Mental Health
Coping with Stress, Anxiety and Depression
Stress is well known to be a trigger for depression. While we all need some stress in our lives to keep us motivated, too much can be mentally, and physically damaging.
Different people react in different ways to stress. For some, it results in loss of control, anger and defensiveness and anxiety. For others, a slippery slope of depression looms, adding to our original stress and deepening the problem.
Counselling has been shown to be highly effective at dealing with these symptoms. Indeed, counselling is the preferred treatment, and has shown to be more effective, in the short and long term, than pharmacological interventions such as anti-depressants.
Symptoms of Stress, Anxiety and Depression
Symptoms of Stress, Anxiety and Depression can include:
- Irritability
- Over sensitivity to criticism
- Sleeplessness and poor sleep patterns
- Over drinking and smoking
- Indigestion, loss of appetite and related symptoms
- Loss of concentration
- Panic attacks
- Feeling out of control
- Feeling faint
Depression (including Postnatal Depression)
Depression is deeper and lasts longer than the normal short periods of unhappiness that we have all experienced periodically. It affects 20% of people at some time in their lives, making it much more common than we realise.
The reasons for depression may not be obvious. It may seem obvious – a failed relationship, bereavement or even the birth of a child – but often the reasons for depression is just not that clear. And depression can creep up without us really noticing.
Thankfully, help is at hand. Counselling is a powerful way of exploring what’s going on.
Symptoms of Depression
Symptoms of Depression can include:
Angry and aggressive behaviour
Harsh self-criticism
Thoughts going round and round
Unable to get out of bed and carry out usual activities
Conflict at work or with family
Lack of understanding and support from others
Feeling low at times of assumed happiness (e.g. after the birth of a baby)
Unable to sleep
Withdrawal
Not understanding feelings
Fear of taking medication or relying on them alone
Loss, Separation and Bereavement -
finding new life after death
Loss is very much part of life. But that doesn’t make it easy.
Losing someone close to us, be it through death or separation, leaves us feeling lost, vulnerable and insecure. And if that loss is sudden or unexpected, we can be left traumatised.
There is no right or wrong way to grieve, nor any hard and fast rules about how long it ‘should’ take. Counselling is highly effective at helping us understand, accept and adjust to change, and gently enable us to move on with our lives.
Coping with Bereavement
Losing a parent, a spouse, a child, a friend or a pet is never easy. Some clients describe this time as being like they have lost a part of themselves. Some are paralysed by the fear of staring into the darkness of an unknown future. Some describe how alone they feel, especially if they feel unable to burden others with their loss, the mourning continuing for many months and sometimes years after the funeral has ended.
Counselling can be very helpful at this point in life. A trained therapist will be able to guide you through the range of feelings, help you to overcome ‘stuck’ feelings sometimes many years after the event, adjust to the change and build a vision for the future.
Coping with Separation and Divorce
Anger, betrayal, blame, bitterness. Confusion, rejection, loneliness. And lots and lots of questions.
The demise of a relationship impacts not only on the two individuals concerned, but can have a lasting impact on any children affected.
Most of the time, counsellors are approached when relationships are already in significant trouble. Distancing behaviours, arguments, lack of intimacy, withdrawal, affairs and other forms of sabotage mark the downward spiral of a relationship. Recovering from this is daunting.
Sometimes, it feels easier to simply cut ties and start again, to use blame and anger to defend ourselves from the hurt and rejection we are feeling.
Counselling can help us to make sense of what has happened, and to challenge the assumptions we have about a partner, or parents’ behaviour, and instead take the lessons learned in life.
By treating relationship loss in a similar way to that of bereavement, counsellors are able to help get yourself back on your feet so that you can build a new future without being continually haunted by the past.