What is depression?

Depression is frightening and debilitating. Some people say that it feels like a black curtain of despair coming down over their lives. Symptoms vary from person to person, but if you feel "down" for more than two weeks, and these feelings are interfering with your daily life, you may be clinically depressed.

Most people with depression never seek help but treating depression is vital because it affects you, your family, your work and your physical health. Rest assured - depression is a treatable illness.

The symptoms that help identify depression include:

• Constant feelings of sadness, irritability, or tension
• Loss of energy, feeling tired all the time
• Change in appetite, significant weight loss or gain
• Change in sleeping patterns
• Restlessness or feeling slowed down
• Decreased ability to make decisions or concentrate
• Feelings of worthlessness, hopelessness, or guilt
• Thoughts of suicide or death

What causes depression?

Depression has no single cause; it can start from a combination of things or one single event. Some of the more common factors involved in depression includes things like: trauma and stress, financial problems, the breakup of a relationship, the death of a loved one. People who have low self-esteem and a negative outlook are at higher risk of becoming depressed.

Anxiety disorders, eating disorders, schizophrenia, and (especially) substance abuse often appear along with depression.

Who is likely to suffer from depression?

Anyone can be affected, although women are almost twice as likely to become depressed as men. The higher risk may be due partly to hormonal changes. Although mens risk of getting depression is lower, they are more likely to go undiagnosed and less likely to seek help. They often show the typical symptoms of depression, but are more likely to be angry and hostile or to mask their condition with alcohol or drug abuse. Suicide is an especially serious risk for men with depression, who are four times more likely than women to kill themselves.

How can we help?

NLP and counselling can help depression. NLP can be used to release emotions linked to past events. Removing innapropriate guilt, anger, sadness and fear. It can also remove any limiting decisions you have made which are preventing you from moving forward. Once this is done it's easier to concentrate on relieving other emotional blocks that are preventing you from having the ability to move forward as you want to. If you are suffering from depression please get in touch today, we can help you change your quality of life and be able to deal with life as it comes.

Low Self Esteem - What does that mean?

We all use the expression 'self-esteem', but what do we mean by it? Self-esteem isn't quite the same thing as confidence. The fact is that there are any number of apparently confident people who can do marvellous things but who have poor self-esteem. The word 'esteem' comes from a Latin word which means 'to estimate'. So, self-esteem is how you estimate yourself.

To do that you need to ask yourself certain questions:

• Do I like myself?
• Do I think I'm a good human being?
• Am I someone deserving of love?
• Do I deserve happiness?
• Do I really feel - both in my mind and deep in my guts - that I'm an OK person?

People with low self-esteem find it hard to answer 'yes' to these questions.

Low self esteem is the reason for many problems and limitations. It can manifest itself as shyness or be the key to more severe conditions such as agoraphobia, panic attacks, depression etc. It can affect all aspects of our lives, personal and professional.

How can we help?

Hypnotherapy and NLP can really help by using techniques to get to the root cause of the problem. The therapist will take time to help you understand what it is you truely want from life. Something that affects our lives in such a drastic way can be dealt with quickly and easily, enabling you to move on with your life and achieve your goals.

If you are affected by depression or low self esteem please seek help. It doesn't have to be through our clinic but we urge you to do something about it today. Changing your life can be a simple process and can take you to heights you thought were unimaginable.

Our therapists

Emma James MANLP, MATLT, MAHYP, Dip FTST, IIHTT is a leading personal therapist, a certified master practioner in NLP, Hypnosis and Time Line Therapy. For more details click here.

Rue Dobson Dip Psy/Phil Dip Couns Dip Clin Hyp MBACP MBSCH has been studying pyschology for over 17 years. He is qualified in person centered counselling and clinical hypnotherapy. For more details click here.

Brian McHugh Certified NLP Master Practitioner has been using his NLP and coaching skills to help people make the positive changes that they know will improve their quality of life. For more details click here.