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Successful treatment for depression and negative thinking

To overcome depression of psychological origin - even if long-standing - therapy works

More than any other problem, depression sings you the song: "Nothing will ever do any good, nothing will ever get any better." Happily, this is wrong. It is entirely possible to lift depression permanently and completely. For psychological depression, research proves talking therapies, not anti-depressants, are the best way to help. I combine several of the most effective treatments to help with depression. Solution-oriented therapy and cognitive-behavioural hypnosis are action-oriented and change your thinking patterns. Hypno-analysis and emotional healing uncover and heal the deeper emotional blocks. All together form an excellent combination with the potential to help bring a gratifying and an enormous relief. You can lift and overcome psychological depression even if long-standing and severe. You can recover your aliveness, joy, motivation and energy.

The symptoms of depression

What does depression feel like?

The intensity of feeling depressed varies enormously. It may be just feeling low and tearful for a period when things don't go well, or it may be a most terrible darkness which descends, a crushing, unending feeling that life can't go on. The American therapist Michael Yapko has defined depression as “when living hurts.”

Typical feelings include the following.

The person may look and feel sad, and move and talk slowly.
Motivation is lost.
Previously enjoyable things no longer give pleasure.
Energy is low. The person may feel lethargic or always tired.
He or she (depression is twice as common in women) may be very down on themselves, and draw into themselves, away from people and activity.
They may be tearful and anxious.
The person may feel down all the time, or have happy periods.
It may be hard to make decisions.
There may be feelings of guilt, shame and failure.
Sex drive and appetite may be low, and there may be weight loss. At the same time, comfort eating when you are depressed is common and may lead to substantial weight gain.
Sleep is commonly disturbed, often with early waking or perhaps no desire to get out of bed.
Life seems meaningless.
The person may feel like a failure.
The very fact of being depressed may feel like a failure, as the person thinks "my life is fine, I have all these advantages, I ought to be OK"
The person may feel unmotivated, empty, hopeless and despairing. They just know there’s no way out.
A depressed person may have suicidal thoughts.

And all of this is way beyond the normal ups and downs of life.

If you come to recognise that "I am depressed," then take heart - modern therapy can help depression enormously. I use a combination of some of the most effective forms of therapy, solution-oriented brief therapy, hypno-psychotherapy, cognitive-behavioural hypnosis and emotional healing. These have enormous potential to help you bring back the joy, energy and motivation into your life. They can even help you cure depression of long standing. To find out how I can help, give me a call today: 0845-3510604 / 0117-968-7307. I'm happy to answer questions or arrange, in Bristol or Taunton, a free, no-obligation half-hour initial meeting.

Below on this page:

Understanding depression - 10 key facts
How to treat depression of psychological origin and regain your motivation, joy, meaning and aliveness

Depression resources on other pages:

"Am I depressed?" - a depression test
"Do anti-depressants help?" -
key symptoms of clinical depression
What are the causes of depression of psychological origin?

Understanding depression - 10 key facts

Depression may come on:
>>> for no apparent reason at all, or
>>> it may result from life-events such as: bereavement, adversity, trauma or stress including problems in relationships, career, money, redundancy, health or relocation to a new town or country or
>>> it may arise from long-buried unconscious emotions or from childhood circumstances
Most depression is psychological. Only a small percentage is an organic brain dysfunction. The word depression covers a spectrum from feeling sometimes down but sometime OK (purely psychological), through feeling permanently down (mixed, very often psychological), to, at the very far extreme end, profound depression which is entirely medical. It is not easy to cleanly divide medical from emotional depression, and nor is it needed to. See also next item.
Most depression is related to life events or life history, perhaps from long ago, maybe even in childhood. The best way to help such "reactive depression" is the right kind of talking therapy. Depression which is not caused by such life events is best dealt with by anti-depressants. In between is an area where both anti-depressants and psychotherapy have value. Post-natal depression could be of either type.
Depression may be severe and crushing, or a mild greyness which comes and goes.
It may be long or short term. Depression can vanish quickly.
Stressed and depressed go together. Stress is a key cause and many of the symptoms overlap with those of stress.
An existing very pessimistic or negative mindset can contribute to depression, as can genetic factors. Buried childhood emotions are normally found to be the source of negative mindset.
Depression can creep on so slowly that people take it for granted, come to regard it as normal, and may be surprised, even angry, to be told they are depressed. (If you want to find out "Am I depressed," try this simple depression test.)
For many, depression carries a stigma. As a result, some people are unwilling to tell their friends they are depressed, or seek help. Actually, recognising "I am depressed" is good news, because you don't just have to cope with depression, it very possible to ovecome it. A combination of emotional and action-oriented therapy has enormous potential to get back your energy, motivation, joy and aliveness. My combination of solution-focussed counselling, hypno-psychotherapy and CBT-style self help is particularly effective. That is so even if the depression is of long standing.

To take the first step to beat depression and get your life back, give me a call today and find out how I can help: 0845-3510604 / 0117-968-7307. Please don't be shy, I'm happy to answer questions or arrange, in Bristol or Taunton, a free, no-obligation half-hour initial meeting.

Overcoming depression - what works

Even if it is severe and longstanding, it is today very possible indeed to overcome depression of psychological origin. The right talking therapy is proved by research to be highly effective to help you you get back your motivation, joy, aliveness and energy. This section explains how my combination of solution-oriented brief therapy, hypno-psychotherapy, and cognitive-behavioural hypnosis, combining emotional healing with action-oriented therapy, can help you do that.

What doesn't help if you are depressed:
chewing the cud

First, something that doesn't help with depression. People who feel very down easily fall into a litany of what is wrong and why - indeed they torture themselves 24 hours a day with this gloomy depressing self-talk. Therapists term this "depressive rumination." In old-style counselling for depression, the counsellor would get sucked into this, and would join in with the depressed person and they would chew the cud together, hashing endlessly over the past to understand why things went wrong. This is useless. Sure, things went wrong. But depression results from being out of contact with life. Putting energy into analysing why, why, why only further reduces the energy available for actual living. It makes things worse, not better.

Seeing this, many modern therapies for depression, such as CBT (cognitive-behavioural therapy) pointedly avoid all talk of the past, all enquiry into the client’s inner emotional world. This is equally wrong. They have thrown out the baby with the bath water. Within a strong framework of future-focused action to get your needs met, and introduced at the right time in that process, it is emotional healing which is the key for helping depression to lift.

On other pages:

What works to lift situational depression:
(1) Face life. Take action. Make small steps.

The thing that really gives help with depression is action. Action is the enemy which depression fears above all others. Depression is a slumped, collapsed, inward state in which the person lives in their heads instead of in their bodies, and lives in their toxic imaginings rather than engaging the real world head-on. Action breaks free of that, and that is why the depression monster always says "nothing will work."

The depression monster tells people that action won’t work exactly because action is what the monster fears most. The key remedy is to start to do even tiny things which are enjoyable - and then if there are big things to face up to, then start fo face them.

To put the same thing differently, a depressed person is in many ways addicted to saying to themselves things like "Nothing will ever go right," "I know I won't enjoy it," "There's no point in anything." The person thinks these things are true, and feels that as a consequence of these "truths," is it inevitable to feel depressed. Actually, it's the other way round: these are very depressing things to say you oneself. Repeating them in your head over and over is a toxic negative self-hypnosis: if you say over and over "there is no hope," then of course you will feel hopeless. And it is wierdly addictive to say things like this to yourself. As you break the addiction to saying them, the depression starts to clear.

Typically, depression zeros in on people who either have very negative core beliefs ("I'm no good") or who attribute very negative meanings to situations ("If I lose this job I'll never work again.") . Again, these thoughts and meaning typically carry a strong sense of unquestionable truth: "this is how things are and I can't change it." Hypnotherapy allows the person to step right past these beliefs and meanings and discover their own intrinsic treasury of positive and life-affirming beliefs and understanding, and to re-programme the mind positively.

The therapy that really offers help with depression involves:

Looking at the future you'd love to have, and working to create it in even tiny steps
Starting to get your needs met DESPITE EVERY INNER VOICE which tells you you are worthless, don't matter, a failure, not good enough and so on.
If necessary, learning how to get your needs met
Learning new ways for dealing with people and emotions.
Doing things which are fun and nourish you
PHYSICAL ACTIVITY which your body enjoys is hugely important. Exercise is a great natural cure for depression.
Pulling free from the depressive suction by focusing on the positive no matter how small at first
Looking at how you think about things and the meaning you give to events. (If you don't get a certain promotion, or if someone rejects you, is that really the end of the world?)
Breaking the addiction to negative thinking.
Stop waiting to feel happy and energised before taking action. Waiting and waiting to feel good before you can act, is a trap. Instead, discover that actions, even small ones, bring happiness and energy.
Coming eventually to a point where you tackle life head-on, and deal with difficult issues and situations: either taking external action to change them, or internal action to accept and let go of them. Some of these may be known about, others may be unconscious.
As a therapy for depression, hypnotherapy has unique advantages.
>>> It can help you find and step past deeply unconscious core limiting beliefs, for example by inner child regression
>>> It can help you go behind the depression and put you DIRECTLY in contact with the joy, peace and energy which is always there in the depths of the mind. Then these seeds can begin to grow in your everyday life.
>>> It can help you heal the wounded inner child who is often, unconsciously, at the core of feeling depressed. (See next section.)

No matter how long you have been depressed, if you would like to take the first step with the potential of reclaiming your vitality, energy and enjoyment of life, then give me a ring: 0845-3510604 / 0117-968-7307. Please don't be shy, I'm happy to answer questions or arrange, in Bristol or Taunton, a free, no-obligation half-hour initial meeting.

What works to lift emotional depression:
(2) Gently, acceptingly and honestly face and heal buried emotions

The depressive spiral is what happens when a person turns away from life. That can be inner life as well as outer life. For example, one common cause of depression is stuck grief.

Let’s say that a woman’s husband dies. And she loved him very much, and she’s just so sad to be without him. If she surrenders to her grief, a paroxysm of bitter pain will seize her. It will feel like her heart is being torn apart. But it is only short-lived: the peak of grief only lasts for a few minutes. And she might feel that peak on just a handful of occasions. And then, while still keeping a place for him in her heart, she can get on with her life.

But maybe she can’t or won’t feel that grief. Then she is turning away from an essential part of her aliveness - her grief. The grief is painful, but it is also a nourishment. Only feeling the grief can give her the gift of a fresh start and a bright future. Without feeling it, she is likely to become depressed. [Stuck grief can manifest in other ways too. Also. stuck grief has an opposite: endless grief, unending tears. This means that there is some other underlying emotion, perhaps guilt or anger, which the person does not acknowledge to themselves.]

A key step in her healing process will be, at the right time, to face the fact that her husband is dead. She may weep bitterly, and it may look for a moment as if the depression is worse. But it is not. Authentic pain is part of our aliveness; when you feel it you are alive, not depressed. These are not tears of misery and hopelessness, these are healing tears. This is not understanding, insight, rumination or analysis. It is a courageous step to face reality. It looks as if it is focused on the past, but it is not. It is a strong action, overdue but entirely in the present: the action of saying good-bye so that life can move on.

The un-acknowledged emotion doesn't have to be grief. It could be anything at all. Depression is also commonly caused by anger which can't be expressed outwards and then gets turned inwards towards the person's own self. (More information: causes of depression)

These wounds often originate in childhood. Inner child healing (ie hypno-psychotherapy) can be a key tool in therapy for depression.

Fighting depression and winning is entirely possible. The right type of talking therapy WORKS. My combination of life-dynamic counselling, hypno-psychotherapy and action-oriented CBT-style self help can help you to effectively restore your energy, motivation and enjoyment. To make an appointment and take the first step to get your life life back, give me a ring: 0845-3510604 / 0117-968-7307. Please don't be shy, I'm happy to answer questions or arrange, in Bristol or Taunton, a free, no-obligation half-hour initial meeting. My approach is friendly, respectful, and very effective.

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