Depression can impact on how you feel about yourself, others and the future. It brings a sense of darkness to life, like a black cloud hanging over you. Activities that were once enjoyable hold no interest anymore.
You may be more tearful, or angry, have changes in your sleep, eating and energy.
Stressful life events can often be linked to depression. Marriage break ups, isolation, prolonged work stress, living in an uncaring relationship.
When feeling depressed it's possible to feel everything is hopeless and nothing will change.
However a full recovery is possible. Reserch has demonstrated that therapy is extremely powerful in overcoming depression.
Therapy is not just about recovery, its a journey of empowerment, of claiming back the real you and building a life of value and contentment
Therapy consists of a place to safely talk about the painful issues in your life. Without fear of judgement. A place to understand your depression, what triggers led you here and how to escape this darkness.
It is important to choose a therapist that you feel comfortable with. They need to be kind, compassionate and patient.
Make sure they are using techniques that are known to treat depression. For example the Nice Guidelines collate research into depression and suggest Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) as one of a range of helpful options for depression (https://www.nice.org.uk/).
CBT looks at thoughts feelings and behaviour in the here and now, with practical strategies on how to change. It is a helpful therapy for moving forward. CBT uses worksheets and homework as tools to progress outside the therapy room.
However if a 'here and now' focus is not your style or if you want a less structured approach there are other options I can provide. Sometimes depression is more related to past hurts so a therapy where you can safely and openly talk about the past can be very healing.
I offer different kinds of therapy that explore past hurts and these include Narrative Therapy, Compassion Focussed Therapy as well as Person Centred Therapy. These different approaches have a focus more on processing and healing past hurtful experiences.
We can decide together what approach of therapy will be most helpful for you to heal.
