Shoot the Damn Dog: A Memoir of Depression

by Sally Brampton

‘Stop abandoning yourself,’ a therapist, Elizabeth, once said to me. ‘What?’ I didn’t understand. She explained it like this. Every time you feel sad and swallow down your tears, you abandon yourself. If somebody hurts you and you pretend that you are fine, you abandon yourself. Every time you don’t eat, or fail to feed yourself, you abandon yourself. If you are tired, but refuse to rest, you abandon yourself. If you drink too much and poison yourself with alcohol, you abandon yourself. If you don’t ask for what you need from somebody with whom you are intimate, you abandon yourself. The times when you resent putting somebody else’s needs before your own are the times when you are abandoning yourself. If you don’t ask for help when you need it, you abandon yourself. ‘You suffer,’ Elizabeth said, ‘from a failure of care.’ From who? ‘From yourself,’ she says. ‘And before that, from your parents. They are the ones who should have taught you how to take care of yourself.’

You see, we want to be better, we want to be ourselves, and it is not through any lack of trying that we fail. But we do fail, because we are deep inside an illness. And it is that failure, and that struggle, that sends us into a despair so terrible that we would rather not exist.

I took up yoga. I walked for at least half an hour a day. I tried not to isolate myself and began to see my friends, but only for a cup of tea or a quiet meal. I particularly saw my friends who are depressives both because it was soothing to be among other people who understood and also because I learned that in helping other people, I began to help myself. I avoided any social situation that put me under pressure to perform, dress up or pretend that I was fully functional.

I stopped trying to use energy that I did not have and accepted that going to bed in the afternoon did not mean that I was worthless. It meant that I was tired.

I understood that I had an illness, not a weakness. I stopped feeling ashamed.

had to learn how to live again, just as somebody with a physical illness might have to learn to walk again.

Finally, I accepted that essentially there is no point—the doing is the point, that and that life is made up of a series of actions that, repeated often enough, begin to assume a shape and a meaning all of their own. They become meaningful to us only because we attach meaning to them or because they give us an outcome that serves us in some way.

I understood that it was a process and either you took part or you opted out. I had tried opting out and there I found no solution. So I took part in the process and in the taking part, I began to find meaning.

Self-control, not to be confused with willpower or restraint, means in this context, that you can determine your own course of action.

One morning I would wake into an intense, almost electric energy, filled with good humour and possibility. It would last for a few days, during which I became euphoric and voluble—sometimes, alarmingly so—and then, just as suddenly, it would be gone. Somehow, that was worse. The contrast between the light and the dark felt almost unbearably sharp, and the dark a colder, bleaker place than I remembered when I spent all my time encased in it.

Try, try and try again. It is the mantra of recovery, in all things.

We shall find peace. We shall hear the angels, we shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds. Anton Chekhov

Letting go is not getting rid of. Letting go is letting be.

Worrying is a holding on to, a tightening of the coils. I take action to avoid a relapse. That’s different from worrying about it. Worrying is inaction, a paralysis of fear. It is an agitation about a future that has not happened, and a past that cannot be changed. It can be understood, explained, even apologised for. But it cannot be changed.

It is about a young Buddhist novice who was learning meditation with his master. It was a hot day so the windows were wide open. Across the way, a car engine was being persistently revved. The young novice squirmed and shifted on his cushion. He peeked at his master who was motionless, his eyes closed in beatific peace. Finally, the novice could stand it no longer. He approached his master. ‘How can you meditate with such a noise?’ The master did not open his eyes. ‘What noise?’ he said. ‘That car!’ exclaimed the novice. ‘Isn’t it bothering you?’ ‘Is it the car that’s bothering you?’ said his master. ‘Or is it you that’s bothering the car?’