Dementors: A Metaphor for Depression...

Dementors from Harry Potter

I've never been able to adequately depict the way depression feels and how it looks to me.  I don't have the words to describe these times in my life, and they feel so intensely personal that I didn't think anyone else could possibly understand, but one of my favorite writers has depicted depression in a way that I completely identify with and can relate to. 

If you're familiar with the Harry Potter stories, you certainly know what dementors are.  Appearing in the third book of the series, they are the soul-sucking beings who cause people to go crazy.  I recently read that author J.K. Rowling created dementors after a time in her own life when she was clinically depressed.  Once learning this, the idea of dementors acting as a metaphor for depression instantly clicked with me, and I couldn't believe I hadn't made that connection before. 

If one looks at the list of symptoms of depression, most of those symptoms are mirrored by the effects that dementors have on people.  Even the physical features of dementors compare to how I would depict depression if I had to put a "face" on it.  Dementors are cloaked, covered in gray, grow in dark places and create a thick chilly fog around them.  An aspect of depression that I've always experienced is the sense of a physical cloud in the distance in my mind.  As I get more depressed, the cloud grows into a bank-like fog.   It grows closer as my depression deepens and thins and clears when the depression lifts.  In the deepest depressions I feel sunken into the thick of the murk and its oppressiveness manifests in a physical sense of weight on me - usually on my chest or in my throat.  

Dementors feed on the happy memories and joy of people, and they cause people to relive the worst moments and horrors of their lives.  Rumination and focus on the negative is a major component to my depression.  Every mistake I ever made and every mark I ever fell short of are replayed in my mind to reaffirm my suspicion that I'm not enough, not good enough, and never can be enough. 

Dementors who latch onto a victim's mouth can suck out the person's soul.  We could argue all day about what a "soul" is or isn't, but I'll use a working definition of soul as one offered by dictionary.com:  the principle of life, feeling, thought, and action in humans.  Depression, likewise deeply affects these four elements of my life.  

When I'm depressed, there is a lack of principle.  Life has little or no meaning and is senseless and purposeless.  I either feel everything entirely too intensely, or I lose feeling altogether and am left hollow and merely a shell of myself.  My thoughts are scattered and undisciplined.  They are difficult to manage, and my mind is not as sharp or as skillful as it is in times when I am well.  Equally as frustrating is the inability to act.  Although I have a sense that tasks need to be accomplished, the will to do those things is lost and the ability to act on the most menial of tasks - getting out of bed, showering, even smiling, are feats that require strength I sometimes don't imagine I could possibly have.  It has been said that the kiss of the dementor is a fate worse than death, which could easily allude to the thoughts of suicide and suicide attempts that are often a component of depression when sufferers feel that any alternative is preferable to the hell of a depressive episode.  

Dementors are very present in my life right now.  I've been through my fair share of depressive episodes in my life and I can tell you it never gets easier nor do I ever feel more confident that I'll get through it in one piece.  The difference between depressive episodes I experienced when I was younger versus those I experience now is that I have more wisdom in knowing how to endure.  


Nothing lifts a depression immediately and I tell those who ask that there is nothing they can do for me because there truly isn't.  Beyond knowing friends and family are there to offer kind words or reassurances, it mostly lies within me to get through.  I can talk to my doctors, change medications and wait for them to work, and go to therapy, but at the end of the day I have to play the biggest role in getting through the bad times.

The trouble with this is that never in my life am I as unmotivated and ill-equipped to deal with a challenge as I am when I'm depressed.  I'll blog more tomorrow about how I fight my own dementors and the ways I attempt to keep them at bay even when they are not an immediate presence in my life.