Psychologist Depression | Positive Psychology

Depression | Centre for Emotion Focused Therapy

Depression is more than feeling blue.

Depression is a common psychological disorder, especially considering the present-day stressors and the pandemic situation. Depression is a mental illness with serious personal, interpersonal and societal consequences. Depression is more than feeling blue, sad or down in different situations. Depression is a strong mood that involves sadness, despondency, despair or hopelessness and it can last for a long period of time.

When you have depression, the negative emotions within you become so overwhelming that you reveal a vulnerable and disempowered self. This emotional distress can be a result of long term exposure to abuse, neglect, abandonment, and also loss or failure events, resulting in feelings of inadequacy, insecurity, or guilt. You lose your coping resources and collapse into depression, feeling powerless, trapped, defeated, and ashamed.

What happens in depression is that the person loses the capability and strength to master emotional experiences and all that remains is a powerless and insecure self.

Dealing with Depression in the Emotion-Focused Way

When you are confronted with so many negative emotions, you need to get to make a sense of your emotions, control them, change them, and focus on the more positive aspects of life. From an Emotion-Focused Therapy perspective, change is brought about by helping people make sense of their emotions through different techniques. The people seeing a psychologist for depression at the Centre for Emotion Focused Practice are challenged to reconnect to their needs and become aware of their emotional experiences. They are encouraged to express painful emotions and transform them into adaptive emotional states. This way, we can develop the capacity to use emotions as a guide, without being a slave to them. Once a person is in control of the way they respond to emotions, we can begin to build satisfaction and happiness through positive psychology approaches.

It is important that besides having emotions, we make a sense of them and make them our allies aiding us in the defeat of depression and achievement of happiness and tranquillity.

If you are looking for help, whether for yourself or a loved one, our psychologists can assist in exploring underlying issues through therapy. Please visit our practitioners’ page to find out more, or call (03) 9820-5577 for an appointment or to make enquiries.