hey there everybody and welcome back to the week by week guide to depression treatment this
is part seven and i'm your host dr dawn elise snipes
again and i've mentioned this in all the other videos i'll mention it again
in-depth videos on each of the topics that we discuss can be found at doc snipes dot com slash
youtube so if i start talking about something like mindfulness or cognitive distortions
and you don't understand what i'm talking about you can find
more information about those things on the youtube channel
like the other weeks we start out this week with a review of the morning and evening mindfulness
mindfulness logs for themes related to your physical health and well-being your emotional or
affective health and well-being your cognitions you know how you're thinking if you tend to be
more thoughtful if you're able to concentrate better if you're more optimistic uh themes related
to your environment and your relationships how is what you're doing impacting your life right now
is it helping or you know sometimes when you're especially when you start processing
traumatic stuff in your autobiography you can have some minor setbacks because
you're expending a whole lot of energy processing things and you're remembering
traumatic events or experiences and that can prompt feelings of melancholy it can be exhausting
so you may not have as much time to spend with your friends or energy to deal with their stuff
so we do want to pay attention to that and notice these things and make sure that therapy or working
through these things is part of the solution and doesn't become another problem in and of itself
we'll review meditation and distress tolerance skills that are working for you
to help you get into your wise mind we'll review your progress and trends in the baseline data
for your top three symptoms for example your your energy your ability to sleep and your mood
and remember just like i just said because we have now moved into the part where you're processing
stuff where you're going through losses and processing trauma and those sorts of things
yes you're processing them and when you finish processing them you are hopefully going to
feel safer more empowered and more connected and grounded within yourself but during this process
it can be stressful and exhausting so it's not uncommon to see energy levels for example drop
during these next few weeks while you're really going through that intense stuff
we'll review the cognitive distortions worksheets that you completed and identify themes and discuss
the loss that you began processing this past week remember you're supposed to process at least one
loss each week so we're going to start reviewing those questions that we talked about last week
you know what's the loss um how's it impacting you what are your feelings about the loss etc
we're going to talk about those in session to make sure that
you've you know really thoroughly delved into that and worked through the lost as much as
you can at this point asking yourself those questions that you were given last week and
going through them once is not necessarily going to completely help you move to acceptance but it's
going to help you see where you need to go it's going to help you start moving in that direction
in week seven we're going to continue processing grief using your week six questions
that's going to be the primary focus of the
of the session you're also going to learn about the impact of poor liver and kidney functioning
on mood energy and cognition in between sessions by watching kidney disease and mental health
you'll learn about the reciprocal impact of hormone imbalances and moods
by watching the video of the effective hormone imbalances on energy sleep depression and anxiety
and you'll learn about systematic desensitization by watching the video systematic desensitization
so these are all things that can be important and you may say well i don't have kidney disease well
great that's that's awesome however it's important to recognize that if you get even viral hepatitis
um you know hepatitis a for example or if you're drinking a lot it can impact your
liver and kidney functioning and that can impact your mental health so that's just another one
of those tidbits we throw in there or i throw in there so you can recognize and continue to
recognize the impact of your physical health on your emotional well-being and your energy
you're also going to start talking about how to develop a desensitization plan to
help you mitigate your reactions to distress triggers there are things that may contribute
to you feeling more hopeless and helpless and depressed so we're going to talk about those
we're going to talk about things that trigger your anger or your anxiety because those are
your fight-or-flight emotions which cause you to surge to expend a whole bunch of energy and when
you expend a whole bunch of energy that is going to leave you feeling fatigued when you're done
so we're going to start identifying some of those things so as you learn about systematic
desensitization you can start thinking about strategies that might be helpful to um
reduce the impact reduce the effect of some of the triggers that you encounter on a regular basis
so this week you know you're really not using or learning a lot more new skills
you're continuing to practice mindfulness in the morning and the evening completing those
worksheets you're continuing with your baseline data collection and like i said um and and i know
i've said it multiple times in this video but it's important to really drive home the
awareness that when you start processing that stuff that you have that you've had
you know stored away for so long it's going to be exhausting just like when you do spring cleaning
you know you start cleaning out those closets and stuff and it's like wow it's exhausting
partly because there's just a lot of stuff there but partly because it starts triggering
other memories that you hadn't even thought about so think about the next few weeks sort of as
spring cleaning for your mind if you will you want to continue taking your happiness breaks at lunch
even though you're working through stressful stuff or traumatic stuff grief um
it's important to also force your brain so to speak to have
to see a rainbow to have a little snippet or a little infusion if you will of
happy chemicals so taking your happiness breaks is important and because you're feeling
or maybe feeling grief or more tired you may not feel as happy doing these same things
but it is going to give your brain a break it is going to be a time where you're able to sort of
check out from the distress and focus on something that potentially could make you
feel at least a little bit more content you're going to continue monitoring your thoughts for
cognitive distortions and completing the worksheet i know it's a lot but
it's important not to slack on noticing your cognitive distortions because as you become
tired you know if you start to become tired with processing this stuff and it's exhausting
you can easily slip into a place where you start becoming more pessimistic so it's important to
be aware of those things so you don't slip into a pessimistic uh hopeless helpless pit if you will
you're also going to continue processing at least one loss or group of losses this week and
the goal is not for you to do this all on your own remember the goal is for you to go through
the questions that you got in week six to answer them to think about them and process them as much
as possible and then in session we'll go through them together and we'll start connecting the dots
regarding how these losses that you experienced back then may be contributing to your sense
of hopelessness and helplessness and depression in the present and then what can you do to improve
the next moment what can you do so the past does not continue to drag you down in the future