There are seasons in the psyche when the light withdraws and the world feels distant. For centuries, this experience has been symbolized as a dark animal following just behind us, what some called “the black dog.” In depth psychology, this is not pathology to be erased, but a figure signaling that something in the inner world has lost contact with warmth, meaning, or belonging.
Depression alters time. It slows thinking, thickens the air, and makes small tasks feel mythic in scale. It is not laziness or weakness. It is the psyche calling a halt when something in us cannot continue as before.
Often depression follows loss, overwhelm, betrayal of self, or years lived in patterns that once protected us but now confine us. Sometimes it has no clear story—an inherited weather pattern from generations behind us. The black dog arrives with no introduction, lies down across the doorway, and refuses to move.
The question is not: How do I get rid of it?
The question becomes: What is it asking me not to pass by?
In a depth approach, depression is not a character flaw and not simply a chemical glitch—though biology plays its part. It is a psychological wintering. A withdrawal of energy from the exterior world so attention can return to what was neglected, silenced, dismissed, or exiled.
A few ways to meet this dark companion:
1. Attention before intervention
Depression is not soothed by being argued out of its experience. Before strategies, the psyche asks for acknowledgment: Something hurts. Something matters.
2. Journaling as witness, not problem-solving
Writing slows the mind to the speed of truth. Not to fix, but to accompany.
3. Walking reconnects body with earth
Forward movement reminds the nervous system that stillness inside does not mean paralysis outside.
4. Connection without performance
Depression resists cheerfulness but responds to presence—quiet company, shared tea, no need to “be better” to be worthy.
5. Explore the meaning, not just the symptom
What did depression interrupt? What story was unsustainable? What longing went unanswered?
Depression is painful. At times unbearable. This is not romanticizing suffering. It is honoring that psyche speaks many languages—thought, image, dream, mood—and sometimes the only way it can express loss is by lowering the lights.
Therapy is not about dragging someone back into the sun. It is about sitting with them long enough in the dusk that their eyes adjust, and they begin to see the shape of the landscape they are in—and the path, barely visible, that was not apparent before.
The black dog may be an unwelcome companion, but when understood rather than feared, it becomes less monster and more messenger—asking only that we walk a little slower, listen a little deeper, and turn inward toward what needs tending.