Depression
How do you feel when you wake up in the morning? Far from feeling refreshed, you might wake up exhausted and feeling utterly unmotivated. As a result, it isn’t easy to contemplate the day ahead. It may have started gradually. Maybe you became aware of feeling miserable or increasingly distant. The world appeared less colourful and engaging. Perhaps you can keep on working or doing your daily tasks. Still, you take less and less interest in social activities, and interaction with other people feels like a mountain of work. Maybe you can’t remember what, if anything, you did half an hour ago.
Crossing a room may resemble battling through super-glue. Even simple tasks – shopping or responding to email – can seem too demanding to contemplate. Focusing and making decisions about simple things can feel overwhelming. At the same time, a desire to pursue (previously) life-affirming activities has drained away. It might seem as though you’re looking at the world through the fog. Perhaps you feel strangely untouched by the negative or sad things that happen around you. Even if you have experienced (and overcome) depression in the past, you might still feel powerless to confront it now. These distressing circumstances represent (what seem to be) an inescapable curse. This experience should not (and does not) have to continue.
Until recently depression was little understood, yet key new insights into its causes and symptoms have made treatment easier and more consistently effective. Our work together will support you to:
- Understand essential information about what causes depression
- Have a clear explanation of your symptoms and what you can do about them
- Build resilience to deal with grief and uncertainty
- Understand why some forms of counselling can exacerbate symptoms
- Manage bipolar depression from a psychological perspective
- Tackle rigid thinking, negative expectancy and the pessimistic rumination that causes depression
- Implement practical help to break the cycle and prevent relapse
- Make an immediate positive difference
