Depression and Anxiety
Common symptoms and their cause
The most common symptoms and reasons for a person to suffer from depression and anxiety include:
1. The person can not feel happiness after achieving something, feels like whatever he/she does is not enough, and even if he/she feels that they have done enough they do not allow themselves to feel rewarded and satisfied. The reason for this behaviour usually lies in excessive demands from their close environment, the use of verbal or physical abuse while asking for something to be done and in how the person perceived at a younger age the terms of ‘doing things‘ for others or for themselves, in the pursuit of trying to be a good, a kind person. The young child is not capable to understand what is good for him/her if their parents were strict, abusive or stressed, and perceives the things he has to do, for exmple eating, washing, studying, as their parents’ needs and not their own and can not accept that what they are being asked to do could also be beneficial to them. Furthermore, depression and anxiety usually manifests on persons who try to prove themselves through academic excellence, a successful career or gaining publicity and wealth in order to prove their strict parents wrong. The contradicting logical or illogical decisions the person has made through his life result in mental health problems and the person feels like he/she can not accept the reality of the situation.
2. The person feels that everyone is fake or inferior to them, that others are approaching him/her because he/she is rich, good looking, popular with the other sex or even famous, in other words he/she feels others do not appreciate him/her for what he truly is and are just using him/her. Loneliness is the primary problem for a person in this category, constantly pretending to be someone else and conflicting emotions, like the need to feel loved and appreciated but not finding a suitable partner to achieve this. What lies behind all this is that, although successful at some aspects of life, the person still has insecurities from a young age, the need to be recognised and loved, to prove his capabilities to his close environment and falsely depends his opinion about himself/herself on how others see him/her. Another common reason for these symptoms is that one of the two parents appeared ‘weak‘ and the ‘stronger‘ one referred to the ‘weaker’ parent as irrational and ‘crazy’. The young child then perceives people who appear to be weak as too needy and as somebody who’s opinion doesn’t matter, somebody who is not able to provide them with the recognition they need and as someone who uses them for their own benefit.
3.The person feels constantly that others are better than him/her at every aspect of life, such as beauty, career, friendship, love life, health, wealth and has low self esteem. Most common causes for this result are constant comparison with others by their close environment, bullying at school, and in what the person perceives as ‘success‘, ‘beauty’ and generally what he presumed is an accomplishment. The person often feels helpless and unlucky and unable to make friends or find a partner, chooses to stay at home and keeps a distance from social activities. A person in this category did not manage, from a young age, to find how to treat other people in order to gain what he/she wants, or is unable to adopt a certain behaviour to achieve what he/she wants due to their ‘I want to be kind’ philosophy. They tend to be attracted to ‘cold‘ people from category 2, they try to please everyone and as a result are considered unworthy.
4.The person needs to constantly be in love with someone in order to be able to function in every day life. He/She feels heartbroken and anxious when their love partner doesn’t respond immediately to their calls or messages, becomes obsessive over the one they are in love with, and feels that the other is responsible for their emotional state, they think they don’t have control over themselves. Every everyday activities feel pointless without their loved one in case of separation. What lies behind these symptoms, is a very low self esteem derived from either their parents’ divorce, a parent or close relative who died when they were young, or an ‘abusive‘ parent and a ‘savior‘ parent. The fear of death, the fear of loneliness and abandonment triggers an elusive illusion that they are in love and see the other as beautiful/handsome. The result is that they misjudge people, they can not choose the right partner for them, they always feel that they give more than they take, and they can not execute the base of every relationship, which is give and take.
5.The person feels depressed and anxious for a long period of time after the death or the abandonment of a parent or someone close to them. This usually happens because the person that left or died was a lifeboat to them. They could show them their true self and feel accepted, the person helped them and guided them to make the right decisions, they could be kind, forgiving and logical thanks to this person. People in this category, at some point in their lives, rejected their own logic because of difficulties they faced, because they were not able to find a solution in a difficult situation, they drove themselves into a dead end and depended on others to define themselves and their actions. They have learned to survive through someone coming to their rescue, sometimes even a God, fate, and fail to recognize their own potential and capabilities.
6. The person suffers from panick attacks or agoraphobia. The causes for panick attacks can vary. Usually the person feels trapped in an effort to try to please their loved ones and at the same time to satisfy his/her own needs. Another cause can be a childhood trauma, an over anxious parent and contradictive beliefs a person has adopted during his/her life. Agoraphobia can develop to a person whose close environment was very strict about how to behave around strangers, relatives and family friends. It also occurs to people with very low self esteem and mental health problems who are very anxious about how others will see them, or that maybe someone will observe them and discover his/her mental ilness. They suffer from an inferiority syndrome and often feel ashamed to show themselves in public.