Depression & Low Mood Counselling in Milborne St Andrew

It is common to feel angry with yourself or for others to misunderstand your lack of energy and mood.

Your responses are natural, even if they don’t feel helpful. Being depressed is often the result of a constant, invisible clash between the self and the world around you. It rarely exists in isolation and often sits alongside stress, anxiety, grief and trauma, so you may find yourself fluctuating between them.

If you feel like you cannot just “pick yourself up,” it is because your nervous system is responding to total overwhelm by “turning down the volume” on your feelings and energy. It’s your body’s automatic safety valve that protects your body from the long-term physical and emotional toll you are carrying. It slammed on the brakes.

This is why we go at your pace—not mine. We work with your nervous system rather than against it by noticing how you are feeling, even if you feel nothing, without pressure to change it. Trying to rush or fix a feeling is a bit like banging on a door and shouting to be let in; it simply scares the person inside and causes them to put extra bolts on the door.  

 

Working with the nervous system is different. It is about a gentle knock. By pausing and safely sitting with a physical sensation without forcing it to change, we are allowing your body’s protective alarm system to realise you are safe. Once your nervous system realises there is no threat, it naturally chooses to open the door a little bit, allowing you to explore the emotion just behind it, safely. Each emotion has its own door and its own security; some may take more time, they may have more bolts, or there may be many emotions that all need to know they are safe first.

 

Over time, you may notice you are gradually reconnecting with your emotions—not all at once, but in small, steady, manageable steps, working through emotional doors as they naturally arise