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choosingchange  — Counselling Sydney CBD

Depression help...

If you think your depressed feelings are badly influencing you life, there are things you can do to alleviate those feelings...

If you think that you may be suffering from depression (or depressed feelings) you are advised to talk to someone. Doctors can prescribe medication to alleviate the symptoms

Doctors may also refer you to psychiatrist for ongoing treatment.

Some signs that indicate you are feeling depressed can include:

• that you are unhappy in your work or relationships, and
• that this unhappiness stays with you over a period of time, and
• 
  cannot be explained by illness, situation or attitude.
• Loss of interest in things you usually do
• Doubts about your decisions, more than usually experienced
• Scary feelings where you can't find good reasons
• Feelings of not being in control (at work or in your relationships or where things are changing around you)
• Difficulty finding pleasure with activities you usually found fun
• Difficulty settling down to things (like study or listening to music or at a picnic etc)
• Feelings of suicide or thoughts about death (yours or those around you).... this is usually at the bottom end of the range of feelings around depression, but is by no means uncommon.
• Some people have described feeling depressed as living life in black and white. This is usually described after they have found some relief from their condition. Depression can be elusive.

CBT (Cognitive Behavoural Therapy)

CBT can help overcome the effects of depression.

Feelings of sadness, unhappiness, disappointment are as common as ecstasy, enjoyment, satisfaction and happiness.  All of experience a range and variety of emotions and feeling every day.  If the range is limited and persists in a limited way then most people will be helped with therapy.

 

CBT for depression consists of the therapist helping the client to understand the normal range of expected emotional responses and feelings all of us experience... and is often and usually remarkable effective in relieving the symptoms.

And it maybe all that is required.  After all, all we want is to be able to get back to our normal range of activities, have some fun and enjoy most of the day.  However, if the symptoms return; if the pleasure is just not good enough; if the job or relationship suffers on a long term basis because of feeling miserable or always arguing or feeling unloved and misunderstood, there may be a case for a deeper and more substantial series of conversations with a therapist.

Consulting a counsellor or psychotherapist can make a difference to your progress.

It has been suggested that one in five people in Australia have, or will suffer from depressed feelings to some degree. Many doctors say that over half their patients suffer from such feelings to some significant degree.

Having depressed feelings: ask for help. Counselling depression helps. Depression counselling can help you find your way out the darkness than often envelops people who are feeling depressed and gives them hope for a future of having some of the good things in life.

Mindfulness        

Mindfulness can play a significant part in a counselling process that includes the concept of emotional intelligence or emotional competence. You participate in the process toward discovering different ways of being in your world. Mindfulness has varied meanings and my understanding of it is from a Buddhist tradition after the time of Lao Tzu (circa Fifth Century BC).

Mindfulness involves nonbeing and nondoing which introduce and support the essence of nonviolence... being in the here-and-now... responding in a helpful way.

Nonbeing denotes allowing the self to be in space free from judgment, free from influence, free from fear and shame and free to embrace everything.

While none of us welcome the uncomfortable or hard or difficult things or people in our lives, hardly any of us can say they have not experienced those times.  What to do with that knowledge is what mindfulness talks about.  Your mind can activate ways of acting rather than REacting; responding rather than lashing out unthinkingly... I would also add that the lashing out is uncaring. 

Responding comes after mindfully reflecting, considering, caringly attending the issue or person or event.  Going a little bit out of your way to say "Hello, can I help?" you rather than brushing past in a hurry to get your tasks finished.  I say, your task in life is to be attentive to others. 

Nondoing indicates not interfering or to do only things that are meaningful and have significance in-the-moment.

Nonviolence is the here-and-now, what is happening in this moment, being alert and relaxed at the same time. In some sense it has similarities with the "at peace" state people encounter after meditation.

The here-and-now or mindfulness concept allows therapist and client to honestly and bravely encounter issues that may be stumbling blocks in life transitions... life transitions we all face.

How we handle these transitions is indicative of how well we know ourselves and perhaps how well we face our shortcomings or incorporate our shadow or dark side of our character.   

That hoary saying — "Life is not meant to be easy," might be better understood with — "The easy path is great but it is the difficult that makes me bolder, brighter, more complete within myself, more creative, more authentic...a better person..."

                           
 

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