Depression is more than feeling blue.
Depression is a common disorder, especially in the present day, with serious personal, interpersonal and societal consequences. Depression is more than feeling blue, sad or down in different situations. Depression is a strong mood which involves sadness, discouragement, despair or hopelessness and it can last for a long period of time.
In depression, the great area of negative emotions become so overwhelming that the person reveals a vulnerable and disempowered self. This emotional distress can be triggered by long term experiences of abuse, neglect, abandonment, and also loss or failure events, resulting in feelings of inadequacy, insecurity, or guilt. The self loses the coping resources and collapses in depression, feeling powerless, trapped, defeated, and ashamed.
What happens in depression is that the person loses the ability and strength to master his or her emotional experiences and all that remains is a powerless and insecure self.
Dealing with Depression the Emotion Focused Way
Being confronted with so many negative emotions, the person who is dealing with depression need to get help in making a sense of his or her 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 experience. 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 tranquility.