Feeling down and depressed is often something that happens gradually, sometimes over a long over a period of time. It can creep up slowly making it difficult to identify, even for the person experiencing it.
Becoming down and depressed, is a mind and body response to life’s circumstances wether this be acute stresses such as financial problems or relationship breakdowns, or a response to ongoing or longer term stress such as previous life traumas, illness, bullying or low self esteem. When things get too much the brain becomes overwhelmed. A disruption in important brain chemicals occur and everything starts to slow down.
It is very difficult to think clearly and rationally, making daily life a struggle. For some people, the withdrawal from life starts to become obvious to those around them. For others it may be harder to detect and they may continue to smile and interact even though, in reality, they are not coping.
Sleep often becomes an issue as with the slowing down of the body comes real and extreme tiredness. Sleep is very important for processing day to day emotions, but when there is too much stress to process we want to sleep more. Unfortunately over sleeping makes depression worse and it becomes more and more difficult to see how things could be different.
The severity of depression can include:
- Low mood
- Lack of energy and feeling tired more easily
- Feeling sad and/or angry
- Becoming irritated easily, or just feeling numb
- Loss of interest in activities you used to enjoy
- Low self-confidence
- Difficulty concentrating
- Changes in sleeping patterns – usually sleeping more than usual, sometimes struggling to sleep
- Feeling guilty
- Feelings of low self-worth
Solution Focused Hypnotherapy helps with breaking the cycle of depression. Using hypnosis, a specialised way of relaxing the mind, we can help by taking small manageable steps each week, to process excess stress, to get sleep patterns back on track, to change the pattern of thinking and lessen the amount of rumination.
Feeling, low, down and depressed in not simply a chemical imbalance that you are stuck with. Solution Focused Hypnotherapy is highly successful in helping people to fully engage in their life again.
It can feel very daunting to seek help when you are feeling down but taking that first step is so important and very brave. We can get the real you back.