Understanding Depression And The Cycle of Depression

What Are Some of The Depression Symptoms?

• Persistent low mood, sadness, or emptiness
• Loss of enjoyment or motivation for things previously enjoyed
• Feelings of hopelessness or pessimism
• Feeling tearful
• Fatigue or low energy
• Difficulty sleeping or sleeping too much
• Feeling angry or frustrated over minor things
• Low self-esteem or confidence
• Feelings of guilt, helplessness, or worthlessness
• Loss of appetite

It’s long been thought by mant that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain. When I first heard this when I was depression back in the early 90s, my immediate, instinctive thought was, that’s total nonsense, it’s the other way around.

In recent times it’s been shown that that it's likely to be the case; when someone is depressed, if they have a chemical imbalance, it's a result of their depressed state. This article in Psychology Today cites the chemical imbalance explanation as a fictional narrative.

Depression is directly related to the REM state, the dreaming state. The more you worry, the more you dream, and the more you wake up feeling exhausted and depressed, and so you worry more. This is the cycle of depression. I will write more about this in a future blog.

It’s not the events that happen to you that cause you to worry and become depressed, it’s that meaning you make of them. What causes one person to worry is not the same as what causes someone else to worry. It’s the worry and rumination that leads you into a downward spiral of depression.

Understanding Hypnotherapy

Hypnotherapy is a form of therapy that can be highly effective for many issues, including depression. It uses the natural hypnosis or trance state that we all experience in our daily lives, such as when we daydream, or when we get deeply engrossed in a book or film.

Hypnotherapy can involve a deep state of relaxation, which is highly beneficial for helping you to overcome depression since depression is usually a highly stressed state. While in this relaxed state we can work through issues that contribute to your state of depression, and use suggestions and imagery to help you create positive changes to your mindset, your thinking process, your emotions, and your mood.

How Can Hypnotherapy Help Depression?

As a hypnotherapist, I start by finding out about what's going on for you, what led to you becoming depressed, and what’s keeping you in that state, whether it was a series of distressing events, unmet emotional needs, or something else that led you into a chronic state of worry. A holistic approach is needed, working with your mind, body and emotions.

The aspects that are important for resolving depression are:

• Relaxation and stress reduction
• Breaking negative thought patterns
• Processing stressful events and resolving trauma
• Building self-esteem
• Improving sleep
• Helping you meet your emotional needs

All of the above result in lifting your mood. I expand on these points in the rest of this section below:

Relaxation And Reducing Stress

The nature of depression is a highly stressed state. You may have noticed that you feel stressed a lot of the time. You will have higher than normal levels of the stress hormone, cortisol in your bloodstream. This is why relaxation is so important and beneficial for depression.

During a hypnotherapy for depression session, you will be guided into a deeply relaxed state, which is so beneficial for depression as it can give you relief from the exhaustion you may be feeling, helps you to calm your thoughts and emotions, and gain relief from physical tension.

This state of calm relaxation usually has quite a lasting effect for some time after the session and has a cumulative effect with each subsequent session. This relaxed state of hypnosis is also a very pleasant state, and people usually come out of it feeling quite uplifted, and/or much more peaceful.

I also teach clients how use self-hypnosis so they can start to guide themselves into calm states of relaxation on their own.

Breaking Negative Thought Patterns

If you are depressed, you are very likely to be having a lot of negative thoughts and ruminations that are keeping you stuck in the state of depression. Accompanying your low mood and perpetuating it, you may be having negative thoughts about yourself, your life, and about your future.

As a hypnotherapist, I can help you recognise and learn to break this cycle by using various hypnotherapy techniques, and other tools and techniques that have been proven to work effectively to help you break patterns of negative thinking. I help to you to process your emotions, reframe your thinking, stop the rumination, and help you to start to lift your mood.

Processing Stressful Events And Resolving Trauma

You may have experienced an event or series of events that led to you becoming depressed. I use hypnotherapy processes combined with other techniques to help you to quickly, and quite thoroughly reprocess negative events or trauma. We do this without dwelling on or analysing the past. This will allow you to release the negative emotional charge from memories so than you can think of them without getting retraumatised, stressed or worried,

Building Self-Esteem

Low self-esteem and the consequences of it may have been an issue that led you down a spiral of depression, or you may have developed low esteem as a result of being depressed. Using hypnotherapy processes and other effective proven techniques, I can help you to have more self-compassion, confidence, and a more positive self-image.

Improving Sleep

Depression has a big impact on your sleep patterns, whether it’s having too little or too much sleep or waking up too early. This is directly related to the cycle of depression. Once you understand and know how to break this, it will help you to break the cycle of depression and improve your sleep.

Releasing emotion from negative memoires and issues and practicing the relaxation techniques that I guide you through will also help you to improve your sleep quality.

Helping You Meet Your Emotional Needs

We look at what needs to happen for you to completely come out of your depressed state and start to live a more fulfilling life. This will often involve making sure certain basic emotional needs are now being met that were missing in some way before.

We can use hypnotherapy processes to help you to make the changes you want to make. For example, maybe you want to meet people socially, but you don’t feel confident enough. Or maybe you want a more fulfilling career, but you don’t have enough self-belief. With hypnotherapy I can help you to gain the confidence and self-belief to be able to create a future for yourself that fulfils you.

Hypnotherapy for Depression And Anxiety

Many people who are depressed also have high levels of anxiety. Hypnotherapy for anxiety is highly effective, and all of the above points are also effective treatments for relieving anxiety. In addition to that, I use other tools and techniques, tailored to your specific issues, to help you to feel much calmer and overcome anxiety. Anxiety and depression are both areas that I specialise in.

Enhancing Other Therapies And Techniques With Hypnotherapy

Hypnotherapy is very good for increasing the effectiveness of other therapies and techniques. In my bespoke depression treatment plan I use hypnotherapy in combination with NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) and EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) and other tools and techniques for best results. I always aim to be flexible and use the most effective tools and techniques that seem to be right for you at any particular time during a session.

Taking The Tools And Learning With You

When you use the tools, techniques and knowledge of how to overcome depression in between sessions it brings you very positive results. Having this knowledge and the therapeutic tools that you will learn from having hypnotherapy sessions with me will give you a good chance of preventing yourself from getting depressed again in the future.

How You Can Overcome Depression

If you are suffering from depression and are looking for a natural, holistic approach to depression treatment, hypnotherapy is a safe and a highly effective solution that could work for you. I combine hypnotherapy with other techniques that proven to be highly effective in resolving depression.

If you would like to have a chat about any issues you are struggling with please free to get in touch to arrange for a complementary chat on the phone.

 

Disclaimer: This website does not provide medical advice. This blog post is intended for informational purposes only. Consult your GP or otherwise medically qualified health professional regarding any medical issues you have, changes to your treatment or medication.