Have you ever felt like this picture? You are sinking and looking for help. You are not alone! 

Dr. Chris Phillips is a clinical psychologist that specializes in pain and injury. Anxiety and depression are common throughout our society and one of the biggest concerns in a family practice. Anxiety is when we feel helpless and depression is when we feel hopeless. This can be important when assessing our emotions and feelings.

Anxiety is when we feel helpless

Depression is when we feel hopeless

One big idea to start with..

EMOTION versus FACT

Stay in the present. The intensity of these emotions will ebb and flow. They have an endpoint. Treatment can help with immediate symptoms and sustained improvement for life.

Starting point...

Recognition of being present. Ask these questions.

What is happing to me now?

What am I feeling and thinking?

Breathe, recognize the difference between a thought and a fact. Emotion and fact. The emotion does not necessarily have evidence that something is as difficult as it might be. It is an emotion. 

We can have a sense that “I am just the sum of what I am thinking”. We need to recognize that our thoughts are a processing of that statement, and are not representative of who we are as a person or of our value or even the context of where we are. Our thoughts are just information, but they don’t necessarily have the sum of reality. We are not contained to the intensity of the emotion or that thought. They are an experience. There is hope past that.

We are NOT just the sum of what we think...

You are not alone. Reach out to friends, family, and even professionals like Dr. Phillips, for help and guidance. Life was meant to be lived together, with others.