Depressed? Or Deep Rest?

Over the years my work has changed.

I started in Past Life Regression. Big soul themes. Guides. Karma. The kind of stuff that stretches beyond this lifetime.

And I still love that.

But lately, more and more, I find myself helping people with something far more immediate.

They come in asking about purpose.

But what we end up talking about is exhaustion.

There’s a clip of Jim Carrey that I’ve gone back to a few times. He makes a distinction between sadness and depression. He says sadness is just a response to something that happened or didn’t happen. That’s human. That’s natural.

But depression, he describes differently.

He says it’s your body saying, I don’t want to be this character anymore. I don’t want to keep holding up this avatar you’ve created in the world. It’s too much.

That hit me.

He references a spiritual teacher, Jeff Foster, who reframes the word “depressed” as “deep rest.”

Deep rest.

Your body needing rest from the role you’ve been playing.

Now, I’m not saying every case of depression is just a clever wordplay. There are very real biochemical, psychological, and situational factors. Some people need therapy. Some need medication. Some need serious support. I’ve seen that too.

But I also know this.

Sometimes we are just tired.

Physically tired.
Mentally fried.
Emotionally stretched thin.

I’ve had days recently where I felt low. Just flat. I could have labeled it depression. Instead I looked at my sleep.

It wasn’t great.

So I did something simple. I went to bed at 7 p.m. No scrolling. No pushing through. I slept close to ten hours.

The next morning I felt clear. Lighter. More like myself.

Nothing mystical happened.

I just rested.

There’s this heavy narrative in self-help that everything is mindset. Think better thoughts. Visualize success. Push through.

But if your nervous system is overloaded and you’re running on four or five hours of sleep, your brain literally does not function the same. Planning gets harder. Emotional regulation drops. Motivation shrinks.

You cannot mindset your way out of exhaustion.

As someone who works with trance states and brainwaves, I see how people live in high beta all day. Fast, alert, stressed. And then they wonder why they can’t access clarity or peace.

You can’t access deeper states if you never power down.

Sleep hygiene matters more than we admit.

Are you on your phone in bed?
Is your room too warm?
Are you drinking alcohol at night?

When I stopped drinking, my sleep improved dramatically. Alcohol might knock you out, but it disrupts deep restorative cycles. That’s not spiritual philosophy. That’s physiology.

For me, magnesium helps. An eye mask helps. Keeping the room cool helps. Small adjustments, but they add up.

Before you question your purpose, your path, your worth, your spiritual alignment…

Ask yourself something simpler.

When was the last time I truly rested?

Not collapsed.
Not numbed out.
Rested.

If you feel depressed, maybe it’s not that you’re broken.

Maybe your system is saying, I can’t keep performing like this.

Maybe it’s asking for deep rest.

And maybe, just maybe, the most spiritual thing you can do tonight is turn the lights off early and let yourself stop being the character for a while.

You might wake up feeling more like you. 🙏🏽