Depression therapists in Swindon, England ENG, United Kingdom GB
Depression
Dr Grenville Major
Therapist, MBchB, MRCpsych, MSc psychological therapies
The Black Dog is what Winston Churchill called it. A disorder that causes immense suffering. The scientific evidence is that talking therapy is as good at treating depression as medication. The difference is of course that you don't have side-effects and the gains you make in therapy last you a lifetime. With medication when you stop taking it, the effect obviously stops too. I would like to meet with you to see what can be done to help you. This will enable us to get to know each other and see if we can work together. It’s important for you to work with someone you trust and feel safe with.
43 Years Experience
Depression
Jill Deacon
Counsellor/Therapist, BSc and FdSc Person Centred Counselling. MBACP
Everyone has times when they feel low. But when you feel this way for weeks or months at a time and it affects your ability to get on with and enjoy your life, then perhaps you are experiencing depression. You are not alone.
As well as low mood, depression symptoms can include feeling very tearful, irritable or angry, losing interest in things you previously enjoyed or feeling tired and having less energy. You may also lose concentration, self-confidence, appetite and motivation.
Counselling can help you explore the cause of these feelings, understand them and work though them, helping you manage and move through depression.
7 Years Experience
Depression
Gordon Wax BA HONS MBACP
Counsellor/Therapist, Pschoanalytic psychotherapist
You don't have to bed crying to be depressed. Therapy will help you to support yourself.
11 Years Experience
Depression
Sara Aicart-Pendlebury
Art Therapist, Human Givens Practitioner (HG.Dip.P), Member of Human Givens Institute, IFS therapist Levels 1&2, Narm Practitioner
If you are feeling low, or depressed I can help you by integrating behavioural, cognitive and interpersonal approaches with relaxation, visualisation and guided imagery techniques. Contact me for a free consultation to feel more motivated, with a clear plan how to begin to solve your problems. Contrary to common belief, depression is not primarily a biological illness, inherited through the genes. Nor is it the setbacks, crises or tragedies in our lives that cause depression. It is our response to adverse events that determines whether we get depressed or not. Research shows that people most likely to suffer depression are those who react to adversity by taking it personally, seeing all areas of their lives as blighted by it, and the misery as going on forever. Depression is always a second and unnecessary problem, and just makes problematic circumstances worse. This is good to know because it means that, instead of feeling helpless or hopeless, people can learn to take back control over their lives. They may not be able to change certain circumstances but they always have options about how they react to them.
The symptoms of depression include low mood, loss of interest or pleasure in usual activities, loss of appetite and energy, sleep disturbance, feeling agitated or lethargic, worthless or guilty, difficulty in thinking straight and having repeated thoughts about suicide. Antidepressant drugs may help some people because they lift levels of a ‘feel-good’ chemical in the brain; unfortunately, they do nothing to change the underlying circumstances or thinking patterns that led to the depression. Depression is always related to unmet essential emotional needs and that is why the human givens approach, which focuses on helping people in distress find healthy ways to meet their emotional needs, is so successful.
Depressed people may seem deflated and flat but, in actual fact, they have raised levels of a stress hormone called cortisol, which means that they are in a state of constant high emotional arousal. When our emotions are aroused we can’t think rationally, so this is why people deep in the grip of depression can’t concentrate well or even make simple decisions. Learning simple relaxation techniques to calm themselves down will start reducing those cortisol levels.
The main reason that depressed people are so emotionally aroused is that they spend a vast amount of time worrying about the future or beating themselves up about past events. Perhaps they still feel guilty about something that happened recently – or years ago; perhaps they are frightening themselves with dire ‘what if?’ scenarios (likely or unlikely), in which loved ones encounter dangers or they themselves lose their jobs or their homes; perhaps they feel beaten down by chronic pain or anger (“Why did this have to happen to me?” “How could he have been so cruel?”); or maybe they experience a combination. They also have a huge tendency towards negative thinking – “I’ll never be good enough”; “I’ll never cope”; “nothing ever goes right”; “the pain will only get worse”. All this kind of negative imagining and thinking saps an enormous amount of energy – and makes people utterly miserable.
Far from feeling more refreshed after a night’s sleep, most people with depression wake up next day still exhausted and feeling totally unmotivated. It is hard for them to get out of bed and do anything at all. We now know why this happens. Psychologist and co-founder of the human givens approach Joe Griffin carried out research over many years which showed that, when we dream at night, we are discharging unexpressed emotional arousals from the previous day. If earlier we were upset about something our spouse did or didn’t do, but kept it to ourselves, we would later dream that out, perhaps in the form of getting angry with someone else (dream content is never straightforward); that would have the desired effect of lowering our levels of emotional arousal, so that we can start next day afresh, even though we are unlikely to remember we had the dream. (If we did express our feelings with our spouse at the time, we wouldn’t need to dream about it. And, of course, if we wake up and remember what our spouse did or didn’t do, we may get emotionally aroused about it all over again, requiring more dream discharge that night, if we still don’t resolve it.)
15 Years Experience
Depression
Ashley Horsley
Registered Psychotherapist, BA, MA, Post MA Dip, BPS Accred
Do you find it nearly impossible to get out of bed? Or if you can get out of bed do you drag yourself to work? Do you put off any chores possible to postpone? Do you hide away as much as you can, taking refuge in escapist behaviours such as sleeping too much/ drinking too much/social media etc? Depression is a debilitating lack of energy and hope. Coming to find me is a fantastic first step out of the shut-down shut-off spaces you have got stuck in. You can do it!
23 Years Experience