Former first lady Michelle Obama has admitted that she is suffering from “some form of low-grade depression” with all the racial strife and the hypocrisy of the Trump administration, according to The Hill.
Obama mentions the revelation on the second episode of her new podcast, The Michelle Obama Podcast, which debuted on July 29. While discussing mental health amid the coronavirus pandemic and the protests over racial injustice with Michele Norris, the former anchor of NPR’s All Things Considered, Obama states, that she is “dealing with some form of low-grade depression.”
“Not just because of the quarantine, but because of the racial strife, and just seeing this administration, watching the hypocrisy of it, day in and day out, is dispiriting.”
She partly blames the unrest people are dealing with in regards to racial injustice.
“I don’t think I’m unusual, in that,” Obama said. “But I’d be remiss to say that part of this depression is also a result of what we’re seeing in terms of the protests, the continued racial unrest, that has plagued this country since its birth. I have to say that waking up to the news, waking up to how this administration has or has not responded, waking up to yet another story of a Black man or a Black person somehow being dehumanized, or hurt or killed, or falsely accused of something, it is exhausting. And it has led to a weight that I haven’t felt in my life, in a while.”
She also discusses how she is struggling as others have during these emotional times.
“I’m waking up in the middle of the night, ’cause I’m worrying about something or there’s a heaviness,” she said. “I try to make sure I get a workout in, although there have been periods throughout this quarantine, where I just have felt too low. You know, I’ve gone through those emotional highs and lows that I think everybody feels, where you just don’t feel yourself, and sometimes there’s been a week or so where I had to surrender to that, and not be so hard on myself. And say, ‘You know what? You’re just not feeling that treadmill right now.'”
But, Obama tries to stay grounded by communicating with friends and loved ones.
“I reach out to my family, and to my friends, even in this time of quarantine. You know, I fought to continue to find a way to stay connected to the people in my life who bring me joy, and my girlfriends, my husband, my kids; it’s the small things … because you have to recognize that you’re in a place, a bad place, in order to get out of it. So you kinda have to sit in it for a minute, to know, oh, oh, I’m feeling off. So now I gotta, I gotta feed myself with something better.”