Clinically depressed or feeling down - understanding depression

Have you stopped taking an interest in things you used to enjoy?
Do you feel down most of the time?
Has your appetite changed?
Do you feel tired all the time?
Do you have difficulties concentrating?
Do you have difficulties falling asleep or do you wake up early in the morning feeling exhausted?
Do you suffer from low self-esteem, lack of confidence?
Do you often feel guilty about all sorts of things?
Have you found yourself thinking about death lately?

If you have answered with a yes to several of the questions, including the first two and you have felt like that for a least a couple of weeks, you are likely to suffer from clinical depression. Is it a stage you are going through because or normal, though painful, life events? Is time for you to deal with and lift that depression? Are you reluctant to use of antidepressants and want to be control of and "own" your recovery? Find an effective counsellor/therapist (HG therapist), who understands depression and/or visit the page on treating depression without medication.

Do you suffer from clinical depression?

Clinically depressed

or feeling down - understanding depression

Understanding depression

The discovery of why we dream, by Dr. Joe Griffin, has given us a new understanding of the cycle of depression.

It is likely that you have suffered a setback, very often a loss that you have difficulties coming to terms with, resulting in negative introspection. Then the cycle starts:

your essential needs are not being met
worrying creates more and more anxiety; this causes your body to become flushed with stress hormones, yet you feel completely 'flat'
stress hormones over-stimulate the emotional brain resulting in black and white thinking: all or nothing, love or hate, good or bad
your attention becomes increasingly focussed and locked on the problems
it becomes harder and harder to look at the situation objectively and see what is happening in a wider context
negative introspection (worrying) increases dreaming
(nature's way of dealing with emotional upsets which you have been unable to resolve/express during the day)
increased dreaming leaves less time for restorative slow-wave sleep and exhausts your attention mechanism (your 'get up and go')
waking up exhausted, you feel unable to activate or motivate yourself
lack of energy leads to further worrying about how you are going to cope with the day's expectations
the cycle repeats itself, increasingly resulting in your being unable to meet your essential emotional needs, which in turn again leads to your becoming increasingly depressed.

Depression is a debilitating condition that saps you from energy and takes away any joy in living. Any counselling/therapy that relies heavily on you introspecting about negative events in your past could prolong the depression.

The good news

Now you have some understanding of what causes depression, you can start doing something about it. You are not going to get better, by sitting on the settee or laying in bed all day. Just by making a huge effort you can lift your mood if only from a 1 to 1½, or 3 to 4 for a start.

It may help to remind yourself that whatever has happened to you, is likely to have happened to other people too and if at all they have had a period of feeling depressed - they have recovered, so there is hope!
Depression is another layer of suffering, on top of your problems, you can do without.

The New Scientist

interview with

Joe Griffin

The Dreamcatcher

The material on these pages is intended as information only, and not as medical advice.

About 50% of people who suffer from depression have relationship problems. Could that be the course of your depression? Is your relationship coming to an end or is there still a possibility that it can be saved?