How Can I Recover From Depression

How Can I Recover From Depression

How Can I Recover From Depression? As my experience grew with my clinical practice I stopped thinking that the problems that my patients bring to me are all related or only related to the brain being ill. Every day I can see more clearly that many of the emotional problems we face are related to coping mechanisms that the brain has, many times enlightening the functional nature of each one is the solution to enduring mental problems such as depression.

How Can I Recover From Depression?

How to explain depression to someone

When I see people with depression their first worry is if they will recover from depression. Therefore, I do spend some time explaining to them how can a process of therapy help them and what would happen to them during that process. I describe some of these tools below.

When exploring with my patients the division of the self as a coping mechanism, most of the patients I have treated with depression have recovered faster than using other theoretical approaches.  Therefore I want to say to my readers that every day there is more hope for recovery from depression as new discoveries are brought to the psychology community

The experience of depression for some people, when exploring the patient’s history can begin as early as in childhood. However, they may get on with life, although they live without a “sparkle”. Usually, it may take decades for people to be ready to ask or receive help from a professional clinical psychologist such as me. I have seen that for some of these people, depression began as a coping mechanism to deal with the sense of self that got established as a way of life.

How to explain to someone what depression feels like

In many cases depression only onsets as a result of other problems, the classic one is enduring anxiety that eventually triggers depression. Or having a traumatic experience will link to depression at some point for the difficulties that trauma generates separating the emotion from the actual experience itself, resulting in an inability to grieve and therefore not being able to move on with life.

For most people suffering from depression, giving a personal account of their depression or telling their stories to someone, who can not only listen but also understand is a game changer. That is why we encourage people with depression to write about how they feel; exposing ones feeling is a powerful psychological tool.

How to recover from depression and anxiety

Because recovery from depression is not linear, a clinical psychologist may use different tools at different stages of treatment. 

How to recover from depression and anxiety

The most important sign that you are recovering from depression is that you realise that some days you do have the energy to deal with life; however, the greatest sign that you are recovering and not turning back is that you begin to enjoy what you are doing in your life.

In general, it has been described that depression has ups and downs or that people suffer setbacks. I now see depression as a circle of repeating patterns. During therapy mapping out these patterns produce an immediate lifting effect on the mood. The more aspects from the patterns that we can map out, the more improvements I see in my patients.

What is the first step in therapy?

The answer is simple but most people are not aware of it:

Find a therapist and get in touch now! Call Dr Sanders on 0203 488 7384 or email her with your questions.