What is living with depression like?
The NHS describe living with depression like this, “the symptoms of depression can be complex and vary widely between people. But as a general rule, if you’re depressed, you feel sad, hopeless and lose interest in things you used to enjoy.”
People have different experiences of living with depression, it can come out of the blue and change your capacity to enjoy life, depression tends to isolate people. A person living with depression can turn in on themselves and become more introverted, it can become harder to take pleasure from relationships. Depression makes us feel tired and worthless, we can lose confidence and find it very hard to be enthusiastic about anything.
Depression is no respecter of gender, wealth, rank or status it strikes men and women from Winston Churchill to Ruby Wax, but there are signs that we are becoming more prepared to talk about depression. Sometimes depression is experienced as a one-off event; sometimes there will be recurring experiences throughout life.
What treatments are available for depression?
Depression can be treated via medication and talking therapy, sometimes by both. Typically a sufferer will be prescribed an anti-depressant, or an SSRI like Prozac or Citalopram.
How I work
It can be hard to start talking about the experience of depression. Over the years I have worked with people suffering depression and I have found that once a way is developed to speak in a confidential setting, there can be a powerful sense of mood improving. People will speak of feeling lighter for having spoken about their depression; they will describe a burden having been lifted. Talking breaks the sense of isolation and this can relieve some of the despair. There is a possibility that as you find a way to speak about living with depression, you realise there are subjects you have felt overwhelmed by for years and that now as you start to discuss them the depression starts to lift.
In my work I try to find ways of helping people relate to the depression. Often our moods are a reflection of things that happen to us, so we might find that depression started when other events happened, for example bereavement, divorce, or redundancy. Often an event has occurred that has had a profound impact on our lives but we have never found a way to talk about it, sometimes as a consequence we develop depression instead. Please call for a free telephone consultation to discuss how I might be able to help you.
