Low self-esteem. Guilt. Trouble concentrating. Constantly self-critical thinking. An often grinding sense of unhappiness and inability to appreciate the moment.
If you are or have been depressed, you’ll know cripplingly well what we mean.
And if you’ve been trying for years to break away from that depressive loop – perhaps through therapy or counselling, or with anti-depressants, or perhaps rather less healthily with addictions to alcohol, food or work – then depression can be a pretty debilitating place to be.
Psychotherapists can’t promise one hundred percent to get you out of that place.
But using EMDR and – as Woody Allen might say – whatever works (a safe place to talk and to be witnessed in whatever you’re experiencing, and the occasional hopefully useful idea or perspective), there’s usually a fairly good chance of making enough of a difference to change your life.
Depression’s journey can feel a lot like the storm brewing over Lake Wanaka in New Zealand in the image at the top of this page.
Pretty black at times, and it can be hard to let go of patterns of misery which over the years might have become paradoxically comforting – as one of our clients once put it, like an itchy but familiar comfort blanket.
But with courage and persistence, that can be light after the storm, even when the darkness set in as long ago as you can remember.