Santa Barbara musician Kyle Nicolaides writes book to help others with depression

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. – A successful rock musician from Santa Barbara has written a book to help people make depression the best thing to ever happen to them. Kyle Nicolaides has lived it and learned from it.

Nicolaides toured the world with his band, Beware of Darkness. They had a top five rock song, and played in front of tens of thousands of people.

"It's interesting to have all that success, but it didn't mean a lot to me because I was so depressed," Nicolaides said. "The stories I told myself and the narratives of depression and anxiety were like, you're not enough."

The band got a record deal before Nicolaides turned 20, and he was already suffering from anxiety and panic attacks without any healthy tools to cope. It took him a decade to get sober and stop running from his mental health issues.

"I got forced to my knees, honestly, to like get help. I don't want that for other people," Nicolaides said. "I wrote this book because I'm like, what if my 10 years of depression can be someone else's three months."

In his book Thank God for Depression, Nicolaides writes with humor and compassion about accepting yourself fully as you are. He offers many tools to wellness, including ways to live fully in the present moment.

"So much of anxiety and depression are either, you're in the past beating yourself up for mistakes, or you're in the future worried about, am I going to be ok? Am I going to be safe?" Nicolaides said. There's a whole chapter on presence in the book."

Kyle says he's proof there's life on the other side of depression, and there are many paths out of it.

"When I found healing, everything I knew about my own depression was wrong," Nicolaides said. "So, the core purpose of the book is, there's a purpose and a reason for your depression and it's here as a teacher. There's consciousness behind your depression and it's here to lead you to some outcome that is so awesome and blissful that you never could have imagined."

Beware of Darkness broke up, and now Nicolaides has a new music project based on healing. His book, music, and more writings to help with depression are available on his website.