle, but sometimes from parents and other friends
and family who just don't quite understand depression.
A lot of people will say, what do you have to
be sad about?
There's nothing really wrong in your life.
And they don't understand, or we feel that way, like
but I don't have it that bad, like I have a
loving husband or wife or girlfriend or boyfriend,
and I have a job or have a good school experience,
whatever, we tell ourselves, you know, things
aren't that bad right now, what's my problem.
And the truth is that your problem
is that you have depression.
Depression isn't something that is circumstantial,
it can be, and it can be exacerbated by situations
in our life, but depression is a chemical imbalance
in your brain, and for many people it can be
something that's genetically driven.
If you have a lot of people in your family who
struggle with depression or dysthymia, which
is a low-grade depression.
If you want to know more about that, you can
look that up, I have a video on dysthymia itself.
But it's all, it's not something we have control
over, it's not something that like, oh, our life
is going great so I have no rights to feel depressed,
because depression is a chemical imbalance in our brain.
If you don't follow me on Facebook, just hop on Facebook
and look, you know, look for Kati Morton, and
you'll see this thing that I re-posted last week.
I want to say it was like last Thursday,
maybe a week ago.
And it was brain scans of someone with depression
and someone without depression.
And you can see how different it is.
It's like looking at a bone in our leg that's
together and one that's broken.
You know, like something's different.
And this needs to be fixed.
And often times we feel that mental illness,
from people who struggle, we feel ridiculous,
we get embarrassed, we feel shameful, you know,
things like that.
People that don't understand think, snap out of it,
eat your food, stop cutting, feel better,
get happy, just smile and get out of bed.
We hear all of these things, but mental illness
needs to be treated the same way we deal with
physical illness, because there are some things
we can't change, like depression and a lot of
things have to do with the way that we're
genetically made up, the way our brain is
chemically balanced, there are a ton of different things.
They're finding little genes that are, you know,
not like other people's genes, and people with
anorexia have that gene mutation.
And people who are bipolar have this gene mutation.
And they run along the same line in the brain,
and so understanding that mental illness isn't
a choice, struggling with depression isn't something
we can just snap out of.
I know that we struggle feeling embarrassed about
it and shameful or ridiculous, but know that you
have an illness and there are doctors that can
help treat you, there are other professionals,
like therapists like myself that can help treat you,
and we can help you better find,
I guess find better tools to help yourself
in the moment, and if that's not enough,
there's always medication, there's group therapy,
there are other options we have and things
that we can do, but it's not something that
you can just snap out of.
It's not something you created.
It's not that your life has to be total
shit for you to feel bad.
Depression isn't just a feeling or a mood,
it's actually a mood disorder, it's something
different in your brain.
Okay?
And please share your comments and questions below.
And don't forget to subscribe, because I
put out videos more often than not, and you
don't want to miss them
and I have some really exciting collaborations
coming up in the near future,
you don't want to miss those, either.
Okay, I will see you all soon, and have a good one, bye.