When Kristen Bell experiences dark moments, her husband, Dax Shepard, is always there to help.
On the Nov. 25 episode of his Armchair Expert podcast, Shepard, 49, was discussing the “coping mechanisms” he uses when he feels “depressed” when he revealed how he helps Bell, 44, get out of her own mental health 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.”
When The Good Place actress experiences mental health lows, Shepard says Bell will be in a “slump.”
“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?'”
Now that he’s “gone through the cycle enough,” he knows, “she’s gonna organize 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 also shared how he tries to help Bell navigate through 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.”
Over the years, Bell has been vocal about her mental health journey with depression and anxiety. Despite her ongoing advocacy for mental health, she once told PEOPLE that there was a time when she was keeping her battle private.
“Prior to sharing what my struggles were with anxiety and depression, I recognized that my picture publicly was this sort of bubbly actress that probably didn’t have any dark days,” Bell said in a January 2023 interview.
At the time, she revealed that Shepard challenged her to open up after he’d been honest about his own recovery from drug addiction.
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“It’s because ‘I’m feeling sad’ is something you say to someone behind closed doors. And I don’t think that’s natural or normal,” she admitted. “People need to know there is comfort and resources around them in all shapes and sizes.”
“Everybody’s mental health journey, wellness journey is so individual. It is not one-size-fits-all,” Bell continued. “There are people with anxiety and depression that don’t need medication, there are people that do, but the tools are out there. You have the ability to put as many tools inside your toolbox as you want. And having people feel empowered to take control of their mental health is incredibly important to me.”
If you or someone you know needs mental health help, text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 to be connected to a certified crisis counselor.
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