Living With The Black Dog

I recently came across this video issued in public interest by WHO. It is an animation video, talking about how to deal with depression. Depression is the result. Result of what we are going through everyday. What we need to do is find the source, which brings the black dog sniffing back to us. For me, it was the constant fear of living with the fear. The fear of being judged, the fear of facing the truth, the fear of admitting my faults. 

When the black dog, comes to us, it takes away all the happiness that we ever had. It is like a dementor sucking away the last bit of the happy memory left in our mind. And of course we are not that strong to cast a charm to push the black dog away. We let him stay. The black dog is a very possessive and demanding animal. If you let him in  once, he would stay there forever hanging around you and making you believe that he is the only one that you have in your life.

This dog doesn't feed on bones and meat. It feeds on your self-confidence and soon reduces you to a small being who hates him/herself. But he is not selfish, he give something in return, no doubt. He gives you loneliness, dark rainy days and a vision which makes you think everyone but you are happy. Quite a lot I must say.

You slowly start loving that big black animal. So much so that you won’t like to show him to anyone. You are very secretive and possessive about your pet. You start thinking how people might not like your pet and how they would judge you for keeping that pet, so what you do is pretend throughout that you don’t have a pet like that. Little do you realise that you are just making things difficult for yourself. How long can you hide such a huge animal in your own house? The constant emotional lies you tell others and yourself, drives people away from you. You lose your friends, and the people who really love and care for you.

All through this the Black dog is really happy because he is getting all the attention. The loss is all yours. But one day you need to realise that you can’t live your life with a huge black dog, who feeds on your happiness. The sooner you do that the better for you. You should realise that if you had brought home a stray unruly dog and can’t probably throw him back to the streets, you need to tame him. Make him hospitable so that he doesn't take a toll on you. And to do that you need to talk to someone.

I realised that quite late. And of course not by myself. I thought like many others that I did not need to involve any one in to this and I can manage the black dog by myself. But clearly I couldn't.  I was ashamed of a lot of things I have done in my life, but I was never ashamed of admitting that I needed help. I did not seek any help earlier because I thought I was strong enough to tame my black dog.

Now that I have got people to help me and talk to, my black dog is slowly becoming calm and gentler. He has learnt to behave himself, and he now lets me go out with the few friends I have and lets me do stuff I enjoy doing. He is not always sitting over my head these days. There are still days when he becomes the old unruly pet, but I have learnt to deal with that too. After all there will be rainy days.

Many of us have such black dogs taking over our mind. There is nothing to be ashamed of them. They are just a part of our lives and there are ways to control them. The black dogs of our minds are just like the physical difficulties we face sometimes. If you get a fracture, you would go to a doctor to fix it right? In the same way if the black dog visits you too often and starts feeding on you, do visit a counsellor or a psychiatrist. Don’t be ashamed of your black dog. There are ways by which you can tame that huge unruly pet and not let him take over you. Do talk to people and help them help you.