Counselling takes place when a counsellor sees a client in a private and confidential setting to explore a difficulty the client is having, distress they may be experiencing or perhaps their dissatisfaction with life, or loss of a sense of direction and purpose.

    By listening attentively and patiently, the counsellor can begin to perceive the difficulties from the client's point of view and can help them to see things more clearly, possibly from a different perspective. Counselling is a way of enabling choice or of reducing confusion.

    In a counselling session, the client can explore various aspects of their life and feelings, talking about them freely and openly in a way that is rarely possible with friends or family. Bottled up feelings such as anger, anxiety, grief and embarassment can become very intense and counselling offers an opportunity to explore them, with the possibility of making them easier to understand.

    If you have been feeling down, or out-of-sorts, your thoughts can easily turn to whether you are depressed or not. Signs of depression include:

• Exhaustion on waking
• Disrupted sleep, sometimes through upsetting dreams
• Early morning waking and difficulty getting back to sleep
• Doing less of what you used to enjoy
• Difficulty concentrating during the day
• Improved energy as the day goes on
• Anxious worrying and intrusive upsetting thoughts
• Becoming emotional or upset for no particular reason
• Shortness of temper, or irritability

    Not all people have all of these, and some have different signs. But if you are feeling really down, you should do something about it.

    Although it is often classed as 'mental illness', clinical depression often has as many physical symptoms as mental. The feeling or emotions that are depression symptoms actually begin to cause the physical effects.

    If you are depressed at the moment some of the following symptoms may sound familiar:

• You feel miserable and sad.
• You feel exhausted a lot of the time with no energy.
• You feel as if even the smallest tasks are sometimes impossible.
• You seldom enjoy the things that you used to enjoy- you may be off sex or food or may 'comfort eat' to excess.
• You feel very anxious sometimes.
• You don't want to see people or are scared to be left alone. Social activity may feel hard or impossible.
• You find it difficult to think clearly.
• You feel like a failure and/or feel guilty a lot of the time.
• You feel a burden to others.
• You sometimes feel that life isn't worth living.
• You can see no future. There is a loss of hope. You feel all you've ever done is make mistakes and that's all that you ever will do.
• You feel irritable or angry more than usual.
• You feel you have no confidence.
• You spend a lot of time thinking about what has gone wrong, what will go wrong or what is wrong about yourself as a person. You may also feel guilty sometimes about being critical or others (or even thinking critically about them).
• You feel that life is unfair.
• You have difficulty sleeping or wake up very early in the morning and can't sleep again. You seem to dram all night long and sometimes have disturbing dreams.
• You feel that life has/is 'passing you by.'
• You may have physical aches and pains which appear to have no physical cause, such as back pain.

*definition of Counselling is from The BACP or British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy
**signs and symptoms of Depression is from The Depression Learning Path by Uncommon Knowledge