What Depression Is Trying to Tell You

“Melancholy gives the soul an opportunity to express a side of its nature that is as valid as any other, but is hidden out of our distaste for its darkness and bitterness.” - Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul, p138

Depression rarely arrives as grief. It arrives as flatness. Most people who come to me describe the same handful of things: numb, drained, going through the motions, unable to feel much about anything including the things they used to love. Whether you’re struggling with low mood, burnout, or a sense of meaninglessness, this is somewhere to begin talking about it. I offer holistic therapy for depression, drawing on relational and transpersonal work, helping you reconnect with your vitality and sense of purpose. Transpersonal means connection: with others, with inner soul, purpose and spirit. You are more than your psyche or your problems.

What Depression Can Look Like

• Ongoing sadness, emotional numbness, or apathy
• Loss of motivation, hope, or clarity
• Changes in sleep or appetite
• Isolation or difficulty connecting in relationships
• Spiritual crisis or a deep sense of emptiness
• Intrusive or conflicting thoughts

If those last thoughts sometimes turn toward not wanting to carry on, please don’t wait for a session - Samaritans are there any time, day or night, free, on 116 123. I’ll still be here when you’re ready to talk further.

These symptoms can feel overwhelming, but they are not who you are. Most of us put this off for a long time before doing anything about it. Saying out loud what has been going on, including what feels true but has usually been dismissed, often brings some relief on its own, simply in being met. Depression can, in its own way, be a signal that something in you is calling for attention and transformation.

Depression Is Not Sadness

This distinction matters more than it sounds, because people arrive apologising for not being sad enough to warrant help.

Sadness tends to move. It usually has an object, it rises and falls, and it often knows what it is about. Depression can be quite different: flatter than it is painful, harder to attach to anything, and slow to shift. Many people describe not being able to cry at all, which can be one of the loneliest parts of it.

Not everyone experiences it that way, and some people do feel profoundly sad. But if you have been waiting to feel sad enough to justify asking for help, that wait may not come. Flatness is reason enough.

How You Came to the Word

Depression is a word that covers a lot of ground. The clinical definition is a useful shared language and worth having. It is also looser than it sounds. When the main diagnostic manual was tested, two clinicians interviewing the same person often disagreed about whether that person was depressed. The researchers running the trial described the level of agreement as questionable.

Which is part of why I am less interested in the label than in how you came to it. Whether a doctor gave it to you, or you reached for it on your own, or someone else used it about you first. What it covers in your case and what it leaves out. How it actually is, hour to hour. That usually tells us more than the label does.

What Depression Might Be Protecting

None of this means you should endure it, or that the meaning has to be found before relief is allowed. If you want it to stop, that is reason enough to come.

Depression often turns out to be vitality with nowhere to go. Anger that was never safe to have, swallowed and turned inwards. Grief that was never given room. A life carefully arranged around what you were supposed to want, which worked for years until the arrangement quietly ran out of fuel.

Seen that way, the flatness is not a malfunction. It is a shutdown, and shutdowns happen for reasons. Something in you stopped, and it usually stopped to prevent something worse.

Winnicott put it more strongly still. He argued that depression is not simply a failure of functioning, but takes a self that has held together well enough to be capable of it. “Always, depression implies ego strength”, he wrote, and depression coming on, continuing and lifting “indicates that the ego structure has held over a phase of crisis. This is a triumph of integration.” He went as far as calling the capacity to become depressed “an achievement of emotional growth” (The Value of Depression, 1963).

That can be hard to hear while you are in it, and it is not meant as consolation. What makes it useful is simpler than that: whatever has held you together this far is real, and it is the same thing we would be working with. Strength of that kind can be built. It is not something you either have or do not.

The question what is this for is worth asking alongside how do I make it stop, and the first often turns out to answer the second.

The Shame Around It

For many of us the hardest part is not the flatness but the shame that comes with it. Being a burden. Being weak. Having failed at something everyone else seems to manage.

The shame is what keeps it hidden, and hiding it is part of what keeps it going. This is where I see the greatest relief come from, and it does not wait for the depression to lift. It comes from being able to say it without apologising for it, and from finding that the parts we are most ashamed of are bearable once they are not carried alone.

When It Becomes Familiar

Some of us know this part of ourselves better than any other. It has been there a long time and it is predictable, and there is a strange comfort in that. Letting go of it can feel like letting go of who we are, which is a real loss and not a small one.

The work is not to strip it away. It is to make contact with the other parts, the more alive ones that have been buried longer, so that there is somewhere else to stand. Part of that is noticing whose voice we took in and now use on ourselves, and what it costs us in kindness towards ourselves.

More Than Symptom Relief

The work is integrative. It draws on humanistic therapy and close listening, on spiritual and transpersonal insight informed by contemplative traditions including Buddhism, on somatic awareness of what the body holds, and on psychosynthesis and parts work, reconnecting you with your inner Self.

It is also relational. Much of what keeps depression in place has never been brought into relationship with anyone, including the early primal wound that often sits underneath a persistent low mood. Bringing the hidden or denied parts of ourselves into relationship is part of what heals, and that happens between two people rather than alone.

So depression is not treated as a failure, but as a call to growth.

Who This Is For

I work with men and women navigating depression, including:

• Men facing emotional numbness, shame, or isolation
• Students and young adults managing stress, identity, or purpose
• Women experiencing burnout, overwhelm, or low self-worth
• Spiritual explorers confronting existential questions or deep emotional challenges

Psychosynthesis offers a creative, flexible approach, helping you move toward wholeness in your own way. As inner confidence grows, real change follows - you become more able to make the changes you actually want in your life.

A Note on Medication

My starting point is to be alongside you in it: how it has actually been for you, what you have made of it, what you tell yourself about taking it or not taking it, and what you feel you need. Some of the people I work with are on antidepressants, some are not, and some have been in the past. All of it is worth talking about, and your own sense of how it is for you is the best guide we have to the work.

I am not a doctor and I do not advise on medication. If you are taking something, I assume you and your GP arrived at that together, and I respect how you got there. If anything we explore here makes you want to change it, that is a conversation for them, and I will point you back to them.

How Sessions Work

Holistic therapy for depression is tailored to suit your story, pace, and needs - there’s no fixed formula. I work from practice rooms in Farringdon, and online. What we talk about stays between us, within the BACP ethical framework. Together, we work toward greater clarity, emotional balance, and self-understanding, at whatever pace feels right for you.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is this a substitute for medical treatment?
No - if you think you may be experiencing clinical depression, it’s worth speaking with your GP alongside any talking therapy. Counselling and medical support can work well together.

How is this different from just talking to a friend?
A trained, confidential space allows you to be fully honest without managing anyone else’s reaction, and to explore patterns - not just vent about a bad week - with someone trained to help you understand what’s underneath.

How long does depression counselling take?
This varies significantly by person. Some notice a shift within several weeks; for others, especially where depression is longstanding, the work continues over a longer period.

Can depression counselling be done online?
Yes - depression counselling London and beyond can be delivered online for those based outside the city. In-person work in Farringdon, London, is recommended where it’s an option, as it tends to support deeper work.