Getting through the day has become the day.
How I can help

Getting through the day has become the day.

Low Mood & Depression

Getting through the day has become the day.

A heaviness that outlasts effort deserves more than being waited out. This is somewhere it can be brought.

Arrange an initial conversation or call 07799 563910
What it can feel like

Depression is poorly served by its common description.

More like moving through water.

Depression is poorly served by its common description. It is not simply sadness, and it is not something you can be cheered out of. More often it is a draining of colour, a flattening in which things that once mattered no longer reach you, effort outweighs reward at every turn, and getting through the day quietly becomes the whole of the day. From outside it can look like inactivity. From inside it is more like moving through water.

One of its cruelties is the commentary that comes with it. The low mood is bad enough; harder is the voice that reads it as evidence. That you are failing, that this is your fault, that other people manage and you do not. The state arrives, and then a verdict arrives on top of it, and the verdict makes everything heavier and harder to speak about.

Where it comes from

Depression is not a failure of character or will.

Not a failure of character or will.

It is worth saying plainly that depression is not a failure of character or will. It is a recognisable condition with its own weight and its own logic, and the exhaustion, the loss of interest, the difficulty doing things that were once simple are part of it, not signs of weakness in you.

For some people there is a loss underneath it with a shape that can be named and mourned. For others it is harder to point at: less a grief for something that went than a sense that something needed was never quite there to begin with, and that kind of emptiness asks not to be mourned but to be slowly given ground. Either way there is usually a harsh inner verdict driving it, and patterns that keep it in place.

Back to life — the weight, slowly shifted.
Somewhere the weight can be brought

The work does not begin by trying to fix or argue with the mood.

The work does not begin by trying to fix or argue with the mood. It begins by making the weight bearable to be with, by providing somewhere it can be brought without having to be explained away or apologised for. From there, slowly, it becomes possible to understand what the low mood is carrying. That understanding is not instant, and the lift, when it comes, tends to come gradually rather than all at once.

This is genuinely workable. Depression responds, and people do find their way back to a life with colour in it, to mornings that are not only something to be survived. It rarely happens through effort alone, and it happens more readily when the weight is not being carried in isolation.

The self-blame is part of the territory, not a true account of your situation. Mornings that are not only something to be survived.
Colour has drained from things.
If colour has drained from things

Worth taking seriously rather than waiting out.

If colour has drained from things and the days have narrowed to getting through them, that is worth taking seriously rather than waiting out.

admin@martinaldertoncounsellor.com 07799 563910
I work with low mood and depression from 117 Harley Street, in Norwich, and online.
If you need help now.
If you need help now

This page describes ordinary low mood and depression. If you are in crisis or thinking about harming yourself, please contact your GP, call NHS 111 and select the mental health option, or call the Samaritans free, any time, on 116 123.