In her hit novel Eat, Pray, Love, author Elizabeth Gilbert writes movingly about her battle with depression in the aftermath of a messy divorce.

“I’m here. I love you. I don’t care if you need to stay up crying all night long, I will stay with you,” her own compassionate voice tells her at one particularly low point. “If you need the medication again, go ahead and take it — I will love you through that, as well. If you don’t need the medication, I will love you, too.”

Now the writer, who has often emphasised the importance of living true to yourself, says that not lying lies at the crux of dealing with mental trauma.

“If I’m depressed, anxious or beaten down, it is an invitation for me to ask myself where I am lying. Because, guaranteed, I’m lying somewhere,” the author tells The Sunday Times’ Style magazine, in a new interview this weekend.

Obviously, mental health problems are, by their very nature, complex and deeply personal. And Gilbert is not in any way suggesting that the truth holds some kind of magical cure; merely that it’s helped her in her own process.

She says this approach was encouraged by her soulmate and lover, the late writer Rayya Elias.

“There’s an efficiency to telling the truth,” says Gilbert. “Rayya said, ‘The truth will always be the last thing standing in the room when everything else blows up. And since it’s where we’re all going to end up, why don’t we just start with it?’ If there’s anything I inherited from her, it’s that. When I’m in moments of difficulty, I hear her saying, ‘Just start with it, babe. Just start with the truth.’”

Author Elizabeth Gilbert: to fight anxiety, I start by telling the truth