A member of the Directory of Complementary and Alternative Practitioners.

Depression

"The Dark Shadows Within"

In the dark mornings do you dread the thought of getting out of bed and dragging yourself to work? As the evenings draw in do you feel more tempted to sit in front of the T.V. screen than socialise and meet friends? Do you constantly feel like avoiding all possible contact even with your nearest and dearest? Do you feel a decline in your ability to carry out even the simplest task: does the slightest concentration at home or work become an impossible feat? Most of all do you lose interest in life? Is your mood shrouded in a heavy black cloud of depression in which life has no meaning?

Most of us have the above feelings in different modes and intensities but there is a considerable percentage of the society which suffers them constantly and acutely. These people are said to suffer from depression.

Clinical Depression is divided into one of two general types. The first type is called 'endogenous depression' or 'biological depression'; the word 'endogenous' means 'coming from within'; in these cases there are no obvious changes or specific issues in the person's life that can explain the feelings of depression that they are facing at the time.

The persons suffering from endogenous depression experiences an overwhelming sense of emptiness and misery. They feels powerless to do anything themselves and often they seem to be doing nothing except staying in bed all day, neglecting personal hygiene, refusing to eat and losing interest in everything.

The second type of depression is known as 'reactive depression'. This can often seem equally intolerable to the sufferer but it does make some kind of sense to him/her and it does attract the sympathetic attention of the family for it comes as a reaction to some real event in the person's life; e.g. death, divorce, failed love affair, loss of job, accident, etc…although most of us would snap out of or work over these traumas after some time some people's symptoms drag on for months and then we know that these people need professional help.

Depression can range from mild to very severe. The signs and symptoms are mostly the same as with anxieties and phobias and generally a hypnotherapist would agree to treat a client with moderate/severe depression only with consultation with the client's G.P.

Hypnotherapy has proven to be very effective in working with depression as it operates at the cognitive and emotional level of the person's self. Hypnotherapy will work at the pace of the client and goals are set with the client; the priority goals being that the person starts becoming functional again e.g. eating, sleeping and becoming a bit more active.

Further goals include going into the unconscious mind and retrieving past, healthy coping resources that the person has used in the past to deal with difficult situations but is no longer using. For example, one of my clients reflected that she always had the same childish excitement and energy when she started something new even as an adult e.g. learning to drive. Through trance work the client was guided back to that child and the unconscious mind asked to bring back those feelings of excitement to the conscious mind. The client started reporting that she went for walks (which was a homework exercise given to her in a prior session) with a sense of excitement that she had not felt for a long time!

Future goals are set according to the client's needs and expectations from therapy. Most clients wish to work on their self-esteem and self-image; their confidence level; their assertiveness capacity…. All these seem to have taken a blow as the person fell into depression and they wish to recover and enhance these healthy skills.

Hypnotherapy works very well with both endogenous and reactive depression although severe cases of depression are taken up only after the depression has come to a moderate level (through medical treatment with G.P/ psychiatrist) and where the person can be an active participant in his/her treatment.