Rachel Maddow Opens Up About Her Depression And Feeling Like a Failure

Yesterday was like a four-star show, I was totally into it. Today and Monday -– like, blaagh. Like, doesn’t get any worse. I’ve been doing this for four years! Why do I still have one-star shows? It’s me — failure.

She added, “Oh, another bad thing about myself is that I’ve allowed you to see that I’m hard on myself. The fact that you’re seeing me sweat is like, ‘Ah, well, I’m failing on that, too.'” Sound at all familiar? However difficult she might find it, Maddow has been open about the fact that she’s long suffered from what she calls “cyclical” depression, and she talked a little bit about how that plays out for her:

One of the manifestations of depression for me is that I lose my will. And I thereby lose my ability to focus. I don’t think I’ll ever have the day-to-day consistency in my performance that something like This American Life has. If I’m not depressed and I’m on and I can focus and I can think through something hard and without interruption and without existential emptiness that comes from depression, that gives me — not mania. But I exalt. I exalt in not being depressed.

As for where she thinks a lot of her depression and anxiety originate, she says, “I see my job as making a TV show. I fail at it — constantly. And that’s all I can think about.” Of course, on the outside, it’s easy to see that she’s anything but a failure, and in fact most of us would probably say she’s constantly succeeding, but that’s the devilish thing about self-doubt and depression: they keep you from seeing yourself the way others see you.

Rachel Maddow Candidly Discusses Her ‘Cyclical Depression’ With Rolling Stone [Mediaite]