Depression is Complex and Complications of Untreated Depression can be Far Reaching
People often associate depression with laying around the house. Sometimes, the effects of depression are not as visible. Sometimes, people with depression are high functioning and show no signs of depression to people around them. People with depression sometimes feel drained and empty inside despite appearing happy and nice to people. Sometimes, people with depression feel completely drained after performing simple social tasks.
Previous enjoyment, happiness and feelings of content are often replaced with feelings of loneliness and an empty void. Basic tasks and activities feel heavy and unenjoyable. People often begin to feel distanced from their friends and family. People often feel apathetic and depressed. These feelings often affect people’s well-being and health and lead to social withdrawal and increased isolation. People with depression often feel helpless and have a strong desire to change their condition.
Support from family and friends is often not enough to completely treat depression. Many people with depression often benefit from the services of a mental health professional. Therapy often provides a supportive and structured environment where people are able to uncover what is causing them depression.
Depression is More Than Just Being Sad
We have difficult moments in our lives, and we experience different feelings that sometimes last for a long time. After negative life events we might feel lonely or disappointed.
Those feelings dissolve as we adapt to a new reality or situation.
Depressive feelings are completely different and may last for months and affect various aspects of your life.
Depression causes both mental and physical symptoms, including:
Deep feelings of sadness, empty feeling, or feeling frustrated or annoyed with no obvious reason
Loss of interest and enjoyment in previously pleasurable activities and social interactions
- Social withdrawal
- Irritability
- Fatigue
- Changes in appetite
- Inability to concentrate
- Feelings of worthlessness and excessive or inappropriate guilt
- Recurrent thoughts of dying or suicidal thoughts
- Physiological changes
As said before, there is a wide range of symptoms of depression, and they vary from one person to another. Some people easily get frustrated and cry a lot. Others feel frustrated and get depressed but rarely cry. The symptoms can vary from person to person. Some people feel deeply sad. Others feel indifferent and numb.
Therapy is good because you get the opportunity to explore the symptoms of depression you personally have, and how it affects you and your life, as opposed to thinking about how others are affected and what symptoms they personally have.
Therapy Allows You to be Honest
Most of us know how to cover our true feelings.
We tell friends we are okay to avoid burdening them with our problems.
We may not know how to express our feelings and we may not be able to identify what we are feeling. We often avoid expressing ourselves because of a sense of guilt or embarrassment. We may not understand why we feel the way we do.
In therapy you don’t have to feel the need to cover your feelings. You can talk about what is on your mind and tell people how you really feel.
You can say what is embarrassing to you.
You can talk about your feelings and your experience even if you don’t understand the reason for your feelings.
You can talk about things that no one can understand and that may seem irrational to others.
Your feelings do not need to make sense to a therapist in order for them to help you understand your feelings.
Often, people need to talk to get things off their chest. It is therapeutic for people to talk and get things out especially if they don’t need to think about how the other person will take what they say.
The Role of Therapy in Recognizing Depression Triggers
Depression is not necessarily a direct result of a single, obvious cause.
It may be the result of an unpleasant event (or series of events)
in a person’s life, such as the death of a loved one, or other traumatic events.
Of course, depression may occur even if there have been no recent, significant changes in a person’s life.
In some cases, there may be a number of factors occurring at the same time that contribute to the development of depression.
One benefit of therapy is the opportunity to analyze a broader range of factors.
Some of the areas your therapist may cover include:
- Family and relationship problems
- Work-related issues
- Loneliness and/or social isolation
- Low self-esteem and/or worth
- Past experiences
- Current issues
- Unresolved grief
- Self-imposed limitations
It is crucial to understand that the ultimate goal of therapy is not to identify and blame external factors for your depression.
Rather, it is to assist you in the identification of the various factors that may have contributed to your current emotional state.
This can help you pinpoint the areas of your life that you may have the greatest potential to effect positive change.
Depression Alters Thought Processes
While depression is understood to be an emotional disorder, it affects multiple facets of a person’s being. Depression skews a person’s perception of themselves, others, and the future. Depressed people often think and believe. . .
I am a failure
The situation will never change
Everyone is living a better life than me
I am a bad person and am deserving of no love and care
Everyone is better than me and more deserving than me
There is no reason for me to keep living
I am hopeless and worthless
I will never achieve anything
People will always hate and judge me
My life has no meaning
A depressed person comes to believe the above stating thoughts and beliefs to be absolutely and completely true. In the process of depressed thought pattern automation, questioning becomes impossible. Eventually, depressed thinking becomes an unquestioned, immutable law.
With therapy, depressed thinking can be broken down. A therapist will teach you to recognize jumping to conclusions and negative-biased, error-seeking, and evidence-distorting thinking. It is not the case that depressive thinking has to be supplanted with happy thinking. The goal is to replace a negative, depressive conclusion with a more balanced and realistic conclusion.
Therapy Can Assist in Overcoming Withdrawal
Depression can lead to a number of different conditions.
One of these conditions is withdrawal.
The key to breaking the withdrawal cycle is understanding how it works.
Depression can leave you feeling tired. Tired people often don’t engage in activities.
Not participating in activities can leave you without social contact.
Being without social contact can increase your feelings of depression.
Not feeling socially connected can further decrease your motivation to interact with people.
This can eventually make performing normal and basic tasks of daily living impossible.
It is possible that you have reached the point where you are unable to leave your house.
You may have lost the motivation to communicate with your friends.
You may have even lost the motivation to meet your basic needs by preparing your own meals.
Therapy can assist you in recognizing your withdrawal cycle.
Recognizing the cycle is only the first step.
You can expect your therapist to work with you to create small goals that can help structure your life.
The goals that you create with your therapist can be so small that they are barely noticeable to other people, but they can greatly improve your condition.
Rebuild Your Motivation with Therapy
One of the worst aspects of depression is knowing what you need to do to get better, but lacking the motivation to do it.
You might understand that decreasing your isolation and improving your sleep and exercise habits are important for your mental health.
But knowing and doing are different things when depression reduces your motivation.
This leaves you feeling trapped because there is little you can do to change your situation.
Fortunately, one of the things that therapy can do is teach you how to break large, complex goals into small, simpler goals that you are more able to achieve.
Therapy focuses more on what you can control. Often, this means dealing with what is most bothersome to you in the present moment.
This can be aimed at making small but important changes in your life like eating more regularly, leaving the house more, or reconciliating with others.
The goal is improving your mental health and general quality of life. To achieve this you need to gain the motivation to change your situation, rather than just focusing on the many things that you feel you ought to be doing.
You’ll feel better if you just focus on the small goals that are most bothersome to you and work with your therapist to accomplish these small changes rather than becoming overwhelmed and paralyzed by the many things that you “should” be doing.
How Does Therapy Promote Positive Change?
People utilize a variety of methods to cope with emotional turmoil. Some retreat socially; Others become obsessively busy. Still others succumb to endless entertainment. Some resort to alcohol or shopping. And still others heap criticism upon themselves for not being able to better cope. While the aforementioned and other coping mechanisms may offer brief relief from emotional distress, in the long run they are of no psychological benefit.
The goal of therapy is to teach you a repertoire of psychological coping mechanisms that facilitate the integrated processing of emotional stress rather than momentary escape from it. This may encompass learning how to:
- Better regulate your emotional state
- Break the cycle of repetitive thinking
- Refine your social interpersonal skills to effectively communicate your needs
- Challenge your negative self-evaluative beliefs
- Enhance your capacity for refined judgment and moral action
- Strengthen your emotional and psychological resiliency by developing the capacity to recognize psychological stressors before they reach critical levels.
There is no one size fits all approach to positive psychological coping mechanisms. Therapy helps you understand what psychological coping mechanisms are available to you and facilitates their integration into your day-to-day living.
Recognizing and Addressing Self Criticism
Depression is associated with negative self talk. This can include:
Criticizing yourself for being tired.
Feeling bad for taking breaks and being unproductive.
Being jealous of other people and situations that seem to be better and easier.
We are all judgemental toward ourselves, but there is a line between what we say to ourselves and to other people. This line often leans toward the more judgemental side.
Identifying this problem is the first step in therapy, and from there, you can determine the origin of the judgemental expectations you have set for yourself.
Through this judgemental lens you may see a lot of issues you have been dealing with and not addressing. You may think that you always have to be productive and that asking for help is not allowed.
Although these may be judgemental thoughts you have, this does not mean that you are a bad or failing person for feeling this way. It means that you have a need that is unmet.
Therapy can help with these judgemental thoughts and instill more positive self talk, in turn providing a healing and more self-gratifying experience.
Emotional Awareness Through Therapy
Depression makes us believe that the sole emotion that defines us is heaviness.
But that heaviness is made up of multiple feelings.
Feelings such as:
- Anger
- Loneliness
- Grief
- Fear
- Resentment
- Disappointment
- Shame
- Exhaustion
When the feelings become this way, it becomes extremely difficult to describe and understand them. Because of this, the feelings begin to merge with each other.
Therapy helps to untangle and decipher the feelings and emotions that we have merged.
Sometimes the feeling that we believe is sadness is actually loneliness, and the feeling that we believed was anger is actually disappointment.
By describing the feelings that we have, the emotions become less confusing.
This helps us to face our feelings instead of feeling overhwhelmed by them.
Therapy Helps Repair Relationships
Relationships usually are the first thing to suffer from depression. It can be hard to notice the ways depression affects your relationships. People with depression can:
Stop returning phone calls
Become irritable towards close friends and family
Assume friends and family don’t want to hear about depression
Feel too tired to socialize
When people with depression display these behaviors, often times their friends and family can sense something is wrong, but are often times clueless to the true cause of the behavioral changes.
Seeing a therapist can help you understand the reasons for changing your relationships. From there you can learn to ask for the help you need. Having the support of family members and friends can improve your depression and increase your feeling of emotional well-being.
Therapy Can Help You Notice Change
When you are depressed you can’t always see yourself improving. Sometimes you can become disillusioned with your desire to be your ‘best self’ and think that if you’re not immediately waking up ‘cured’ then things must be hopeless. This isn’t the case.
You are probably improving. You just might not be able to see it.
You might start answering texts or calls instead of ignoring them. You might start looking forward to activities or outings during your day. You might find yourself managing your negative or harmful thoughts or impulses.
These are all signs of improvement, and these changes are not going unnoticed. You might also find yourself setting goals for yourself and starting to look toward the future in a more positive light.
A therapist can help you identify these improvements and give you an opportunity to recognize the progress you have made but might not be able to see for yourself.
Different Kinds of Therapy to Help With Depression
One form of therapy will not treat depression for everyone. Look for the approach that resonates most with your symptoms, personality, and goals.
Some therapies help with depression by teaching you how to change and identify unhealthy or negative thoughts.
Others help by changing your behavior, emotions, and relationships.
Some therapists tend to work with you based on your personal experiences and past.
Your therapist is free to choose the approach most helpful for you, and mix and match different methods.
No single therapeutic approach works best for everyone.
The key is to find a therapist who works best for you and makes you feel comfortable.
The relationship you have with your therapist helps you achieve your goals and change your behaviors.
You and your therapist must be on the same page and in agreement in order for your therapy to be effective.
Sometimes Other Forms of Treatment Are Used in Addition to Therapy
Therapy can be useful for some people independently.
For others, treatment can use a combination of therapy, pharmacological interventions, and/or other allied health professional input.
Depression can range in severity, and varying factors can contribute to the presentation.
A mental health professional can assist in defining the nature of your symptoms, and help determine if a referral for further assessment and/or support is warranted.
Depending on your assessment and diagnosis, an integrated approach to your mental health care which includes therapeutic interventions and medication management, may be beneficial.
It is important to understand that the goal of the pharmacological interventions is typically to address the symptoms of your condition while other allied health professionals, e.g. psychologist/therapist, work on other aspects of your condition, e.g. your thought processes, coping mechanisms, social relationships, and behavior.
You Are Not Waiting Until Things Get Worse
People can have a preconceived notion about when it is appropriate to seek therapy.
Often, people think you should only see a therapist when your condition is at a crisis point.
Not the case.
You do not need to be at the point where you cannot get out of bed.
You do not need to be at the point where your interpersonal relationships are breaking down.
You do not need to be at the point where you feel emotionally swamped and overcome.
If you feel that you are feeling less motivated than usual and need to exert more effort to do the things you usually do, then you can always reach out for professional help.
You should seek support before things get that bad.
What If You Aren’t Sure If You’re Depressed?
Therapists are trained to differentiate between symptoms of various mental illnesses. You don’t need to come to conclusions on your own.
It’s completely normal if you can’t tell the difference between depression and anxiety, burnout and grief, for example.
Therapy can help answer those questions.
The least you can say to address the situation is, “I feel like I’ve been really different lately.”
You don’t have to come to any conclusions about your condition to talk to a therapist.
A therapist helps you recognize your condition and figure out the next steps.
Emotional Well-Being and Depression
It’s not the case that if you can’t say you’re “happy,” you’re “depressed.” There are lots of ups and downs in life including feelings of stress, frustration, and sadness.
Emotional well-being means you have the skills to recognize your emotions and strengthen your interpersonal relationships.
If that’s the case for you, you may be more confident in handling stressful or unfavorable conditions in your life and feel more in control.
Therapy can bring those changes in your life.
Final Thoughts
Depression makes the world smaller.
It can lead to exhaustion and apathy, isolate you from friends and family, and crush your self-confidence and your ability to believe things can change and be different.
It is important to understand that having to manage depression on your own is not true.
Therapy is a great way to learn more about your depression and how it is impacting your life, learn why you are stuck and repetitive in your ways, and reconnect and reintegrate yourself to activities and ways of living that brought you the most joy, meaning and satisfaction.
Serenity Psychotherapy is not about dictating your feelings. It is about aiding and guiding you to the next step that you believe is right and reasonable for yourself.
You may always contact us for therapy even if you think that is not the next step for you.
Most importantly, we believe that the next step is always closer than you think. You do not have to be certain and definite about everything to ask for help. All it takes is telling yourself that you “are not yourself” recently.
