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Counselling for Depression

As it can affect they way we think, feel, behave and relate to others, depression can seem like an impossible challenge to work through alone. Fortunately, Counselling Psychologists at The House are brilliantly positioned to be able to tackle these problems with you.

Working through rough patches with counselling & therapy

Depression is more than “feeling sad”, and is felt in a huge variety of different ways by different people. Some of these experiences include…

  • A persistently low mood and low self confidence
  • Excessive guilt and self-blame
  • Loss of interest in things that used to engage you and no longer finding fun activities pleasurable
  • Trouble getting to sleep, waking up in the night, or waking very early
  • Poor concentration and indecisiveness
  • Eating noticeably more or less than usual
  • Agitation or restlessness, or conversely, slowed movement

These experiences are not just emotional, but cognitive and even physical, which can make you feel like nothing is going right. Depression can feel like it’s wearing down the very core of you, and it can be easy to lose hope that things will ever feel better again.

Counselling: lasting positive change is in sight

For some people it can feel like they have spent their whole lives dipping in and out of depressive episodes. For others, these feelings may be relatively recent. Just as its symptoms and course can vary to person to person, depression can also arise for a variety of reasons. It may be a lingering response to a traumatic event such as a bereavement, the end of a relationship, or job loss. It may be caused by a combination of stressful events at work and at home, or may even feel like it has crept up on you ‘out of nowhere’.

Tailoring the process to your needs

Counselling psychologists at The House are able to help people at any stage of their relationship with depression. Counselling is not a fixed process set in stone: Counselling psychologists use their experience and knowledge to tailor the therapeutic process to the particular needs and concerns of each person because what works for one might not work for another.

The theme or elements of Counselling common to every approach however are:

  • Discussing at the outset what the changes you are hoping to achieve through therapy
  • Taking the time to recognise and explore your experiences, both internal and external
  • Working collaboratively to understand which elements of the way you think, feel, act and relate to others are maintaining your problems
  • Challenging unhelpful habits that you may have, and developing more realistic and helpful alternatives
  • Recognising your ‘triggers’ and helpful ways to react to them, so that you are skilled and empowered to deal with problems in the future without ‘relapsing’

Dwelling on the past can make us feel worse

You will notice that all these components concentrate on your problems in the present, and how to challenge them to make your future better. Counselling has very little in common with the popular conception of therapy as laying on a couch whilst a psychoanalyst asks you about your relationship with your mother! Far from helping, there is evidence that dwelling on negativity from our past can actually make us feel worse.

Though perhaps overused or cliched, the phrase, ‘You can’t change your past, but you can change your present’ really strikes at the core of the counselling process, which is very much solution-focused. The success of this approach is evidenced by the fact that Counselling is generally so effective that lasting positive change can be achieved in a matter of weeks to months, where psychoanalysis traditionally is undergone for years and even decades.

The House Partnership, 21st February 2015

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