Depression is a truly debilitating condition. Feelings such as hopelessness, helplessness, and uselessness among others incapacitate the sufferer, sometimes to the extent that virtually all functionality is lost. Anybody who is emmeshed in its grip is having an awful experience. The good news is that it is not impossible to escape its grasp.

 

M. Scott Peck, in his well known book "A Road Less Travelled", writes about what he calls "The Healthiness of Depression". He believes that basically depression is a "normal and healthy phenomenon" associated with growth and change. Growth and change implies the letting go of something familiar and often loved in order to develop into the next stage of life. Depression becomes unhealthy when we become stuck in the letting go process. This may happen because change occurred before we were ready for it, before we could voluntarily relinquish our "old self".

 

In this kind of situation I work with people helping them to unearth and negotiate their way through the loss they are stuck with.

 

Depression is a complex condition and these few paragraphs can only describe one scenario in which it may feature by way of illustrating how counselling may be helpful in moving beyond this very disturbing condition.