Feeling Better Online Counselling > Depression Depression Partnership Our Partnership will move you towards a life that works Partnership for depression recovery is between you and me. To move you ever closer towards a life that works. This means that your emotions, imagination and other resources are working better. In consequence you are getting your essential emotional needs well met. Not necessarily perfectly but in a more balanced way. This will create resilience for you. A life that works according to the Human Givens The Human Givens Organising Idea makes so much sense ..read more

Feeling Better Online Counselling > Depression Depression Firefighting Firefighting to reduce arousal pays big dividends quickly   Firefighting is quite clearly distinct from Hope and in logic should follow on from the first requirement to kindle Hope. But there is little doubt also that as Firefighting proceeds, this will nurture Hope and may even jump-start it. What is Firefighting? Firefighting for depression recovery is the urgent immediate action needed to reduce rumination and so allow sleep to become more restful and replenishing. This will happen as the need to ..read more

Feeling Better Online Counselling > Depression Depression Building Hope Hope is essential for Depression Recovery The lack of hope is the missing ingredient to virtually all sufferers of depression. And it’s easy to understand why. If you have tried so hard for so long and spoken to so many people and discovered that nothing seems to work – well that will destroy any hope. And that is why a thread of hope has to be laid down early on – to lead from despair and hopelessness to confidence born out of direct experience. How to Build Hope The way to build hope is to understand ..read more

Feeling Better Online Counselling > Depression Depression How do I weave your Depression Recovery? There are three threads:  Hope, Firefighting and Partnership. How to recover from Depression  My sister is a weaver and is very good and well known. And if you are curious this is the Janet Phillips website   So weaving has been part of my life for a long while, albeit in a detached way. And what I do know is that a magnificent piece of weaving – of a scarf, or coat or blanket or rug can follow from only a few original threads. That the end result is unrecognisable from the ..read more

Feeling Better Online Counselling > Depression Depression Understanding how depression takes hold and how to free yourself with depression vicious and virtuous cycles. Depression and Depression recovery becoming beautifully clear I use vicious and virtuous cycles when explaining mental problems, notably depression.  Vicious and virtuous cycles convey beautifully the vital insight of what mental distress is mostly about.  That it is a dynamic process of cause and effect, where the starting point to understanding is to know where you were yesterday and how you got there and how ..read more

Feeling Better Online Counselling > Depression Depression Meditation for Depression is not the first stage of recovery but can help you later on when you are recovering. Meditation is not the first stage for Depression recovery A fellow Human Givens therapist twice attended the major annual US counselling conference, a few years ago now – where he learnt a lot about the intense interest in meditation for depression. These conferences are massive affairs with many attendees, events and keynote speakers. One year I noticed that the conference was in Hawaii. So you can imagine the dedica ..read more

Feeling Better Online Counselling > Depression Depression “Antidepressants work in aggregate about as well as placebo which means about one third of people benefit.  But of course they do not pretend to treat the root cause and so there is a high rate of relapse.  And a quarter of users will do less well than placebo.” And there are side effects – from an increased  suicide risk, loss of sex drive, dizziness, nausea, fatigue, headaches and so on  Finally, a third of those taking anti-depressants will suffer withdrawal symptoms.” Now, read the summary of Charles ..read more

Feeling Better Online Counselling > Depression Depression IAPT stands for Improving Access to Psychological Therapies and is the NHS flagship policy to bring fast and effective therapy (principally Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)) to a grateful nation as it struggles with our epidemic of depression and anxieties. It is easy to be critical of such efforts – and suggesting the inevitability of NHS failure. Depression Epidemic Antidepressants? Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Why an Epidemic?   You will therefore be barely able to imagine my surprise to learn the results of an ..read more

Feeling Better Online Counselling > Depression Depression Reframing to see your depression as understandable and solvable and be comfortable being patient and taking small steps. How to reframe Depression? The planet image  illustrates what is meant by depression reframing.  For, depending on where you are, you see things differently. And this applies to everything, not only to planet earth. And no viewing place is intrinsically better than any other. It is just different – and either helpful or unhelpful. So how can you reframes your depression? To see it differently and no l ..read more

Feeling Better Online Counselling > Depression Depression For many, the warning signs of Depression developing yet again are all too familiar. Is that true for you? Heading into Depression – what are the warning signs? Any of us can become depressed. If our life is not working as we need it to and we don’t know what do to about that. Then, we will begin to worry and to dream a lot. And this will just makes our situation worse – mainly because we are getting more and more exhausted. We are not seeing the wood for the trees. And to our great horror, we may well find our life is disinte ..read more