Depression Specialist in China – Cognitive Psychologist

Depressions specialist in China available for psychological treatment of depression. The working methods in my practice is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, also called CBT.

How are depression and stress related?

When a person is depressed there is always a certain level of stress present. Almost always. The human organism simply gets stressed at a fundamental level when the psychological condition of depression is present. If a person has a depression, and has had it for some time, then in the course of a series of therapeutic sessions we will simply have to address the stress level.

We need to assess how severe the stress level is and for how long it has been like that. The consequences of stress on the organism as a whole matter for depression. We need to get the perspective of body and stress into the picture as a whole in the treatment of depression. We also need to have the body and stress perspective in mind when we work towards establishing a long term sustainable condition of not being depressed.

We find some connections between stress and depression, that we perhaps would not have expected intuitively. It is almost not possible to have a depression while not simultaneously having a certain level of stress. But, interestingly, the arrow does not point in the reverse direction. A person can be relatively severely stressed and not have any depression at all. At least in a short and medium time perspective.

When a medium to severe stress condition has been present in a person in medium to long time perspective, we begin to see the stress condition simply cause the depression. A high level of stress wears down the physical and mental health. In a neural perspective the resources get depleted and we begin to see neuroanatomical changes. We see problems with memory and the mood becomes unstable in many directions.

So what we see here is a complex relationship between stress and depression. In early stages of depression, it will raise a certain stress level. In a longer time perspective the stress condition begins to damage the neurological fundament and thus feeds back to the depression and deepen if further.

And here is a situation that needs to be acknowledged and assessed in relation to the depression. Stress at a severe level can reach a point of becoming self sustaining. Very difficult to get out of. There is in some sense for the nerve system a point of no return , from which the reduction of hypertension is not easy. If a client has a depression and is in that stage of stress, it is not realistic to reduce the depression without simultaneously work to reduce the stress level. Luckily, this is a task we understand the nature of and we know how to manage.

Meditation can reduce depression

Activities like exercise, deep relaxation and meditation can be very helpful in fighting depression. When I see clients I don’t insist that they start doing these activities. But, as a psychologist and depression specialist in China, I will present the good arguments that speaks for doing them. If my client is interested we can include meditation and deep relaxation as part of our work to reduce depression.

As mentioned above, the cognitive work with restructuring of negative automatic thoughts plays a central role in the battle against depression. Meditation brings in one more method in the work towards getting rid of negative thoughts.

Meditation is a concept that can mean many different things. The way I work with meditation and teach it, we keep it simple. We work with attention training. We work with training the mental ability to focus the attention on a chosen object for a long time. The object is usually the breathing. We work with this in a systematic way over a longer period of time. In this way you train your minds ability to consciously keep a focus. It makes a difference to train exactly that.

The consequence with regards to thoughts is easy to see. And here we have a selective interest in the negative thoughts and the tendency to rumination. Still keeping it simple. By keeping your attention on breathing over a prolonged period of time, not allowing the mind to engage in anything else, you block the minds tendency to ruminate. You block one of the central dynamics that sustain depression. It stops.

In that way meditation is an effective tool for going against depression. If my client has the interest and temper for it, meditation can be taken pretty far. It is a strong

My experience with China

I have traveled to China many times. Around 10 times I have visited China. I have mainly visited Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. I study Chinese but do not yet speak Chinese fluently. In summer 2012 I did a one month Chinese course on Dong Hua Da Xue in Shanghai. I am very interested in Chinese culture and history.

While growing up in Denmark, and have history classes in primary school and high school, we had almost no education about Chinese history. I discovered later the richness and long history of Chinese culture. I also discovered how the different European countries had behaved in China during the last 2-300 years. With my own eyes saw the French, German and British architecture in Shanghai.

I see clients from China now and the working language is English. I aim to be able to work with clients in Chinese in a few years.