Depression, Anxiety, Adjustment issues
Supporting clients who are experiencing depression, anxiety and who are working through adjustment issues to significant life changes such as parenting challenges, relationship breakdowns and work changes
Depression
Depression is very common and can arise for a number of reasons. Depression may also occur in combination with other mental health conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and anxiety.
Depression can also be linked to life events and the environment we are living in. There are many stresses in modern day life and trying to cope with this can leave people feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. Life changes can often result in people feeling depressed, some examples of times that poeple can feel overwhelmed and depressed are when:
- Changing jobs or losing a job
- Moving house
- Relationship breakdowns or conflict arise
- Parenting challenges
- Unresolved trauma in your past is retriggered
- Beginning a family
- Trying to conceive
- Approaching menopause or perimenopause
I have supported clients through all of the above events and often find it is important to spend time understanding the source of depression. A component of working with depression can often invovle reassessing life values and goals, we all need a sense of agency and if this is missing our life can feel flat and meaningless. At times I use EMDR therapy with clients who are suffering from depression, particularly if there appear to be links to events earlier in their life that haven’t been fully resolved. This is often the case where there is past or continued family conflict.
Anxiety
Anxiety is a common mental health condition characterized by excessive worry, fear, or apprehension about future events or situations. It can manifest in physical symptoms like increased heart rate, muscle tension, sweating, and restlessness. Anxiety disorders can interfere with daily life and well-being. Often anxiety is related to a fear of the unknown and can be linked to a desire to control your environment. Some specific types of anxiety disorder include generalised anxiety disorder (general anxiety and worry), social anxiety (fear of negative appraisal), health anxiety (worry about your health or fear of illness) Psychological therapy, including cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), mindfulness and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), can be effective treatments for anxiety.
There are many aspects of CBT that can be helpful in treating anxiety, but one of the most common is exposure therapy, that’s where you deliberately work at doing the things you are anxious about. This is done in a graded and systematic way so that you don’t get out of your window of tolerance, otherwise the result can be a negative impact where you become more fearful.
Mindfulness can help individuals with anxiety by increasing awareness of their thoughts and feelings, teaching them to accept these experiences without judgment, and providing tools to manage anxiety more effectively. Anxiety is often linked with an over-analyser mode, whereby people think of everything that could go wrong and try to plan for it. Mindfulness can help people be more aware of this pattern and allow them to step back from the over-analyser mode.
EMDR can be applied to specific anxieties that have a traumatic origin or are linked to past distressing experiences. With EMDR we may spend some time on working out when you first noticed yourself becoming anxious and what happened at the time to trigger this. With EMDR we aim to reprocess these memories, reducing their emotional charge and their impact on current anxiety.
Adjustment disorder
Adjustment disorder is a mental health condition characterized by emotional and behavioral symptoms that occur in response to a specific stressor or life event. These symptoms typically develop within three months of the triggering event and can cause significant distress or impairment in daily functioning. Adjustment disorder is different from other mental health conditions in that it is directly linked to a specific stressor, and the symptoms generally improve as the individual adapts to the situation or the stressor is resolved. Some life events that can lead to adjustment disorder includeTop of Form:
- Death of a loved one
- Relationship breakdown/divorce
- Starting a family
- Facing fertility complications
- A health condition
- Job loss
- Financial concerns
- Any other major life change
A person with adjustment disorder will often display symptoms of depression and/or anxiety. With support symptoms of depression and/or anxiety will often resolve within 6 months.
COURT REPORTS
We do not provide court reports.
We are here to support people with their mental health issues, not their court issues.
There are other psychologists who specialise in medico-legal reports.