Chloe Bailey on her depression: ‘you get stuck in that moment and it feels too long’
Emily Beck
Chloe Bailey has been doing a lot of interviews and appearances as promotion for her new album, In Pieces, and her new movie on Peacock, Praise This. She appeared on The Tamron Hall show a few days ago and talked about her mental health and struggles with depression. In the Cosmo interview, Chloe alluded to some of her struggles in relation to her music and its meaning, but in this interview she openly confirmed she was speaking about depression.
Chloe Bailey wants to help others with depression feel less alone.
During the Tamron Hall show Friday, the “Have Mercy” singer, 24, shared that she struggled with her mental health a few years ago.
“You know when you get stuck in that moment for too long and it feels a little too long being there?” Bailey said, and then confirmed to host Hall that she was speaking specifically about depression.
She continued, “It didn’t have anything to do with my career or my music, it was all personal internal things and I think when you figure things out that make you question your entire life, you look at yourself like ‘What did I do wrong? Am I good enough?’ things like that,” she said. “And for me, I used music to pull me out of it, my God, Mom and my family … all of them kind of helped lift me back up into better spirits.”
Thanks to her loved ones, including her younger sister Halle, 23 — with whom she rose to fame as the duo Chloe x Halle and released two studio albums — the star has been able to emerge from her depression.
“You have your ups and you have your downs,” she said. “It’s never going to be a steady course, but at least I feel confident enough in knowing this life is worth living for.”
On Tamron Hall Friday, the star also shared that she is speaking out because depression is “greater than myself.”
“I want people to know, because I don’t want there to be a young woman or a young fella out there feeling alone like there’s something wrong with them because it’s not,” she said. “And especially right now with this generation and social media and everything all in your face and you’re comparing your worst self to everyone’s ‘fake’ best self, and with FOMO and things like that.”
She added, “If I could just help one person feel less alone and inspired to go talk to someone or lean on a family or friend … then I know I’ve done my job. This is greater than myself, and ever since I was young, I’d always pray to God like, ‘God I want to do this, I want to also inspire and help people,’ so while I’m helping and healing myself, that’s why I created this album. Because it was therapy for me and now I can use it to hopefully help someone else.”
What Chloe is describing is a feeling that many, myself included, can identify with. You get stuck and then after being in it for a little while, you kind of realize that you’re in a funk for whatever reason and then there’s the process of figuring out how to get out of it. For her, it’s her music and her family, but it’s different for everyone. I think it’s important that she’s talking about this and specifying that it’s not her career, but personal stuff. Because I think a lot of times people fall into the trap of thinking that if all the “right” boxes are checked then everything should be fine and they should be happy, but that’s simply not always the case. So I think it’s important that Chloe is showing that you can still feel depressed even if things seem like they should be fine. And it’s good that she’s sharing that message with her young fans so they feel less alone and understand that things aren’t always as they seem for everyone else.
Photos credit: Roger Wong/INSTARimages, Getty and via Instagram
