Brief Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Depression

Brief Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Depression

Depression feels like someone is available for the help, how we available for someone else who is depressed.

We all feel fed up, useless, miserable or sad at times. These feelings do not usually last longer than a week or 2, and they don’t interfere too much with our lives. Sometimes there is a reason behind and sometimes not. We usually cope up problems – we thought that we may talk to a friend but we don’t want any other help.

However, when these symptoms bother us for more than three weeks, there is a possibility to call depression.

Brief Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)

It is a short-term therapy technique that can help people find new ways to act by changing their behaviour and thought pattern by targeted emotion. Brief CBT is the condensing of CBT material and the reduction of the average 12-20 sessions into four to eight sessions. In Brief CBT the concentration is on specific treatments for a limited number of personal problems. Basically it is time-limited therapy may offer an additional incentive for patients and therapists to work efficiently and effectively.

Many of us have habits of thinking which are quite apart from what is happening in your life, are likely to make us depressed and keep us depressed. CBT helps you to:

  1. Identify impractical and unhelpful ways of thinking
  2. Then develop more helpful ways of thought and behaving.

Research shows that Brief CBT can support people with depression, panic disorder, and various other health conditions. There is also evidence available that can help to relieve suicidal thoughts.

Therapy useful for problems that target specific symptoms in depression e.g., depressive and restless thinking, sadness & suicidal thoughts.

During treatment with Brief cognitive behaviour therapy on depression, a person can learn to:

  • Clearly identify problems
  • Awareness of automatic thoughts
  • Challenge assumptions that may be wrong
  • Understand how the past can affect present feelings and belief system
  • Face their fears rather than avoid them
  • Trace, accept and understand rather than judge themselves or others.

Brief Cognitive behavioural therapy is fit for verbal and goal-oriented people who want short-term, symptom-focused strategies. Brief CBT needs that people commit to monitoring and practising skills outside the therapy session.

 

Written by:

Hira Saeed

Clinical Psychologist

Consult A Psychologist

Let Me Hold The Door for You

Let Me Hold The Door for You

To see with other’s lenses and to have their ears, so to feel with their hearts, their disasters, their failures, their pains… seems hard but isn’t impossible.

In today’s selfish world, what a person wants from another person is just “empathy”… a feeling of being understood without being judged. Empathy is the ability of an individual to understand and share the feelings of another person. It is the capacity to understand what another person is experiencing, the capacity to place ourselves in another person`s position.

The term Empathy was first presented by Carl Rogers, an eminent figure of Humanism, as an essential feature of client-centred Therapy. He defines Empathy as an ability of the therapist to perceive the client’s words within the client’s context, his frame of reference, to walk a mile in the client’s shoes.

People might get confused between empathy and sympathy thinking that both can be used interchangeably. But there are important differences. Sympathy means your feelings of pity for someone`s misfit. It’s about support and care. We may feel genuinely sorry but this doesn’t mean we necessarily understand what they are going through.

While empathy involves a cognitive component of your efforts to understand someone`s emotional experiences and is based on an unspoken understanding. We can co-experience the feelings of another person without being necessarily having to communicate with them.

Empathy is essential in daily life as well. It helps to maintain quality relationships. It’s essential for understanding, communication and relationship building in everyday life as well as in clinical settings because

  • Empathy helps us to build connections with acquaintances.
  • It allows us to establish trust in relationships
  • Empathy helps us to understand and anticipate others’ behaviours.
  • Empathy supports us in making better decisions

So, if you want to be empathetic in daily life consider the following

  • Put aside your personal viewpoints and try to see things from others’ perspective
  • Authenticate the other person’s viewpoint
  • Listen carefully without judgment
  • Examine your attitude
  • Put aside your biases, prejudices and also your sympathies. Be neutral

Empathy is like giving someone a psychological hug. Don’t hesitate, do even the least that you can…

I may have never walked

In your shoes

But I can see

Your soles are warn

Your strength is torn

Under the weight of a story

I’ve never lived before

Let me hold the door for you

After all, you’ve walked through

It is the least I can do 

~ Morgan Harper Nichols

By:

Zartasha Munawar

Lecturer in Psychology

GGDC Sarae Saleh, Haripur

The Reality of High Functioning Depression

The Reality of High Functioning Depression

If you think that you’re doing well in life but you’re consistently stressed out, frustrated, and sad, then chances are that you are depressed.

When you visualize a depressed person, you don’t immediately imagine a popular guy, living in a big city, with a dream job, and a great bunch of friends. You obviously envision a person who has isolated himself from the world and cries all the time. But what if this perfect guy wakes up every morning with crippling anxiety and a self-imposed internalized pressure to keep it all together?  Would you still believe that he has depression?

Our society has stereotyped everything to such an extent that even mental illness has to be exactly as the official book of symptoms suggests. Previously, our ambition was to spread awareness about mental illnesses in our society. Now that we’ve managed to generate some conversation and empathy, it is now important to make the society realize that a disorder doesn’t have to have one strict shape or set of symptoms.

Hence, people who are doing considerably well professionally, personally, or even academically, who have long been living with a secret, can now understand and give a name to this feeling. These are the people who gather up the courage to open up to their friends or family members only to get called ungrateful. We see you and you are not alone in this fight.

We’re currently living in a society where people have developed unhealthy coping mechanisms and poor stress management tactics just because their symptoms are not severe enough. However, living with depression is not only dangerous for the patients but for their children too, if they have any. They are unable to give quality time or attention to their kids and they channel their outrage on them – one way or another. When you ignore a condition for too long, it turns into frustration. This frustration can have a serious impact on children. Hence, it is extremely significant that you seek professional help, even if you think you can handle it on your own.

 

KNOW YOUR WORTH IN A RELATIONSHIP

KNOW YOUR WORTH IN A RELATIONSHIP

 

How to Decide Its Time to Move On

You don’t plan to fall in love it just happens, it’s the most beautiful experience in the world only if the next person is ready to hold you back, it is a mutual relationship where there is a partnership, No ego! Where you have a strong trust that if I get mad the next person knows how to calm me down, where you know if I ever lose hope he/she will become my strength.

Where, your promises mean.

Where your hearts belong to each other.

Where you live for each other.
But! If you feel like not belonging to that person or that person is holding you back from achieving what you want, you should plan to move out because you can’t live every single day of misery and blaming yourself for every kind of fault.

Moving on is not an easy road. There are a lot of emotions attached to that person who is not easy to let go. But living the life where you die each day is even worst.

At that stage of life, your friends advise you

“He/she is not the right one”

“You deserves better”

These are the most annoying pieces of advice because you can’t forget the person in a day or two with whom you had thousands of memories attached. There are traces of moments which remind you of that person again and again if you think of throwing the gifts and things they gifted you will help you out, might be you are wrong because on trying too hard to forget them you are actually sharpening those moments more.
Now what you actually need to do is “ACCEPTANCE”.

Accept the pain you are having, that you care but at the same time accept that person is not the one you can spend your whole life with.

Do you want to spend your whole life with the person who doesn’t let you do what you want, who make you feel miserable about you daily, who loves you only when he gets the time? Obviously, no one wants such kind of life.

Accept the fact that you both aren’t meant for each other, let them go and soon you will get the one who actually cares, wants you in his/her life, who makes you feel special, who will make your rest of the life beautiful.

Yeah. That is it. You are on the right path now….!

Good luck with the healthy relationship you have.

Written By:

Aqsa Yaseen

Psychology Department

Institute of Professional Psychology (IPP)

Bahria University

 

You Can Prevent Major Depression through Web-based Counselling Services: Latest Research

You Can Prevent Major Depression through Web-based Counselling Services: Latest Research

A doctoral researcher of Psychology, Claudia Buntrock, at Leuphana University in Lueneburg, Germany found in her examination the effectiveness of online psychotherapy or Web-based Counselling Services in treating depressive episodes.

The analyst considered both male and female participants who were suffering from depressive symptomatology. They were provided with online treatment by a web-based mentor. Another category of participants was just given access to self-help manuals and guidelines about how to deal with depression. The second group of participants had no access to an online mentor. All of the participants who were part of this experiment were interviewed after one year. Interesting findings were obtained through the research. The group of individuals having no access to online counselling showed a significant increase in depressive symptomatology despite having access to written material on self-improvement while those receiving online help were less likely to develop depressive episode. This experiment has opened new boulevards for internet-based treatment services.

The creator of this study has recommended that an online self-help program is only effective when guided by an online counsellor. This kind of treatment not only helps to deal with depression effectively but also prevents the onset of the depressive episode.

The implications of findings suggested that individuals who simply encounter even minor depressive manifestations, for example, low mood, lack of interest in activities, fatigue, appetite disturbance, lethargy, absence of hope, absence of enthusiasm, self-blaming, suicidal ideation and so forth can approach an online specialist and therefore keep an outbreak of depressive episode.

Hence, it is an alarming sign for the individuals who are at the edge of mental illness while here is uplifting news for the individuals who have lost any trust in online treatment. You can now certainly profit from online psychological services to turn away your depressive manifestations. The sooner you look for online help, the better results you will get.

Written By:
Mehwish Mursaleen,
Senior Psychologist/ Online Psychotherapist/ Chief Editor
Consult-A-Psychologist

Coping With Depression

Coping With Depression

TIPS FOR COPING WITH DEPRESSION

Connect and remain associated:

Look for help from individuals who influence you to feel safe and tended to. Converse with one individual about your sentiments.

Do things that influence you to rest easy:

Spend some time in nature, Watch a clever motion picture or most loved TV appear.

Go ahead, Get Moving:

Exercise is something you can do at the present time to help your mindset. Its Increase your vitality levels and enhance rest.

Eat a solid, sorrow battling diet:

Don’t skip suppers and Cut out the garbage nourishments as feasible for sound feel.

Get a day by day measurement of daylight:

Sunlight can help support serotonin levels and enhance your temperament. Along these lines, open yourself to the sun for no less than 15 minutes per day.

Test negative reasoning:

Ignoring positive occasions and concentrating on the negative. Trusting that the way you feel reflects reality (“I feel like such a washout. I truly am no great!”)

Take full breaths:

Inhale and breathe out gradually.

Welcome Laughter:

A great chuckle goes far.

Count to 10 gradually:

Repeat, and tally to 20 if important.

Keep up an uplifting state of mind:

Make a push to supplant negative musings with positive ones.

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