It seems that life today can be a recipe for stress, anxiety and depression. We all push ourselves to go to work, have a home life, social life. If we have a family, we want to give our children the best we can so we may end up following a holy grail of multiple activities that we have to get them to and pay for; in middle age or later we may have responsibility for elderly parents as well as teenage or younger children and working. At any age we may end up alone and feeling lonely and cut off from the world. If we don’t have a partner, or a partner we relate to, we can end up not having anybody to confide in, to share the problems of the day or family problems. This all creates stress. Loneliness has always been around but in our society where few people have their families living near them for support or families at all, it seems to be on the increase adding to stress and anxiety.
It is normal to worry over serious things and anxiety is natural in these circumstances. It is where anxiety turns into something that dominates how you live making you feel that everything is out of proportion, indeed being anxious about anything and everything; that is more of a concern. This could be where you feel you are no longer doing anything properly; where seemingly minor things such as comments from people hurt you deeply and haunt you; where you wake up with an anxious knot in the pit of your stomach for no reason just worrying about what bad thing might happen next; where you can’t sleep because of worrying or wake up after a short sleep and are unable to get back to sleep through worry.
Stress and anxiety can lead to depression. When does it become depression? There are two types of depression; depression because things have happened in your life that you find hard to cope with for example, disappointment, bereavement, divorce or separation. It is natural to feel low after significant negative events. It is important to recognise this and give yourself time and space in which to start feeling better. Talking in the consultation and/or to a counsellor or friends can help, alongside the use of homeopathic remedies and maybe the support of flower essences. Sometimes events happen that you may never completely recover from, like the death of a loved one or even the death of a relationship, but over time you pick up the pieces of life again. It is not the same but you do get the strength to carry on and hopefully eventually find joy in the life you now have.
The other type of depression is where you seem to have a perfect life but you feel low and continue to feel low. This needs to be dealt with urgently. Sometimes you can talk about it and how it makes you feel. In other situations you may cut off from life and your loved ones, or become remote; this is sometimes a symptom in postnatal depression as well as in depression with no seeming cause. Get help as soon as you can. Recognition of how you feel and doing something about it is the first step in recovery and the earlier you acknowledge it the sooner you should recover.
Homeopathy is individually prescribed and the best situation is to have a full consultation to explore the issues followed by constitutional homeopathic prescriptions.