Here at Counselling Connections this week we took a few minutes to sit and talk about different kinds of depression. Some people who are diagnosed with depression are told they have a chemical imbalance which is causing them to feel unwell. We’ll talk about that kind of depression another time. What we’re interested in discussing with you this week is a kind of depression which is actually quite hard to define. In simple terms it is a collection of feelings which are experienced over a period of time and which relate to a general dissatisfaction with the turn that life has taken. There’s a kind of self help phrase going around at the moment which says ‘depression is not a sign of weakness; it’s a sign you’ve been trying to be too strong for too long’. This is the kind of depression we’re talking about.

One of the difficulties about coming to therapy for the first time is being able to say why you’ve decided to come. It can be hard to say what’s wrong. It is not necessarily that its too upsetting to talk about it; although that is sometimes the case, its just that the feelings are a low level flattening off of your normal zest for life and its hard to know where to begin describing it. This is where counselling and psychotherapy come into their own because we are not concerned with a diagnosis or with placing your feelings or symptoms into a particular category. Rather, our first concern is to hear from you what way you are feeling and how this is affecting your life.

In the initial stages of therapy the focus can be on what your current difficulties are. These are normal everyday things like getting up for work; financial problems and managing relationships with loved ones, partners, parents and others. Sometimes we find that how we are feeling begins to affect these different relationships in similar ways. This can lead to a feeling that ‘there is something wrong with me’ and this can shake our confidence a little further. It is not uncommon for someone who begins to feel this way to subtly withdraw from their primary relationships. This strategy is about avoiding feeling hurt or experiencing judgement from others. Loved ones can pick up on our frailty and try to protect us by keeping details of ongoing domestic issues from us. All these serve to increase the sense of isolation we have begun to experience.

This is a painful phase to endure and getting back a sense of positivity or optimism seems like a daunting, if not impossible task. Although it is not generally looked at this way at the time, it also presents an opportunity to reorder our priorities and re-assess the direction our lives have taken. It can lead to a process of dreaming it all up and beginning again. This is not something that can be achieved overnight but over the course of a therapy new horizons can be considered and played with. We can spend some time looking at what fears or roadblocks exist within us which have served to stifle our creativity over the years. We can look back at previous experiences; at times when we suffered setbacks and see what adjustments these caused us to make in our unwritten plans. These adjustments to difficulties can be similar to the withdrawing from loved ones at times of distress. Initially we do these things to protect ourselves but in the longer term they may serve to stop us from attaining even modest goals.

I suppose we at Counselling Connections have a slightly different view of this kind of depression. We would see it as part of a natural process that we all go through on an ongoing basis in life. We assess where we are; we see things we’d like; or we imagine a way we’d like to be and we aim for that. We probably do this on an ongoing basis through life without really realising we are doing it. The times we are talking about this week are those times when this process doesn’t work or where we get stuck at some point in it. This can be because in the ‘assessment’ phase of the process in our minds we might see where life has taken us and realise that we’re not happy to be here. This is painful; it can lead to loss of interest in life and a temptation to give up. It can also be regarded as an opportunity. To engage the services of a specialist in this kind of thing, a counsellor or a psychotherapist can lead to a process of getting to know your own self and your own processes to the extent that you are much more in command of them. In this way we can learn to leave behind states of getting stuck or of withdrawing from life and learn ways to feel content and accomplished and quietly confident in ourselves and our position in the world.

Counselling Connections, Dundalk.

Here at Counselling Connections this morning we sat for a while to talk about Depression Awareness Week. We would like to add our name to the campaign which this year aims to raise awareness in particular of the stigma surrounding depression. There is no doubt that there has been a stigma associated with depression which holds that a permanent mark of shame is attached to the illness. It seems that the perception is that there is no cure or recovery from depression. We are glad to be able to confirm that this is not the case.
Depression can be a surprisingly debilitating illness. The physical manifestations of depression can take a sufferer by surprise. A cluster of symptoms around loss of interest can leave a person feeling physically unable to carry out some basic tasks which normally would be carried out without much thought. We can lose interest in food and in tastes and textures which we had previously enjoyed. We can lose interest in sex or in our loved ones. We can lose interest also in our occupation and in whatever hobbies normally keep us entertained. Sometimes in depression we can improve these things by setting simple short term goals and trying to complete some tasks even though our normal interest or drive might be absent.
There are different kinds of depression and it could be argued that no two people experience depression in precisely the same way. Our early lives are particularly important in our development and the hopes and dreams we hold to in childhood and adolescence create our adult expectations. If these are not realised we can be left with a feeling of dissatisfaction with life which can over time become depression. Some of us experience traumatic events which result in feelings of shame and guilt which can lead to depression. For others, the causes of depression are more subtle and it can be very lonely and confusing to feel low without really understanding why. It is important, whatever the cause, to be able to talk to someone about it.
Talking about depression can be difficult for lots of reasons and the fear of the stigma is definitely a consideration which might put people off. If that is the case we would encourage you to make contact with a good counsellor or psychotherapist who will listen to you in a respectful and understanding way. It can be helpful in the first instance to talk with a loved one or a trusted friend and it is not unusual to ask someone to make an appointment for counselling for you if you don’t feel you can take the first step yourself. It is also not unusual for someone to come to see us and to say simply that they don’t know what is wrong or where to begin talking about it. We can help you take things from there.
Brave people are coming forward all the time now to reveal that they had at one time or other suffered with depression. Some have experienced hospitalisation, drug therapy or ECT. These events are a difficult part of what some people go through as part of their way out of depression. These can all be put in the past and people can and do get better and live full and complete lives after depression. We welcome the public awareness programme for depression and we would encourage anybody who feels they may be suffering from it in one form or another to talk to someone about it.
Counselling Connections.