Depression
Depression is a common and serious medical illness that negatively affects how you feel, the way you think and how you act. Fortunately, it is also treatable. Depression causes feelings of sadness and/or a loss of interest in activities once enjoyed. It can lead to a variety of emotional and physical problems and can decrease a person’s ability to function at work and at home.
Depression affects an estimated one in 15 adults (6.7%) in any given year. And one in six people (16.6%) will experience depression at some time in their life. Depression can strike at any time, but on average, first appears during the late teens to mid-20s. Women are more likely than men to experience depression. Some studies show that one-third of women will experience a major depressive episode in their lifetime.
Depression symptoms can vary from mild to severe and can include:
- Feeling sad or having a depressed mood
- Loss of interest or pleasure in activities once enjoyed
- Changes in appetite — weight loss or gain unrelated to dieting
- Trouble sleeping or sleeping too much
- Loss of energy or increased fatigue
- Increase in purposeless physical activity (e.g., hand-wringing or pacing) or slowed movements and speech (actions observable by others)
- Feeling worthless or guilty
- Difficulty thinking, concentrating or making decisions
- Thoughts of death or suicide
Often these symptoms will be treated by a doctor. Remedies will be prescribed. These treatment methods, of course, are aimed at symptom relief but don’t get down to treating the underlying cause of the depression.
If the depressed person goes to a counselor, they will talk about the feelings which may help for a while. Other therapists may try relaxation techniques combined with positive affirmations. There is a basic reason why these common responses to depression don’t really work: they do not address or resolve the deeper underlying causes of depression.
Depression Triggers:
Depression is often a reaction to a distressing or traumatic event. The people and situations who are associated with the traumatic event in our lives are referred to as traumatic triggers.
An example is someone reporting, “I never was depressed before my father (mother, child, spouse, best friend) died.” After a loved one passes on, the individual often has to deal with their belongings including their home, or now has to take on their responsibilities. Any of these can become traumatic triggers. If the person or family member who has lost the loved one does not have time to fully grieve the loss, and to process unfinished feelings about the person, depression may set in almost immediately. Other traumatic triggers include losing a job, divorce, or financial reversals such as bankruptcy or home foreclosure.
How can hypnotherapy treat depression?
1. It helps you enter the subconscious:
First, we drop down from the conscious mind, which is only 10% of the mind into the subconscious mind. Now we are addressing the whole person, 100% of the mind rather than just treating the symptoms.
2. It helps you identify the “unfinished business”.
People often have what is called “unfinished business” with whatever has been lost, be it a loved one, a job, or a home. These unresolved feelings, such as resentments, regrets, blame, anger, guilt, jealousy, and fear are stored in the body and must be released as soon after the triggering event as possible. Clinical hypnotherapy works for depression because it removes the underlying basis of depression and completes the unfinished business that otherwise continues to recycle as self-sabotaging thoughts and behaviors.
3. It helps you “finish” the “unfinished business” and release the stored emotions/experiences.
With hypnotherapy, we can go down to the deepest level of these traumatic experiences, memories and stored emotions to release them from the mind and body. When this hypnotherapy process is completed, the client reports that their depression has lifted, that they have stopped the compulsive thoughts or behavior, and that they are ready to resume living their lives again.
4. It helps you replace the trauma with positivity.
With each healing session of clinical hypnotherapy, we can replace the fearful repetitive thoughts that often haunt people following a traumatic experience. Positive affirmations now work because the underlying emotional release has been accomplished.
5. It helps you use the power of hypnotic suggestion to create long-term improvement.
Hypnotherapy provides an effective way to access the individual’s ability to affect the physical body. Once self-sabotaging thoughts and behaviors have been resolved, the individual can begin to use hypnotic suggestibility to improve the body’s functioning. Hypnotherapy can be very helpful in correcting patterns of restless sleep, low energy or libido, headaches or chronic pain. And one can use hypnotherapy to increase motivation to exercise and eat properly.
Conclusion
Consistent research and methodology refinement has allowed hypnotherapy to progress as an advanced form of therapy to the point where clinical hypnotherapy is now regularly considered as a treatment option for depression. Working in tandem with a group of powerful psychotherapy techniques, hypnotherapy can be a highly successful form of treatment for individuals with depression.