Depression, overwhelm & grief

Depression isn’t always sadness, often it’s flatness. The things that used to matter stop mattering. Getting out of bed takes an effort you can’t explain to anyone, and the people around you, however much they love you, start to feel very far away. It isolates you in a particular way, because it tells you that you are the problem and that nothing will ever change.

That voice is part of the depression, not the truth about you. In our work together you can say what you actually feel, without having to perform being fine. We look at what the depression is made of, what it might be protecting you from, and what has gone unheard for a long time. Slowly, things that once seemed impossible to understand begin to make sense.
 

Overwhelm creeps up. Work asks for more, the people at home need things, your phone never stops, and somewhere along the way you lost track of what you actually want. You might be functioning perfectly well on the outside while feeling permanently on the edge of tipping over.

Rest helps, and so do practical changes, but overwhelm is often about more than having too much to do. It can be about never having learnt to say no, feeling responsible for everyone, or staying busy so you don’t have to feel something else. We look at both: what needs to change around you, and what keeps pulling you back in.

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Grief doesn’t follow neat stages, whatever you may have read. It comes in waves, sometimes years later, set off by a song or a smell or an ordinary Tuesday. And not every loss gets recognised as one. The end of a marriage, a miscarriage, an estrangement, the life you thought you would have: these deserve grieving too, even when nobody sends flowers.

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You don’t have to get over it or move on. Therapy is a place to feel the full weight of what you’ve lost, to make sense of the parts that are complicated, and to find a way of carrying it that lets you live again.