In my experience, there are a lot of resources out there to help people with anxiety, stress and depression. Many of them focus a great deal on why these experiences happen to some people, but seem to lack tangible, actionable things that you can actually do.
I am a professional counsellor, and I have been in direct practice with clients since I began my career, and a great majority of my clients arrive for their intake session claiming they suffer with anxiety and/or depression, among other things.
Although there are clinical definitions of each of many of these disorders and are included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), with several different categories and diagnosis, in my experiences, many clients that I see do not have a formal diagnosis by a medical doctor or psychiatrist.
Nevertheless, my approach to working with clients is based on their own perceptions, not necessarily some label placed on them by another professional. Formal diagnosis can be useful to identify an area of need, or a specific issue that needs to be addressed, but it is not a requirement for me to try and help people.
The underlying assumption in many of my ideas and suggestions is that our perceptions shape a great deal of how we live day to day. In other words, how we think, what we think about, and what we choose to put our physical and emotional energy into will shape the course of our day, and ultimately, our life. If you focus only on what is going wrong in your life, things will appear to always go wrong. If you strive for perfection, you will consistently meet with failure. If you wait for others to change, so that your life is better, you will be waiting forever. If you consistently put others before yourself, you will never be fulfilled, content or truly happy. Self-care is not selfish.
I refer to myself as a generalist. Essentially, what that means is that I do not adhere to a single theoretical perspective and approach. I draw from many theories, ideas, approaches, and perspectives to try and work with my clients to develop strategies and ideas that will work for them. I utilize strategies from Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Dialectical Behaviour Therapy, Choice Theory, Acceptance & Commitment Therapy, just to name a few. Sometimes, I combine them, and sometimes I create or invent activities and strategies for my clients based on several them all at once.
With any self-help endeavor, I always tell my clients to "take what speaks to you and leave the rest." There will be many ideas that you find amazing and can't wait to try, and others that you will think won’t work, and that’s okay too. All I ask is that you give a strategy a reasonable amount of time before you decide whether it works. Researchers have shown that it takes approximately 21 days to form a new habit, so that would be a great place to start. Give a strategy 2-3 weeks of daily practice before you make a determination on its effectiveness.
Remember, without change, nothing changes. Be brave, be strong, be diligent, and I can guarantee you will feel better than you did yesterday.
Not only am I a professional who sees this every day in my practice, I personally also suffered with severe anxiety, recurring depression and enormous amounts of stress for as long as I can remember. So trust me when I say that I absolutely understand what these emotions feel like. I know how debilitating it can be, how much pain and sadness and inability to function comes with feeling this way.
The good news? I believe I have come out the other side of it. Although it never completely goes away, I have learned ways to cope and deal with my emotions so that I can finally be happy, healthy, and content.
You can get there too; I have faith in you.
xoxo Darienne
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