All depressed people worry. ‘Why did I lose that job?’ … ‘Why do people treat me like this?’ …  ‘What will I do if my partner leaves me?’ … ‘What is going to happen to me?’ … ‘How am I going to pay my bills?’ … ‘Why don’t things work out for me?’

Feelings of frustration, anxiety, anger or guilt can become overwhelming but, instead of taking action to deal with the situation, which would bring the uncomfortable emotional arousal down, once we are in this situation we feel exhausted and powerless and worry even more – creating a mountain of negative expectations. The more we expect things to be bad, the more stressed we feel.

All strong emotions focus and lock our attention and, with depression, our attention stays focused on all the bad things that seem to be happening to us, whether real or illusory.

Human Givens work with the fundamental truth that people do not develop mental illness when their innate emotional needs are being met, healthily and in balance. Working with this organising idea they employ techniques from various therapies that have proven effective (interpersonal, cognitive behavioural, solution focused) plus they add the new knowledge you have just read above that shows the importance of vividly creating new expectations in the mind of the patient to ‘kick-start’ their interest in life again.