Dependency and depression

More often than not, we hear these hackneyed phrases from folks around us: “My domestic help, owing to her being indisposed, wouldn’t be turning up for work for the next few days.

Without her assistance, I dread the very thought of plodding away at those plebian household tasks at my place.”

“Our cable TV operators are on indefinite strike. I shudder at the prospect of spending time at home sans watching my fave telly soaps.”

“I’m used to spending weekends binging and carousing in swanky hotels with friends. Being strapped for money presently, I’m assailed by depression to think this weekend wouldn’t be the same.”

“My bosom friend has gone gallivanting abroad on a month long holiday. I always bank upon her for mental solace, the times I’m flustered. Without her now, I find my peace faculties getting derailed.”

Well, dependency, whether physical, emotional or materialistic, could be quite addictive, just as the drug addiction

Once you get used to depending heavily upon a person or a thing, the absence of which can hurl you in the vortex of depression.

The degree of your depression depends upon the dependency level. Like say, your domestic assistant has stopped her services for a short term.

Or, your telly channels have temporarily been shut off. Now, if you really look at it here, the problem may not be as severe as you’d have imagined it to be.

It’s only the chronic dependency upon those things/persons, which is making you feel that you simply can’t manage your life without them.

And, it’s this unsettling thought that triggers depression bouts in you.

Incidentally, more than the physical or materialistic dependency, it’s the emotional dependency that often makes us plunge into a pool of depression.

In today’s stress-fraught times,we seek some sort of outlets to spew out our bottled-up negative emotions.

At times, it so happens that, in times of mental depressions, out of sheer desperation, depending on humans around, we confide off certain personal matters.

What we don’t realise is just for those fleeting moments of emotional relief; we let out such things, which could be in future used by them against us as our Achilles’ heels, to wrong-foot us at wrong moments.

The result of which could make us later wade through much greater depression.

These apart, when we are totally dependent on someone, we’d be empowering them, by undermining our strength. On the other hand, when we are able to independently control our life, along with our whole spectrum of emotions, we’d be making ourselves more strong mentally, by steeling our nerves, besides making ourselves more self-reliant and self-efficient.

This doesn’t mean one shouldn’t enjoy comforts/luxuries in life by depending upon certain things/persons around us.

Of course, a few dependencies are ineluctable, too. But what we ought to try is, from not becoming over-dependent upon things/persons, which make us vulnerable to assaults from depression.