Acknowledge Your Depression

Depression is sadness that lasts too long. Everyone is sad at some point in their lives but depression is more than that. It is a feeling that you canít bring yourself up from the bottom. In the end you give up trying. People start to avoid you. You feel worse. You need to find external help to treat the problem in the same way as you would if you had a long-lasting cold. You could try herbal remedies Ė there are some in your pharmacy Ė or you could see your doctor. There may be an underlying physical cause for your depression.

If your doctor cannot help you they may refer you for counselling. Donít be embarrassed to go for counselling but do make sure you are comfortable with your counsellor. If not, try another one. Counselling should not be discounted because you donít feel comfortable with your first choice of practitioner. In everyday life you will naturally find that you get on with some people and clash with others. You cannot afford to have a personality clash with your counsellor. On the other hand you must be sure that it is a personality clash and not just that you donít agree with what they are saying. A general rule is to go with your instincts. If you like the person and seemed to get on well in the first couple of sessions then stick with it because they might just have touched on the root cause of your problem.

In some cases, acknowledging depression may be difficult because you have lived with it so long that you donít know whether it is depression or not. If you have grown up with depression it is possible not to realise that you are actually depressed because you have no concept of how normal people should feel. You may feel angry all the time or you may feel like going to the middle of an empty field and simply screaming. You may feel anxious, have trouble sleeping or even sleep too much. You may think that your family would be better off without you (and actually believe that to be true) and may have considered running away or suicide.