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| DEPRESSION and phsychotherapy |
If you’re on this page then it’s likely that either you, or someone close to you, is experiencing depression. Periods of depression are incredibly difficult phases of life and require the utmost care and support from ones self and from those around them. Tackling depression on your own has not been proven to be an effective treatment strategy ; instead, the connecting theme amongst most treatment plans today include broadening ones support structures, within themselves and from within their community and environment.
The team at the Encompass Health Centre is sensitive to the challenges that faced by those suffering from depression.
What is Depression?
Clinical depression is an illness, and can be seen as a medical condition. It affects the way someone feels, causing a lowering of mood. Depression can occur for short or long periods of time and its severity can vary from a mild sense of depression, all the way to a deep depression where the person can no longer distinguish what is real. Depression is often accompanied by a range of other physical and psychological symptoms that can interfere with the way a person is able to function in their everyday life. The symptoms of depression generally react well to a number of treatments, including counselling, social activity, exercise and diet. Some forms of depression are biological and many require the client to be treated with antidepressants as well as individual therapy.
What can cause Depression?
Depression can be a response to stressful life events; examples of this include family break ups, abuse, bullying, relationship difficulties or break ups, overly stressful jobs, or family conflicts.
Depression can be part of other mental illness such as bipolar disorder or schizophrenia.
Depression can be biochemical and associated with a chemical imbalance in the brain. This form of depression may have nothing to do with outside influences or events.
Personality type. Some people can be more at risk with depression based on their style of personality. This may include, for example, perfectionists, people with low self esteem, people who are often very anxious and those who are shy.
Treating depression?
Individual therapy (counselling) can be a very effective approach to treating depression. Through exploration of what the client feels and thinks, how they relate to themselves and others, and what they may be overlooking in themselves, they become empowered to take more control of their depression and their lives.
My approach to treating depression is to use an integrated approach and to view the person holistically and within their total environment; This approach includes working with a persons...
History. A person’s history and how this carries forward in their lives can be vital in the effective treatment of depression. Sometimes a person’s history is not left in the past and instead, is alive and playing out in the present moment in unsatisfying, repeating patterns.
Relationships. A person’s relationships should be considered in the context of depression, and whether these relationships support the person. A key characteristic of depression can be one of feeling closed off, and often a person’s relationships can mirror this experience and become closed off too; thus leaving the person without adequate support in a very difficult time.
Lifestyle. It can be important to consider a person’s lifestyle and whether this sustains the person and supports their efforts to heal, or works against them. A person’s lifestyle includes all the ways in which they connect with their environment.
Family constellation. The family constellation refers to how a family is configured and what role each person takes on within this configuration. It can be important to understand how these roles may be helping or hindering the person’s healing. Often the family roles that are taken on are unconscious and carry well past the family environment and into the person’s current life. It can be very useful to understand what these roles are and whether they fit well with the psychological make up of the person; if they don’t, then the person may be living a life that does not allow them to be who they truly are, leaving them feeling trapped and unfulfilled.
Somatic blocks. Resolving and transforming the stuck emotions within ones physical, chemical structure can be extremely useful in treating depression. It has now been scientifically proven that emotions become stuck within the body. Once stuck, they can play over and over within a person’s awareness, like a stuck record, leaving the person with a recurring and unwanted emotional experience. The goal here is to assist the person to unblock these emotions and free themselves up from these recurring feelings.
Beliefs and belief structures. A person’s beliefs play a large part in the treatment of depression and working with this is a key focus within counselling.
For more information on your particular situation, please call Robbie on 9904 1333.
Otherwise, click here for more contact details. Contact. |
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Congratulations
to Martina
and Sonya
for their
outstanding
efforts in the
Blackmores
Bridge Run.
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