“When I talk about mental illness, if you spoke about it for the reality, the core of it, it would be called whining. So the reason I flip it into comedy – not always, but sometimes – is because that’s the way you can get people to listen and go ‘maybe that’s me too’, and that makes us feel more of a tribe.
“You don’t have to be mentally ill, but let’s be honest with each other – and that’s what I try to do in my show, is speak from [my] guts. Don’t give me how wonderful everything is or jokes about your cat, I like to talk about the real thing.”
Wax told Real Life that people still make light of mental health struggles – “they say ‘perk up’, like I never thought of that one” – but that’s because it’s difficult to understand if you haven’t experienced it.
“It is not a sad day, it’s not that your cat died; this is something where your personality leaves town and you’re replaced by something that’s locked in cement. It’s a death, but you’re awake, so it’s as bad as it gets,” she she said.
“I’ve had people in my audience over the years who put their hands up and tell me what their story is. And some people have said ‘I have cancer and I have depression’. I say ‘what’s the worst?’ And they always said depression is the worst, it’s as bad as it gets.
“I’ll take anybody on for saying ‘oh well, it’s your imagination’, as though I woke up and thought ‘I’ll have depression or play golf’.”
As well as her many successful decades in the entertainment industry, during which she was a script editor for BBC sitcom Absolutely Fabulous and hosted her own celebrity interview show, Wax gained a master’s degree in mindfulness-based cognitive therapy from Oxford University.
“It’s like we have a Ferrari on our head but nobody gave us the keys,” she explained to Cowan. “So that’s why I went to Oxford, because I thought, how do you run this baby? And that became my interest, much more than show business.
“To me, nothing’s more interesting than the brain. You can throw out every organ, but that brain is the mothership, and we don’t know how it works.”
Wax has taken a closer look at mindfulness practices across the world, which she talks about at length in both her books and comedy shows.
She said while they have made for great anecdotes, her adventures overseas in search of a remedy for her mental ills ultimately proved to be like “running outside to find meaning while inside the floorboards are rotting”.
“The book and the show become a story of looking outside, always running – and then inside something’s really going wrong,” Wax told Real Life.
“In the end I realised I wasn’t running from meaning, but I was running away from a childhood.
“So the show and the book – one is a journey outward, looking for something in the world; and the other is a journey in to find out why you are running so hard. That’s what makes them really interesting; not just the journeys, but the juxtaposition.”
Ruby Wax will be performing I’m Not As Well As I Thought I Was in Christchurch on April 4, in Auckland on April 5, and in Wellington on April 8.
- Real Life is a weekly interview show where John Cowan speaks with prominent guests about their life, upbringing, and the way they see the world. Tune in Sundays from 7.30pm on Newstalk ZB or listen to the latest full interview here.
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