Perhaps your mood has started to dip recently or maybe you have been feeling low for some time. You dread the mornings and getting up because it feels too overwhelming to face the day and the challenges you face. You are searching to understand why you are feeling like this and help with getting through this dark time in your life. It is incredibly difficult to go through every day like you are carrying heavy bags on your shoulders. Perhaps you have managed to hide your depression and it is your dark secret because you are a “high functioning” person with depression. You are not alone!

Depression is very common and many people suffer with it for a long time until they seek help. It is normal for the mood to fluctuate from day to day, but if you start to notice that you are feeling sad and/or low most of the time without being able to shake it off watch out for the signs of depression.

• feeling hopeless and helpless
• losing interest in activities that you previously enjoyed, such as seeing friends or family
• feeling excessively tired all the time or not being able to sleep
• poor appetite or eating too much
• poor concentration
• self-critical thought patterns
• feeling irritable and/or angry
• increased consumption of alcohol
• other significant changes in behaviour

Often there are many reasons for depression. There may be a single triggering event that you recognise to be contributing to your low mood, such as a significant loss you have experienced. Often depression is a culmination of many significant events combined together with personal internal struggles.  There may be other unexpressed feelings underlying depression, such as shame, sadness, loneliness, or anger.

In therapy, together we will help you to understand what keeps you in that dark place. Often behind depression, there is shame about something that did happen to you or something that should have been there but for whatever reason was not available to you. I wrote a post recently about Steps to reducing the shame of Childhood trauma. Once you understand the source of your pain, you start the healing process and start making changes to your daily life to improve your well-being, processing underlying feelings and understanding their source in light of your personal history.

If your low mood and depression are linked to a childhood trauma or emotional neglect, psychotherapy can help to heal internal wounds that are stopping you from thriving in your life and relationships.

At times prolonged severe anxiety can lead to depression and hopelessness. Often life is so busy that it is difficult to really see what it going on in our lives and therapy is an opportunity to pause and become aware of the stress factors around us and learn how to deal with them.

How could therapy help you:

• Supporting you to understand the original route causes of your depression and working heal the pain that you experience
• Get you excited about life again and lift the cloud of depression
• Be able to live life wholeheartedly and feel a deep connection in your relationships

You have been suffering long enough, make the first step in finding a way out of that dark place.

When you are ready, get in touch I would love to hear from you and support you on your journey of healing.