Turn On the Tube: How I Use TV to Survive My Depression

In this personal essay, I talk about how TV is my go-to coping mechanism when I’m dealing with a bad bout of depression.

When you have depression (and OCD, and invasive thoughts, and major anxiety), engaging in relaxing, effective self-care is not just a coping mechanism—it’s a life-or-death necessity. And ever since college, my go-to trick is TV.

My mental health exploded like a dirty bomb between freshman and sophomore year in college. Because living in a dorm wasn’t conducive to my old ways of dealing with stress and sadness—blasting my favorite albums and belting out “Defying Gravity” on repeat—I had to come up with something to do on the days when I couldn’t get out of bed. I needed constant distraction from the fact that I was missing my third class of the week, so I filled my bed with the few DVDs that merited following me to school and burrowed under the covers with my laptop.

Read it here

Photo by Frank Okay on Unsplash

About the author

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *