Sometimes it feels that life is going really well. You feel fairly good about yourself. You have stopped beating yourself up about the things that you don’t get right and you might have started accepting yourself. Liking yourself even. Maybe your relationships are going quite well and even work doesn’t feel too bad. You seem to be able to do the things you want to and feel like you have some control over your life. And then one day you wake up and things feel so different. You notice tears rolling down your face. It’s hard to get up. You want the world to leave you alone. Out of nowhere. The sun doesn’t seem to shine so brightly. You look around and wonder what it’s all about. Worse still the people around you might be very unsympathetic. Not this again.
Depression
Is there any point?
Do you ever look around you and wonder what’s the point? Maybe other people say things to you like ‘it’s alright for you’ or ‘you’ve got it all’ and you feel silenced and unable to say how you really feel. It can feel as though you are not entitled to your feelings and feel judged by the people you want to care about you.
Does it ever feel really hard to put one foot in front of the other and function and do all the things you usually do without even thinking about them? Maybe it feels like you are stuck on a treadmill of work, work, work and any space for downtime is filled with worrying about work, your future, mistakes you have made or how you are going to pay the bills. On top of all that, maybe you have started to feel a bit unwell physically. Maybe you can’t sleep and feel exhausted. Or you might have some unexplained medical symptoms and every time you go to the doctor you feel like you are not being believed. How lonely that experience can be.
Do you ever feel like everyone just gets on your nerves? Especially the people you love. Do you feel like you just want to slam the door shut and be left alone and that everyone who contacts you is irritating or just wants a piece of you? Are you fed up with being nice and understanding and think it would be nice if someone understood you for a change?
Sometimes we all feel a bit jaded by life. Stress can overwhelm us and make us withdraw from life until we recover our focus. Sometimes we can’t seem to find our way back to where we’d like to be and we need help with that. It’s an isolating experience to feel that no one understands us or is able to help us feel better. Counselling and CBT can be very helpful if you feel lost or confused or alone. Please get in touch.
Drifting through life
Have you ever felt like your life is happening and you’re just sitting back watching it? It can be a very distressing experience to realise that you simply don’t have the energy or inclination to get back on track and live the life you know you want to live. It might feel like all those people buzzing around you have got it all worked out and you feel like sitting down on the floor and weeping. How could I have got this all so wrong? To make things worse, it might be that other people in your life are fed up with you and tell you to pull yourself together. It’s very painful to feel misunderstood, particularly by those who are meant to love us.
What keeps you awake at night?
Not sleeping well is a bad place to be. It seems so much harder to cope with day to day life when you are tired. It becomes so easy to snap at other people. You can end up worrying about not sleeping and this can create a vicious circle. Lots of clients come to counselling and mention that they are having trouble sleeping. It’s very common, especially if you are experiencing some kind of psychological distress. So what can you do?
There is a lot of helpful information available on the internet. Try searching under ‘sleep hygiene’ and you will find lots of common sense articles about how to get a good night’s sleep. Try some of the things suggested in these articles for about 2 weeks and see if things improve. It is amazing how many clients come to counselling and say that if they wake up in the middle of the night they go downstairs and make a cup of coffee. Caffeine is not known for its sleep inducing properties.
So what happens if you are still not sleeping well? It’s really important to try and figure out whether this is a normal response to an abnormal situation. If you are recently bereaved then it is possible that this will interfere with your sleep. If you have recently experienced some kind of loss, for example redundancy, again it is likely to impact on your sleep. Or it may be that you have some regrets about things that have happened in the past. And these keep ticking over in your mind at night. Maybe you feel guilty about something you have done. Or haven’t done.
If you are having difficulties sleeping you could go to your GP and ask about medication. Or you could try some counselling and try to process those losses or regrets or feelings of guilt. Sleep well.
Why do I feel depressed?
If you type the question ‘why do I feel depressed’ into google it will return thousands of results. And they will all say something different. It can be confusing and frustrating and no one seems to know the answers.
If you are feeling low you can feel very alone and misunderstood. You might find that people close to you are fed up with your inability to ‘get your act together.’ You might not even have anyone close to you to talk to. Maybe you never did. Maybe they have drifted away. Leaving you alone to get on with it. That’s the thing about feeling low. On the one hand you want to be on your own . To pull the duvet over your head and shut the world out. And on the other hand you desperately want someone to talk to. Someone who won’t tell you what to do or to ‘pull yourself together.’ Someone who will listen to you and really hear your story and help you to understand yourself and the way you are feeling. Someone who will help you to gain a new perspective and to work through your feelings so that you become able to make some changes in your life.
The ‘why’ question is really difficult. There are so many theories about why you might feel low. Some believe it’s a chemical imbalance in the brain and that antidepressant medication is the correct treatment. It is important to talk to your GP about this. Other people think that feeling low can be helped by the talking therapies.
Counselling and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) are widely recognised as therapies which can help people suffering from low mood. These therapies can help to find the answers to the ‘why’ question. Maybe you have some unresolved losses in your life. Counselling could help you to work through these. Maybe you see the world as an unfriendly and harsh place. Maybe you have lots of negative thoughts which come to mind automatically when you are face with challenging situations. CBT could help you to challenge these automatic thoughts.
If you think you would like some help with your low mood then please get in touch. If I think I can help then I’ll let you know. If I think I can’t then I’ll let you know too.
I’m tired and fed up with life
Have you noticed that when you are feeling tired that the world doesn’t seem to be such a nice place? Things start to get on your nerves and other people seem to become rather irritating. We just don’t cope so well with day to day problems when we are exhausted. We can get into a vicious circle where not sleeping well makes us feel depressed and angry. Does this sound familiar? It sounds familiar to me as a Counsellor. Not because I feel like that all the time (although I’m human too and feeling tired impacts on me and how I am) but because clients often come for counselling and feel lost and don’t know how to get their lives back on track.
Sometimes not sleeping well becomes a habit and we start to get anxious about this. So letting go of that can be helpful. There is a lot of good information on the internet about sleeping problems and I’ve included some links below. If nothing seems to be working you can always see your GP and they might be able to offer you some medication to help you if you think that’s the right choice for you. Alternatively you could try some counselling to help you figure out what might be keeping you awake at nights…..your thoughts…..your conscience…….your regrets……your past……your future…..your worries……..and this might help you to gain some perspective on your troubles and make some changes in your life.
I know what it’s like not to sleep well. It’s made me miserable in the past. Ok it still does sometimes! One thing I found so helpful was to stop looking at the clock every time I woke up. It felt like the kiss of death every time I did look because then I would become preoccupied by how little time I had left to get a good night’s sleep. Why not try?