The Black Dog Whisperer
January 11th, 2008I once read about something called ‘impostor syndrome‘ where outwardly successful people feel that if others only knew the truth about them, they would be sunk, their life would be over. All of their success in life was just a fluke and had nothing to do with their intelligence, creativity, work ethic or the type of person they were. They don’t feel successful on the inside and don’t feel good about who they are.
Now imagine feeling like this with a black dog too. That’s a double whammy and we fear if others only knew, we’d be done for. We feel bad about feeling bad. It’s like compound interest with our emotions.
Everyone has a natural aversion to life’s difficulties. People don’t want to deal with uncomfortable situations or think about illness. That’s especially so when it comes to the mind and emotions. Illness frightens us. Mental illness terrifies us. Ditto difficult or uncomfortable situations. We don’t like any of it. The black dog brings it all.
The idea of telling your family and friends about your black dog is a very personal decision that can seem overwhelming. Like it or not there’s still a stigma attached to mental health issues. Families being what they are . . . you just never know how they’ll react, or how you’ll react to their reaction. How many people do you know (yourself included) who enjoy talking about emotional issues?
When my ex filed for divorce, I had a friend and his wife who, up to that point, I considered very good friends. In fact he was the best man at my wedding. As soon as divorce reared its ugly head they quickly backed away. They didn’t want to talk about it and they didn’t want to hang out anymore. Maybe it reminded them of the issues & frailties in their own marriage. Maybe they were afraid it was catching. Maybe if they didn’t acknowledge it, it would go away . . . maybe.
Real friendship is like true love; it isn’t conditional. This was a hard lesson for me. No one wants to be abandoned especially in a time of need and by close friends or family. I think that maybe some people when faced with a friend or family member with depression may react in a similar fashion to my ‘best’ man and his wife. Sometimes I think it reminds them of what’s inside themselves. They don’t know what to do so they panic and run the other way.
Talking about depression is a very intimate thing. You can’t get much deeper inside a person than when you’re exposing raw emotions that aren’t very pretty to look at. I think we hesitate to talk about it because we still are attached to ideas that we brought it on ourselves. That it’s a personal flaw we should feel guilty about. If we were only a stronger person, less sensitive, more assertive, etc. we wouldn’t be in this fix. The black dog already makes you feel incredibly vulnerable. Can we risk exposing our soft underbelly and being even more vulnerable?
I still find it incredibly hard to reveal this disease to others. It’s like carrying around some kind of horrible secret that slowly eats you up from the inside out until you’re just a shell of a person. I had to let the monster out of the closet but I knew if I started to talk about it to loved ones, I may start to feel overwhelmed and tear up and then I’ll feel like I should have more control and wonder what they think of me . . . and just beat the hell out of myself.
There is an end though. As hard as it’s been I’ve managed to tell some family and friends. I didn’t want to be one of those people who tell way too much information about their personal life so I was selective. I only told those I felt close to & thought might be open minded if not compassionate. Most were understanding or if they didn’t understand they were at least sympathetic and concerned. There were some who didn’t know how to react & they got very quiet and that was the end of it; they never brought it up again. It may have stung a little but I figured it was more a reflection of them than me.
In the end it didn’t matter that people reacted good, bad or indifferently. I always felt better for getting this terrible burden off of my back. The hard part comes in continuing to openly care for yourself. It truly is a balancing act as you don’t want to constantly dwell on depression & make it worse, but you also don’t want to ignore it & pretend that now that it’s out in the open, it will just go away. It’s very easy to let the beast go quietly back into the closet until it becomes unbearable once again and you’re facing a relapse.
My suggestions for coming out about your black dog.
- Be selective. Not everyone needs to know. Only tell those you trust - a few close friends or family members you feel comfortable telling.
- Lower your expectations. Don’t expect too much and you may be pleasantly surprised. Expect too much and you may feel worse & that’s the opposite of what our goal is.
- Be honest & share your feelings openly without guilt. If tears come, let them come.
- Don’t dwell on things - realize when enough is enough. Too much talk can easily become verbal rumination that only feeds the black dog.
- Don’t hesitate to ask for help, support & accountability (remember it’s a disease, not an excuse).
If you’ve ever watched the Dog Whisperer you know that Caesar pays attention to the environment and what both the dog and it’s owners are doing in relation to each other and their surroundings. Then he adjusts his training so that everyone’s behavior & environment improves. We need to be vigilant and listen to our black dog and become our own whisperers.
For anyone who wants to understand what depression is please take a look at this wonderful book. It was written and illustrated by an artist who knows what it’s like to have a black dog. A difficult subject handled beautifully. Set it out on your coffee table and let your friends flip through it. It’s a great way to help them understand.
January 13th, 2008 at 8:09 am
I respect your approach to “coming out” about your depression. I have a different approach. I treat it like any health problem. Nearly everyone who knows me knows that I have it and take medication for it. I don’t think it’s something to be ashamed of. The medication helps me stay on an even keel most of the time, but yes, there are relapses, or times when I’m struggling, and I might mention it to those closest to me, if it interferes with a commitment or plans. There have even been times when it affected my job performance, and while this is touchy, and depends greatly on the work environment and people involved, I have been honest about it to my supervisor and worked hard to make up for the lapses.
Depression is not a character flaw; it’s an illness. As with other illnesses, it’s not good to bore people with your symptoms or use it as an excuse for everything. But I think that the stigma of any illness, especially mental illnesses, is lessened when people know someone who has it– a friend or a colleague– and can see them as a real person.
I don’t expect everyone to understand or even sympathize. But as people become less fearful and ashamed of a condition, they may be more willing to seek help than to just hide it away and suffer in secret.
Just my opinion. Thanks for your blog.
January 13th, 2008 at 9:22 am
Patricia,
I agree wholeheartedly with your comments. I don’t know that your approach is different at all.
There must have been an initial time that you shared information about your depression with people. That’s the moment I’m referring to. That’s why I say not everyone needs to know and knowing when enough is enough - I don’t want to bore people either!
Thanks for reading and for commenting.
January 14th, 2008 at 6:04 am
I’ve been through both of these in my life. The seed of the”Imposter Syndrome” was planted by my ex-wife who told me once “I can’t wait until those people you work for find out what a FRAUD you are and fire your ass!”.
Not a true statement, and I’ve TOLD myself and tried to logically demonstrate HOW it’s not true (I’m a Television Engineer) but, the Black Dog doesn’t care about Logic.
After the divorce, what few “friends” who hadn’t already been driven off by the Wicked Witch and her Spawn faded away like a snowman on a March day.
Some friends, huh? I haven’t bothered trying to make new friends, even though I moved far away from where I was 10 years ago. What few people I’ve tried to get close to have bailed out like skydivers once they found out about my Dog and the “treats” I have to feed him every day to stay functional.
January 14th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
John; A lot of people will say that “lack of friends” is an indicator - (or an aggravator) - for me, I rationalize it as simply a practical consideration of priorities (which is viewed as workaholism by my family).
The worst judgment is when you’re working in a field where having a documented mental illness can be detrimental to your ability to hold a security clearance. It used to be (still is, for some jobs) detrimental to simply be a homosexual.
That’s not a problem for me, but almost has been.
What can also be tricky, is the work environment. At my last job, I tended to work around people who were very helpful, and accepting, and when someone needed help, you helped them, and when you needed help, they helped you - technically. Because we worked on a really wide variety of engineering tasks. But where I work now, it’s really a lot more focussed, and people are very ego driven, and even competitive, and that paranoia of being a fraud is omnipresent. It’s a really toxic environment.
January 14th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
A few weeks back you recommended that book to me for my husband to read so I bought it. I thought the book was excellent and have since given it to my thearapist to keep in her office to help others understand the illness.
Unfortunately it didn’t sink in with my husband. The one person who I am supposed to be able to open up to and trust with my illness, is the one person who makes me feel worse about myself. He says he understands and wants to help me but at the same time blames me for being lazy, forgetful, useless and ruining our lives, etc.
January 14th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
Laura,
I’m so sorry that your husband is not supporting you like you’d hope. Did he read the book? Is he open to couple’s therapy?
January 15th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
i can’t believe you posted this!! its like you read my mind, or something…
i feel like i’m new at this, even though i’m not really new at all. i guess i should say i’m new at *dealing* with my black dog.
he’s been around for… about 12 years - more than half my life. i’m turning 22 next month.
every time i’ve tried to talk to my parents, including in pre- and early adolescence, its become a MAJOR issue with all sorts of brow beating and denial and lectures. its like they think if they can pile enough shame on then i’ll somehow snap out of my ‘issues’. i just stopped trying to talk to them. they would even laugh about it with school counselors, neighbors, and other relatives.
all the help i’ve gotten and everything i’ve decided to deal with has been minus the help and support of family AND friends - i can’t imagine being honest about it with someone who *knows* me. i have never even considered that as an option.
i have started dealing with the black dog himself now, and go to a therapist that no one knows i go to. i don’t really know what else to do. i honestly cannot imagine being honest and having it be okay. i’ve always imagined that some day ‘when it is all over’ i’ll be able to tell people i made it through. but that sure isn’t today.
January 15th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
Katrina,
I’m so glad you’re getting help on your own. We all would love to have the support of family and friends but sometimes we have to go it alone. Don’t let it get you down. You’re doing what you need to do to get better and that’s all that matters.
If you haven’t already, you may want to look in to the elements of the TLC program (http://www.psych.ku.edu/TLC/element.htm) that maybe you can do with the help of your therapists. It’s a pretty rational, common sense approach but most of all it works.
My thoughts are with you.
February 2nd, 2008 at 6:25 pm
This post speaks directly to me, in the sense that I have had these feelings of “what if they realize what a fake I am?” for years. I do my job well, but still think that any day now, my employer will figure out that I’m not all they think I am. Never mind that I’ve not given them any reason to think that, but the black dog is whispering in my ear that it’s all a sham, and I’m going to be found out, and it will end. I do my best to ignore it, but some days it just won’t go away. How do you prevent yourself from believing it? I have days when the whispering is so loud that it threatens to affect my work, and then my employers WILL be unhappy with me.
February 3rd, 2008 at 7:57 am
Nancy,
If you haven’t already, you may want to read an earlier post on mindfulness (click here) . I’ve been getting a lot of help from following it. You won’t get immediate help as far as stopping your thoughts but over time it will help re-frame them so that you see them for what they are . . . little bubbles of thought that come and go . . . and with that understanding they’ll loose their power.
March 8th, 2008 at 10:10 am
This is my first time searching for and reading a “depression blog” and I am tearing up as I read it. I have suffered from depression all my life (I’m 55 years old), done therapy (many times!), taken medication (for years), lost jobs because of it (most recently just last year — a job I’d held for 20 years and one I was very proud of) and almost everyone who knows me knows about the depression–to my ever-present shame. I am always wishing “I was like other people.” I am always envious of people who seem to lead normal lives. I cry almost every day because I am lonely, scared, unhappy and feel trapped in a lifetime of loneliness, sadness and shame. I guess it feels good to read about others with the same “black dog.” I want to have hope that life can be better for me, even as I feel incapable of making it better. Anyway, thanks to all of you for being out there and “listening.”
March 8th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
Oh Maureen,
It breaks my heart to read of your suffering. I’m so glad that you are reading this blog and I hope you not only find comfort here but also help. It takes work and time . . . but you can get better.
If you’re seeing a counselor/physician talk to them about helping you implement the TLC strategies into your life. Click on the links in the left side menu and you can read more about the program.
Remember you’re not alone. Good Luck!