From the Vault | Ruby Wax on mental health journeys, finding the good in the world and why you should always be hopeful.

This episode was first published in February 2022.

My guest on this episode of the podcast is Ruby Wax. She is a writer, comedian, mental health campaigner and author and someone whose interviews over the years inspired me so it’s quite something to be interviewing her for this podcast…

Ruby joins me in this episode to talk about her latest book And Now For The Good News - the much-needed tonic for our frazzled world.

If you feel utterly distraught at the constant negative news cycle - the climate crisis, increasing costs of living, injustice, Covid and, as this episode goes live, the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, then you may have stopped searching for the light of hope on the horizon.

You may just assume that there’s only bad news out there in the world to be shared. Here’s the thing, if all we ever expect is bad news. If we assume that there is only bad news that chain reaction can make us feel hopeless, and helpless and fall into that space where we wake up in the morning and think ‘what’s the point?’ 

As someone whose particular shape and shade of depression took this form, a chronic apathy that eventually suffocated everything, I see this bad news cycle as something that can trigger the same feelings - even in the most hopeful of souls.

Perhaps Ruby thought this too, which is why she went on a global search to find the good search. 

If you don’t know the light is there, you won’t know to see it. And so Ruby compiled all her findings into the book so we can all see there is hope and to equip us with a positive approach for a brighter world and, most importantly, for a better collective mental wellbeing.

Ruby has been open about her own mental health issues over the years, something that was a source of great comfort to me at a time when I needed it, so during our conversation, I also quizzed her about how she emerged from her own struggles, the coping mechanisms she put in place and what she learned from a masters degree in cognitive-based therapy from Oxford University.

I came away from the conversation feeling so inspired, not least because speaking to Ruby it was a reminder to always be curious about the world around you rather than scared of it, how vulnerability can immediately neutralise tension and how, though it might feel hard sometimes, it’s important to look for and follow the light, because it is there.

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