Symptoms of depression
Typically people who are given the 'depression', or 'depressed' label have some of the following symptoms - sadness, despair, tiredness, lethargy, grief, frustration, guilt, anger, inability to sleep, overeating, no appetite etc etc, and these symptoms, or patterns of thinking/feeling, tend to go round and round in loops in a person's mind.
Depressed about being depressed is a common pattern that needs to be sorted
Then, often there is self-blame, a feeling that the person is inadequate or stupid because they are not able to break out of the depression patterns themselves and stop being depressed.
Sometimes the person knows, or believes they know, how the cycle of thinking/feeling began (the cause of the depression), sometimes they don't and go on a search to find out why they have depression.
Our approach to help ease depression, the therapy to help you stop you being depressed, by using hypnotherapy and NLP is threefold
- We spend time looking and listen to the person to determine how it is the patterns of thinking/feeling that we call 'depression' manifest themselves.
- We then work consciously to begin to build flexibility in the way the person thinks about things, they way they remember the past and imagine the future, the way they talk to themselves, and literally the way they experience the world.
- We work unconsciously (hypnosis) to assist the person to gain flexibility in their behaviour, to build with suggestion, metaphor and conditioning new resources, and to connect the person with the resources they almost invariably have but have been unable to access during the 'depression'.
We don't talk about the past, we simply train your mind for the present, and the future
We find that by working literally with how a person is thinking, rather than trying to interpret, explain or theorise about why they are that way, we can achieve results more quickly. Similarly, while some therapists spend time in a search for a 'cause' or a 'deep hidden meaning' to try and get someone to stop being depressed, by going through a person's past, we find that approach is often long-winded and painful for people (if you were beaten with a baseball bat when you were seven, what is the use of re-living it!?).
Be more resourceful right now
Therefore our aim is as quickly as possible to help to make the person more resourceful in the here and now. Doing this will usually help to allow them to move away from depression, to view the past with a different perspective, and begin think of the future in a more positive light, a future that sounds good when you think about it, and a future full of possibilities for feeling good, having fun, and learning.
How long will it take to treat my depression?
This varies considerably depending on your circumstances. As a broad estimate, allow for 3 - 4 one-hour-long sessions although please do call us so that we can talk about your personal situation.
