ABSTRACT
One of the most familiar mental health issues of all is that of depression. From Churchill’s ‘black dog’ to William Styron’s ‘darkness’, we think we know what it means even if we have not experienced the full-blown symptoms of a major depression. A typical depression scenario was described to me by my client, Carys. She found the pain most intense in the early morning. When she woke up, she would become aware of a sick feeling in her stomach. Her muscles began to tense. She did not want to get up and face another day. What was the point? Nothing felt good, no one cared. There was a sharp feeling in her body, something like pain, without a specific location. A hollow feeling too, like hunger, yet she had no appetite for breakfast or anything else. She just wanted to curl up in bed and make the world go away, especially the images of failure and humiliation that endlessly circled in her head. The face of her employer when she had to tell him she’d made a dreadful mistake; her ex-partner’s face and his words: ‘It’s not working, Carys, you are way too demanding.’ She felt nothing would ever come right for her; she was a useless, bad person whom no one wanted in their life.
