Counselling for Depression

It is generally thought that 10% of all people are feeling depressed at any given time . But depression is different from person to person, and depression can be so commonplace that we don’t even notice it. All of us experience depression in some form, but usually attribute it to “being blue” or say “I’m just a little tired.” We sometimes even attribute depression to personality: “She’s always irritable like that…it’s just who she is.”

We will show you that depression is not WHAT you experience but HOW you experience it. We’ll provide you with the life skills that will enable you to shift your mindset, bringing you life back into perspective.

Click below for further information or take the first step towards a happy life and give us a call now on (023) 8036 4024.

More Information

Working with  Advanced Counselling, talk therapy isn’t one-size-fits-all. We approach psychotherapy for depression using several general components which, among others, include:

  • Focus on Strengths: When we’re depressed it’s as if the part of us that might otherwise feel confident and strong is shut off or greatly diminished. Quite frequently, this part of us hasn’t disappeared entirely but is being blocked or feels prohibited. We can work together to understand these blocks and gradually re-integrate strengths back into your thinking. Like many cognitive-behavioural approaches, this isn’t a simple matter of doing an exercise once and feeling cured. It is normal for some parts of you to resist doing the exercises so we’ll work with those parts to understand them and integrate them into the change process.
  • Depression as Relational: Your depression affects the people around you whether you know it or not. In the same way, the people around you affect your depression. Small changes in how you express your needs to others or how you respond to the requests of others’ needs can sometimes have a huge impact on your feelings of depression.
  • Accepting Your Depression: Admitting you feel depressed is an important first step. Accepting your depression is a more challenging but very important next step. Accepting your depression means it’s an invited member of your family at the dinner table. When you can get to the place where depressed feelings are just like any other feelings then you’ll be less likely to have a freeze or panic response to them which often makes them more intense and potentially scary. You’ll be more able to respond to your depressed feelings flexibly and then they won’t take up permanent residence. This isn’t easy but it works. Befriending the parts of you that you don’t like is often more effective than trying to exile or manage our feelings which is never a permanent solution; humans are wired to experience a whole range of feelings, so depressed feelings are bound to return some other time and it’s best to learn how to accept this when it happens.

Treating depression with talk psychotherapy can sometimes be done in brief therapy (6-10 sessions) and sometimes takes much longer. We will talk about what your goals are and I encourage you to assess our work together so that I can make adjustments and provide the best support for you.

Click below for further information or give us a call now on (023) 8036 4024.

"I can truthfully say I was sceptical about how someone could 'coach' me about my life, but having gone through the process I can say this experience has changed me as a person for life."