Candace Cameron Bure Opens Up About Depression Struggles
By Movieguide® Contributor
Candace Cameron Bure recently shared how her podcast has made her more open about things like mental health — and is encouraging others to do the same.
“You have to put yourself out there a lot,” Bure told Woman’s World of “The Candace Cameron Bure Podcast.” “I’ve definitely been more vulnerable than I expected to be, especially because my podcast is a little different in that I have one guest co-host for an entire season and we do thrive on a specific topic.”
She continued, “My place as the podcast host is to be the guide and bring on the experts and ask the questions so that they can share in their expertise. What’s happened over the course of the podcast is it’s rather personal and I’ve been much more vulnerable, even of my experiences in relation to the topics we are talking about more than I thought, so that’s been surprising but it’s also been liberating in certain places and hearing feedback from people that affected them.”
One example of that vulnerability was an episode where Bure shared her struggles with depression.
“I’m often known as a very positive, happy person, but I had battled with depression since I was a teenager,” the actress said. “I didn’t know on the day that I was actually going to share that and my co-host kept pushing and opened me up like a little onion. She kept peeling the layers back and the outpouring of the amount of people that said thank you so much for sharing…that’s exactly how I felt. And then to give them tools to say, hey, this is what helped me and it might not be the same thing to help you, but here are some tools that have helped me over the years.”
In the podcast episode, Bure said that it was hard to ask for help with her battles with depression, as it felt “so shameful and so lonely.”
“[Depression] is such a lonely place and it’s very difficult to speak out about it, even to your most trusted people,” the actress shared. “It’s hard to admit it, at least for me, I feel like because I should be strong enough to overcome that and then it just feels weak. It just feels so weak. And the perception of that.”
Bure continued, “There are a lot of people who feel that it’s weak and will verbalize that, so then it’s just immediate shame that you’re like, ‘Oh, well if I struggle with this then I’m weak person,’” the actress continued. “Yet so many times when I’m like, ‘I don’t want to feel this way.’ I can try with all of my might to get out of this and I can’t pull myself out of the pit. I can’t pull myself out by myself. But it’s hard to extend the arm and go, ‘Help me.’”
Bure shared her own tools for overcoming mental health struggles with Woman’s World, including exercise — ”You don’t have to be a fitness guru to know that going out and walking and being with trees and getting that oxygen to your brain can really change the dynamics of your mental state” — and talking to people about what you’re feeling.
“Talking and going to therapy has helped me,” she said. “I think the biggest tool was opening up to my husband and at the time I shared with my husband, there were only about three people in my life that knew, including my husband, so it was very difficult.”
Another way Bure finds happiness and peace? Through her faith.
READ MORE: CANDACE CAMERON BURE’S KEY TO JOY? ‘SALVATION IN JESUS CHRIST’
Bure is currently preparing for Great American Family’s Christmas Festival, which will take place from Nov. 22 to Dec. 29.
PEOPLE reported that Bure and fellow GAF stars “Mario Lopez, Danica McKellar, Cameron Mathison and more stars of Great American Family’s holiday movie lineup will be making appearances at the Great American Family Christmas Festival at Northwell Park at UBS Arena in Belmont Park.”
“The actors will participate in world premiere movie screenings, Q&As, and scheduled photo ops amid action-packed weekends,” the outlet continued.
READ MORE: GREAT AMERICAN FAMILY BRINGS CHRISTMAS MAGIC TO LIFE WITH HOLIDAY FESTIVAL
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