Dealing with Depression
Depression is a mood disorder that causes persistent feelings of sadness or loss of interest and affects how you feel, thinks, and handles daily activities. The two most common forms of depressive disorders are major (clinical) depression and persistent depressive disorder (Dysthymia). Common symptoms of depression include sadness, lack of interest in things you once enjoyed, irritability, fatigue, and feelings of hopelessness, worthlessness, and pessimism accompanied by physical symptoms.
Many women going through perimenopause or menopause can tell you that extreme shifts in hormonal levels often lead to feelings of depression. Whether it’s a new onset of depressive symptoms or exaggerated symptoms from an existing diagnosis, managing the mood swings along with other symptoms can, at times, feel very overwhelming.
It is only recently that the medical community created guidelines for the evaluation and treatment of perimenopausal depression.
Some of the challenges in evaluating perimenopausal depression is because several of the symptoms related to its hormonal changes overlap with common symptoms of depression and other menopausal symptoms that often present similarly.
Symptoms including, insomnia, hot flashes, sleep disturbances, and mood problems are common during perimenopause and menopause.
The risk of developing symptoms related to depression is known to increase among women as they transition to menopause.
The signs and symptoms of depression include:
Persistent feelings of sadness, anxiety, hopelessness, or pessimism
Feelings of worthlessness
Decreased energy or fatigue
Irritability
Loss of interest or pleasure in activities once enjoyed
Difficulty sleeping or oversleeping
Appetite or weight changes
Difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions
Lack of self-care
Aches or pains, headaches, cramps, or digestive problems
Withdrawal from social activities
Causes
The symptoms of depression that can present during perimenopause and menopause are related to a variety of factors including hormonal changes, underlying vulnerabilities to depression, and other stressors. Hormonal shifts that happen at other times in a woman's reproductive life, such as the postpartum period, are also correlated with an increase in depression and mood symptoms.
Declining oestrogen levels that happen as you move through perimenopause towards menopause can contribute to emotional changes such as sadness, irritability, fatigue, difficulty concentrating, and mood changes.
Clinical hypnosis can effectively reduce hot flashes and associated symptoms among postmenopausal women by as much as 80 per cent, and the findings also showed participants experienced an improved quality of life and lessened anxiety and depression, according to a new study conducted by researchers.
Depression is debilitating and can affect not only how you feel about yourself but also impacts your relationships and your career. Using a variety of therapeutic techniques CBT, NLP and EFT with the integrative on of hypnotherapy render it a highly successful way to identify and understand depression and behavioural traits that might be causing and maintaining the client's depression. Cognitive Hypnotherapy gets to the root cause of the depression problem and changes the perception patterns. EFT empowers the client to feel calm in control and manage negative emotions.
