Sit, Stay
November 10th, 2008
This is my brother-in-law’s black dog. He’s a really sweet lab but is an ‘outdoor’ dog. He stays outside all the time. He has a pen, a doghouse and a really nice dog bed in the garage, but he’s never allowed in. He knows he can’t go inside so when there’s an open door the most he’ll do is poke his head inside and look at you with sad, heart melting eyes.
He’s never known anything but the great outdoors. Despite feeling bad for him when he sticks his old face inside and looks at the little Cairn terrier who gets to come and go at will, I can’t help but think how this is what TLC does for the black dog of depression.
One of my readers wrote a while back asking if depression ever went away for good. They were understandably tired of always dealing with it.
My response was that everyone is different. I’m sure there are some people for whom depression is a temporary thing. I wish I could say it goes away for good and you never have to worry about it again but . . . with me anyway it comes and goes. Sometimes it’s worse than others which is why I try and stay on top of it.
I have a friend who is a cancer survivor and he still has to worry about it coming back. Maybe depression is like that. We have to be vigilant, watch and correct our thinking process, exercise, go to a counselor, etc. - whatever it takes to keep it in control.
I dislocated another friend’s shoulder in an Aikido class (it was a freak accident, honest). The doctors told him that once your shoulder is dislocated it’s more prone to come out again, so you have to be careful and do exercises to strengthen the muscles that help hold it in place. I think depression is a lot like my friend’s shoulder; once you have had it - you’re more prone to experience it again. TLC are the exercises we do to keep it from coming back.
My goal is for the TLC program (and other things I do) to become more automatic so that my black dog just leaves and never comes back or at the very least never comes in my house.
My blues are a result of a lot of stressful events in my life, primarily the estrangement from my daughter. There’s a part of me that still holds on to the hope that she’ll return to my life and then my black dog will be gone forever but I just don’t know. I can’t keep postponing my happiness, my life, while waiting for her to return. All I can do is to keep practicing TLC.
All too often we withdraw and wait for all the stars to align and then we’ll get on with life and happiness, but those stars never cooperate do they? Don’t wait for ‘X,Y or Z to happen before you take action to get better. Act now.
There’s always going to be sad and stressful events in life so you have to learn how to deal constructively with them. My friend’s deaths, my parent’s Alzheimers and mom’s death were really traumatic events that happened over a relatively short time. My oldest brother’s way of dealing with our folks was to ignore it and not visit our parents very much. I felt too much responsibility to do that but in my facing the trauma head on I found I needed help in coping with it all, so I’m back in counseling now.
The important thing for me is to not fall in to the trap of feeling bad about getting help - which amounts to feeling bad about feeling bad. Do everything you can to combat your depression. It’s hard to do but is always worth the effort.
Here’s a couple of great articles on depression.
Lifting the Curtain on Depression
Depression and the Nobel Prize
