Your Therapy Space

Accredited CBT and counselling Leamington Spa, Warwickshire and online

Depression

CBT Therapist in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire to help with depression

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Understanding Depression

Depression is more than just feeling low, sad or flat.  Depression can affect all areas of your life and make it hard to function effectively.  It can impact on work, sleep, relationships and your overall enjoyment of life.  It can make it hard to get up in the mornings and difficult to keep up with basic self-care activities.  Everything can feel like too much trouble.

Fortunately, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) may help to overcome depression and is recommended by the NHS and NICE guidelines.   CBT may help you to change patterns of thinking and behaviour over time that maintain low mood and start to live in a more fulfilling way.

How CBT Helps with Depression

CBT is concerned with the links between thoughts, behaviours and emotions.   You may recognise the following:

Experiencing negative thinking patterns (“I’m not good enough”, “I can’t change”).

Withdrawing from hobbies, work, family and friends, or responsibilities.

Losing interest in looking after yourself, for example, not eating properly, failing to maintain personal hygiene.

Struggling with sleep and appetite and concentration.

CBT may help by:

Challenging unhelpful thinking styles, for example being self-critical or having a negative filter.

Encouraging behavioural change by planning a range of necessary, routine and pleasurable activities at a manageable pace.  It is important to have a balance of activities to gain a sense of achievement, purpose and enjoyment.

Breaking the cycle of avoidance, for example, by reintroducing hobbies and social connections.

Reducing rumination.  It may be helpful to process some past experiences and learn how to be more present.

Increasing self-awareness and understanding how early experiences influence responses to triggers.  This may help you to become more self-compassionate.

Developing a relapse prevention plan to maintain wellbeing post therapy.  CBT is a collaborative short to medium-term therapy and does not encourage dependence on the therapist.  It is important to help you to learn how to deal with any problems you may encounter after therapy has ended.

How to get in touch

If you are finding it hard to improve your mood and feel stuck, maybe CBT could help you.  Please get in touch if you wish to make an appointment by emailing info@yourtherapyspace.co.uk or ringing 07950064086.  You can read more about my credentials here.

Being wrong again

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“I feel like I never get things right.  I’ll do my best but I’m always left with the feeling that I did something wrong or that I should have kept quiet or that people don’t like me.  It’s always there.  I can go for a walk and that’s the thing that swirls around the whole time.  I can go to a social situation and see how happy other people seem to be and, again, those thoughts are there.  I can be at a meeting at work and the thoughts pop up again.  The idea that other people are better than me.  The idea that everyone else knows how to ‘win’ at life and I don’t.  I do my best to disguise this and it sometimes works but it’s not working for me.  I feel sad and anxious and that I can’t tell anyone about how I feel because they would really think I’m just a loser.”

If the above resonates with you, then I am really sorry to hear this.  It sounds very painful and lonely to live this way.  It can lead to symptoms and feelings associated with depression and anxiety and create a vicious cycle which seems impossible to break.  It would be understandable that you would not want to talk about this with other people.  Imagine that you did talk to others about these thoughts and feelings.  Imagine how you would feel to discover that others sometimes feel like this too.  Imagine that you could find ways to challenge some of your thoughts and behaviours and feel more accepting and at ease with yourself.

For those who do not want to talk to family and friends about how they feel, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) can be helpful to understand what is maintaining your emotional states by developing a clear understanding of the problems you are facing and increasing your self-awareness.  This enables you to consider the choices you are making and the changes you could make to live a more fulfilled life.  If this sounds like something you would like to do, please get in touch.  Learn how to enjoy your walks, social gatherings and meetings.  Learn to value yourself.

Feeling lost

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It is so easy to feel lost at times in life.  You might feel like everyone else seems to know what they are doing.  Other people may seem to be busy with interesting jobs or hobbies or travels or family and friends or all of these things.  And you might feel as though you are making it all up as you go along.  You might be wearing a mask and pretending everything is fine while wondering if you are messing up one thing after another at times.  You might tell yourself that you can’t speak to anyone about how you feel because you don’t want to worry anyone.  You might be the one who makes sure everyone else is ok and you might think that you don’t want to be a burden or to come across as self-absorbed.

It can feel very lonely when you are being self-critical or when you are comparing yourself to others in a negative way.  It can lead to sleepless nights, anxiety and low mood and depression.  It can lead to finding unhelpful coping strategies and you might even notice that you are eating more or drinking more.  You might have stopped doing the very things that might help you to feel better and have started to withdraw from others and/or your hobbies.

We can all feel lost at times.  Hopefully, it will pass soon.  If it doesn’t, it may be useful to reach out for some help to try and work out what you would like your life to look like and how you could make some changes to move towards this.  CBT and counselling can help you to do this.

Photo by Eric Ward on Unsplash

Being real

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It’s coming up to that time of year again.  Everyone is getting excited about Christmas.  People are out and about, full of festive cheer, buying presents, attending office parties and catching up with friends.  You may have received some cards already and, possibly, some round ups of how great other people’s year has been.  Or so it seems.

We can be so talented at creating illusions.  The idea that all is well when it isn’t.  It sometimes feels like being real is not valued.  So, we sometimes slip on a mask and internalise all the niggles and worries and problems that keep us awake at night.  We start to feel lonely and misunderstood.  We can feel like running away from it all but we can’t do that either.

So we look for ways to cope.  Another drink, another mince pie, another new toy, working even more hours.  Anything to escape from our feelings.  And then the coping strategy becomes the problem.  And on and on.  People criticise us and call us weak because it’s easier than seeing our pain.

Imagine if there was another way.  Imagine being able to say ‘ I am finding things difficult and I need some support’.  Imagine being able to say ‘no’ as a full sentence.  Imagine being understood.  Imagine not having to focus on how stressed you are feeling all the time so that you could enjoy spending time with the people you care about over the festive period.  If you can’t find a way to achieve this, then talking to someone might be helpful to find a way forward.  Your therapy space is waiting, if you need it.

When what you’re doing isn’t working

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The only person who can really know that what you’re doing isn’t working is you. You’re the one who has to try and get yourself to sleep at night. No one else can do that for you. All those things that keep churning over in your mind may be hard to silence. The missed opportunities, the regrets, the sadnesses, the grief, the what ifs. In times of loss the noise we create inside our heads can become very loud. At some point it might become unbearable and you might need some help because what you are doing isn’t working. Or maybe it’s what you’re not doing that is not helping.

[Read more…] about When what you’re doing isn’t working

How long does the ‘new toy’ feeling last?

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It can feel exciting to get a ‘new toy’, whatever that ‘toy’ may be for you.  Maybe it’s a new car that you just can’t stop admiring or a new gadget that you can’t put down.  All these new things can help to break the monotony that can creep into our lives unnoticed and/or provide a welcome break from feelings of stress or anxiety.  And there’s nothing wrong with that.  It can become problematic, however, when we can’t enjoy or value what we have because we are worried about what we don’t have or what we want next.

Have you noticed that you are constantly looking for the next thing to make yourself feel ok?  Are you finding it hard to sit with your feelings or find a way to live in a fulfilling way?  If you feel that you could benefit from some help with figuring out how you would like your life to be, maybe therapy could help.