Are you experiencing a lowering of mood, reduction of energy, and decrease in activity? Is your capacity for enjoyment, interest, and concentration reduced? Do you have marked tiredness after even minimum effort? Is your sleep disturbed, appetite or sexual mojo diminished?
If you answered yes to many or all of the questions above then a psychiatrist may well diagnose you with a mood disorder called depression.
Coping with depression
Coping strategies are the sets of behaviors people develop to enable them to live with their depression. While these strategies can reduce suffering in the short term, they are unlikely to resolve the depression itself.
Medication for depression
Medication can be used to provide a short term lift during which the patient can seek to make structural changes in their life and to explore the causes of their problem with psychotherapy. However, a big problem with medication are the side effects, which can be significant. Another is the risk of long term dependency (i.e. addiction) and the prospect of withdrawal symptoms that are much the same as the symptoms of depression that they were prescribed to treat.
Masking depression
An effective way of coping with depression is to pretend to yourself and everyone else that it isn’t there. If you keep yourself really busy then you never have an opportunity to fall into depression. An additional advantage to this behavior is that if you throw yourself into something and compulsively work at it then you may well become successful. This brings with it rewards such as money, status, or a super fit body. Learning to wear the mask of a smile will trick many people too.
Sadly, despite your best efforts the mask will probably eventually slip. You will fail at something, get burned out, or some kind of injury. Then you will get depressed. In the mean time, do you really want to be hanging out with people who are tricked by the mask in the first place? Suckers. What if they knew the truth? It is all very precarious.
Causes of depression
Depression does what it says on the tin. It is the experience of being depressed, i.e. being pushed down or crushed. It is common for people to describe the feeling of a dark cloud around them or a weight on their shoulders.
But who or what is pressing down on you? At least some of it is down to you. You are pressing down on you. Or, put another way, you are depressing something in yourself. The opposite of depressing is expressing. The cause of depression is, therefore, the inhibition of expression.
Why would you inhibit your own expression? Because, at some time, you learned that it was not OK to express certain emotions openly. You were taught to have a ‘stiff upper lip’, that ‘big boys don’t cry’, that ‘it upsets your mother when you get angry’. To avoid conflict that you could not win you learned to contain your perfectly normal emotions. When the emotions are really strong they collapse inwards into a black hole. When you are depressed you are experiencing this black hole from the inside.
Resolving depression
The key to resolving depression is to stop masking the issue behaviors, to feel, and express the underlying emotions. To literally come out of yourself.
What you can do right now
Get up and go for a walk. Preferably in nature. While you are walking look around you. Pay attention to the colours and textures. Even if it is not a massive workout it does get you out of the house and get the blood pumping.
When you get back you can be proud of yourself for doing something positive. You have earned some proper relaxation time. Put on some meditation tones, lie back, and allow yourself to enjoy the experience.
Flex your food for the day away from sugary sweets and refined starchy carbs like potatoes, bread and pasta. Eat lower glycemic index (GI) foods such as fruits and vegetables. This will stop your blood sugar yo-yoing which could be a significant cause of sluggishness.
How I can help resolve your depression
We will work together to create a safe space for you to explore, uncover, feel and express emotions that have probably been buried for years. Rather than covering the depression up we will journey to it’s core and release the root causes. These could be traumas in your own life time or tensions from your family history. To facilitate this we will use a blend of psychotherapy, NLP, and hypnotherapy based approaches. As you learn to shed the heavy emotions your commitment will be rewarded and you will begin to feel lighter, more energetic, and make real life changes. The downward spiral of depression transforms into a virtuous cycle of self esteem, activity, and recognition.
Take action now
Interested in learning more about psychotherapy, NLP, and hypnotherapy can enable you to deal with depression? I work face-to-face in Bethnal Green, East London and online via Skype and Google talk. Call me now for a free chat and to arrange an appointment.
