How to overcome feeling depressed:

There are many ways to treat depression, including antidepressant medication. However, many will say they feel depressed again after they stop taking antidepressants. Why do depression symptoms persist? In fact, it’s the ways that individuals avoid their feelings and avoid facing life that make them depressed. So, waiting passively for a pill to make them feel better will not improve their lives if they do not face their lives. It will not change how one feels about themselves.

Are you feeling depressed?

Many depressed individuals feel overwhelmed with sadness or hopelessness, and feel flat or down. Feeling weighed down, many depressed individuals shut down their emotions and avoid situations or social interactions

What causes you to feel depressed?

Sometimes depressed individuals have internalised that they are not good enough or not worthy, from their earlier experiences with caregivers. Because of this, they see things negatively that happened to them. Feelings of worthlessness often cause them to give up on life, feeling worse, as they find it difficult to get the strength to push forward and face the day.

Many depressed individuals distract themselves from what they are feeling or use comforts to get rid of unwanted feelings. Alcohol and drugs can be one way to self-medicate. But the feelings don’t go away; in fact, they get worse. Depressed individuals who avoid feelings use a lot of effort to push down emotions. Eventually, the individual cannot keep these feelings repressed, to the point where they need treatment for depression. Sometimes the individuals feel less in control or unable to keep it together, without getting the help to resolve the depressive symptoms.

Keeping feelings down and shutting down can actually increase depressed states of mind. Many of the ways that individuals avoid these feelings make it harder for them to overcome what they are feeling. The more they bottle up their feelings, the more they feel weighed down by them. Avoiding facing the day makes them more anxious. The more they give up on the things that make them happy, the more lifeless they may become, as they give up passions, stop seeing friends, or give up their job. There is nothing left to make them feel good about themselves or give them a sense of purpose. The end result is feeling more depressed, when they cannot face life or have no stability.

When these unwanted feelings or negative self-beliefs remain out of their awareness, they can get in their way and hold them back from opportunities, because they don’t believe in themselves to try. So they live a life that holds them back from living up to their real potential.

Treatment for depressed individuals

Counselling is a treatment that allows individuals to access underlying feelings, better manage them and restructure the negative beliefs. Providing therapy, individuals locate where their intolerable feelings about themselves come from. Nancy Carbone’s approach works at the deeper layers, to restructure how one feels about themselves, so they can modify negative thinking patterns, by challenging these distorted ways of thinking, so they can overcome feeling depressed.

As a counsellor for depressed individuals, Nancy helps them to better make sense of these emotions, so they do not feel overwhelmed by them. As a result, the individual does not need to use defensive strategies to hold them back, but instead can be free to enjoy life.

By sorting out one’s feelings and challenging negative self-perceptions, the individual can overcome depressive symptoms that weigh them down and take over their life, with the help or expertise of a therapist. Then they can become clear, focused and live life according to their real desires, rather than be held back by self-perpetuating negative beliefs, which can prevent them from moving forward.