The "Blues" or a depressed mood can cause a persistent feeling of sadness and loss of interest in things and activities once enjoyed.  It can also cause difficulty with thinking, memory, eating and sleeping.  When someone is suffering from the Blues, they may find difficulty concentrating, remembering, and making decisions.  There can be a sense of tiredness and loss of energy, a decrease in productivity at work, and even a loss of libido.

It is like “living a life of quiet desperation.”  A person may put on a persona (a mask) just to get through the day and be suffering in silence or “smiling and laughing on the outside yet dying on the inside.”  Some days a person may even find it difficult to get out of bed.

A person may feel worthless, fearful, worried, hopeless, helpless, and irritable.  There can even be excessive or inappropriate guilt.   Other descriptions of feelings that are signs of the Blues or a depressed mood include: lousy, discouraged, powerless, dissatisfied, in despair, and sulky.

Mainly, the Blues or depression is literally holding in unexpressed feelings and even unhealed/unresolved disturbing or traumatic memories.  It can indicate repressed or buried emotional pain.  There is a feeling of disappointment or frustration or no longer being in control of your life.  Experiencing distressing life events like a significant loss -  unemployment, divorce, illness, death of a loved one, family problems, childhood experiences like being physically or emotionally abused, or aging can all leave you feeling down and depressed.

It can be caused by “frozen anger” coming from an experience that caused a feeling of anger from hurt, or being treated unfairly, and at the time you couldn’t express the feeling of anger properly, so the anger becomes suppressed and builds up and causes depression.  It can come from being alone, too stressed, physically exhausted and having no one to talk to.  It can come from types of physical illness which can alter how the brain works and cause depression such as hormonal problems, viral infections, painful or lasting illness, e.g., arthritis, heart disease, and cancer.

As you can see, there are many causes of the Blues or depression, and it might find you when you least expect it.  It's a normal part of life to feel down from time to time.  But there's no reason for you to continue feeling that way.  You do have the power within you to beat those Blues!  All you really need is the drive to get rid of them.  The rest is all just a matter of how.

Here are some tips and techniques to help you kick the Blues to the curb!

Use one or more of these strategies the next time the Blues bring you down.  Just one of these tips may be just the thing to help you break free and turn that frown upside down into a smile!

You may consider seeking the services of a Life Coach who is also trained as a Hypnotherapist.
A Life Coach can guide you to put into action solutions to clear your Blues or depression.  AND since the root cause of depression can be from repressed and buried emotional pain (i.e., pent-up feelings of anger, sadness, grief, fear, and unhealed, stored disturbing or traumatic memories), a Hypnotherapist can guide you in clearing and releasing these buried feelings and the disturbing or traumatic memories.

Life Coaching and/or Hypnotherapy is recommended in combination with other medical interventions for clinical depression, as the Life Coach can clear the root cause(s) of the depression alongside medication and other mental health treatments.