Dax Shepard is opening up about husband duties he performs when he senses his wife Kristen Bell in low spirits.
Shepard, 49, was discussing his “coping mechanisms” for depression during the November 25 episode of his Armchair Expert podcast when the conversation shifted to Bell’s struggles.
“Kristen has depression, so hers won’t necessarily be incident driven,” he shared during a conversation with guest Anna Kendrick.
“It’s not like she has a specific thing. She’ll just have a wave of it. She’ll sleep a lot and there’s nothing I can do or nor do I think I should do,” he said of Bell, 44.
Shepard noted that he finds the Nobody Wants This actress in a “slump” when she’s experiencing a depressive episode.
“She’s gonna sleep a lot for a while, and then she’s gonna come out of it. Now earlier on, that used to scare me,” he admitted. “And I was like, ‘Is this gonna be forever?'”
The podcast added that now that he’s “gone through the cycle enough,” he knows his wife is going to “organise for a couple days really, really, intensely, and then she’s gonna sleep a lot for a few days, and then it’s gonna be over.”
Shepard then revealed how he tries to contribute to her mental well being during these periods, adding that there were “steps” to his process.
“I will gently [be] like, ‘Hey, love. Have you checked in with your psychiatrist lately? I’m not saying you need to do anything. Just, like, have you checked in with your psychiatrist?'” he said. “So that’ll be like one thing I can do. It’s evolved because I used to try to fix it.”
He explained, “That’s my nature and I used to try to talk her out of it or tell her what’s good in her life or [make a] gratitude list.”
“One thing I’ll still do, and she likes this, and it doesn’t trigger [her] feeling judged about being sad, is [saying] let’s go for a walk or let’s go for a hike,” he added. “Like, just encouraging, let’s go move around.”
Bell has also spoken on her mental health journey with depression and anxiety on multiple occasions.
However, at some point, Bell decided to keep her struggles “private” despite her ongoing advocacy for mental health.
At the time, she revealed that Shepard challenged her to open up after he’d been honest about his own recovery from drug addiction.
Kristen and Dax, who have been married since 2013, share two kids Lincoln, 11, and Delta, 9.