Depression Help… From NLP (tadah…)

I’ll bet you encounter depression once in a while. Or, you might actually be someone who has been battling depression for some time. Maybe you have someone you’d like to help.

photo credit: h.koppdelaney

Whatever the case, the perspective I’d put on this is that depression is normal. Yes, can be debilitating, but it’s normal. Millions of people go through it. Some people get out of it faster than others.

In recent days, especially after the announcement of major job losses in America, I’ve seen a surge in people seeking depression treatment or depression help. Somehow, many people are in a bad spot and just don’t know how to go about helping themselves.

To get out of a spot of depression, you’ll have to acknowledge that:

• what you are going through is not your regular self;
• it’s good to get out of the feeling of depression;
• if you’re not doing something, you have too much time to think about things that are going wrong in your life.

Most of the time, depression comes about from inner thoughts and connections. You might not know where those thoughts came from. It’s often due to a response from observing (although unconsciously) the world around you, and then the propogation of lots and lots of thoughts associated with that.

If you have trouble expressing yourself, it might cause you to think “wait, let me sort out my thinking first, then speak”. But that might simply aggravate the sensation of depression, anxiety or anger. Or worse, all of them.

NLP has a model known as submodalities. By learning to shift our mental images, we get to change the experience we have in our head. For instance, making an image brighter or darker in our minds can help to reduce or increase the intensity of a feeling.

Test it out.

If you look at an image of yourself depressed, how about making that image brighter or darker? Which direction works for you? Then keep doing it!

Of course, it’s not easy for someone to do this who has never done it before (I know some children who do this very well, though). It’s about mental flexibility and the ability to see different perspectives. If you are able to shift your perspective, coming out with alternative, healing mental images is going to be easy.

This process, in NLP, is known as reframing. Putting on different lenses and seeing from someone else’s perspective can help you to put things in context.

If you need to process your thinking, though, drop me a message and I’ll see if I can help.