Shoot the Damn Dog: A Memoir of Depression by Sally Brampton Read Free Book Online Page B

empty) or observation made by others (e.g., appears tearful). In children and adolescents, this can manifest as irritable mood.
Markedly diminished interest or pleasure in all, or almost all, activities most of the day, nearly every day (as indicated by either a subjective account or an observation made by others).
Significant weight loss when not dieting, or weight gain (e.g., a change of more than five per cent of body weight in a month), or a decrease or increase in appetite nearly every day. In children, this could show as a failure to make expected weight gains.
Insomnia or hypersomnia (sleeping excessively) nearly every day.
Psychomotor agitation or retardation nearly every day (observable by others, not merely subjective feelings of restlessness or being slowed down).
Fatigue or loss of energy nearly every day.
Feelings of worthlessness or excessive or inappropriate guilt (which may be delusional) nearly every day (not merely self-reproach or guilt about being sick).
A diminished ability to think or concentrate, or indecisiveness, nearly every day (either by subjective account or as observed by others).
Recurrent thoughts of death (not just fear of dying), recurrent suicidal ideation (thinking about it constantly) without a specific plan, or a suicide attempt or a specific plan for committing suicide.
     
    I wish I had sought help more urgently, wish I had known or even understood the symptoms. I waited—for a year—for my mood to lift, telling myself that I was just a bit low or tired, waking day after day convinced that soon I would be right again. In that state of passive ignorance, I had no idea of the demons that were waiting for me and that, once they captured me, would not let me go without a catastrophic struggle.
    They finally got me in the January of 2001. By then, I was lost. Each day hurt, each breath, each step I took. I wanted only to be dead. It was the only thing I could think about.
    Sometimes, the final realisation that you can no longer function or continue with life is called a breakdown. It’s a phrase rarely used by mental health professionals; it’s considered too patronising or demeaning. It’s sufferers themselves who use the expression most often, perhaps because it perfectly describes that state of total collapse. You no longer have control over anything: thoughts, emotions, sleep, appetite. You are, quite literally, broken down. To me it felt like the total disintegration of everything I had ever known about myself.
    Someone once asked me how it felt. I lost my balance, I said. It felt as if I lost my balance. I fell flat on my face and I couldn’t get up again. And if that implies a certain grace, a slow and easy free-fall, then you have me wrong. It was violent and painful and, above all, humiliating.
    People rarely discuss the absolute humiliation of severe depression, the punishing helplessness, the distressing, childlike impotence. When well-intentioned friends and family say to the depressive, ‘pull yourself together’, they may as well be saying it to the baby crying in its cot.
    We cannot. It is not that we don’t want to. We simply can’t. But, unlike the baby in the cot, our adult brain is sufficiently engaged to know that we should, to believe that if we tried hard enough, we could. Then every attempt and every failure brings with it its own, additional depression, its own profound and hopeless despair. And every contemptuous glance, every irritated sigh from family and friends drives us still further out into the cold, black night.
    Depression has its own pathology and self-absorption is part of that pathology. Telling somebody who is in the grip of severe depression that they are being selfish and self-pitying is like telling somebody with asthma that they have breathing difficulties. It is meaningless except as a statement of fact or an expression of the symptoms affecting them. They are lost in a place without boundaries or borders, where the concept of self has no