Information
We offer to help you with lots of different types of complaints. Below you will find information about common types of complaints you can contact us for.
What is low mood?
If you have depression you will face a miserable, disheartened mood for a period of two weeks or more. Sometimes this period of low mood can last longer, or even return after a short period of time where you felt better.
You are likely to experience sadness, loss of interest or pleasure in things that you do, or low self-esteem. You can also suffer from a change in your appetite.
You may have trouble sleeping and feel restless or you may be sleeping more and feel tired and exhausted. You may feel very guilty and worthless about things in your life, find it difficult to concentrate and make decisions.
You can also have thoughts about death or plans for suicide in this depressive state. Although, not all characteristics need to be present for you to have depression.
What is anxiety?
When suffering from anxiety you react physically and psychologically to a situation, trigger or event that you think is dangerous. Anxiety or fear is an emotion that everyone feels when there is imminent danger.
It causes our bodies to prepare ourselves to act on the situation, to escape the situation, or to wait and not act at all. This is often called fight, flight or freeze response.
If you have an anxiety disorder you experience this same response in situations that are not dangerous. This will have a big impact on your daily life and functioning.
Anxiety complaints can show themselves in many ways, for example:
- A lot of anxiety and uncontrollable worry about various, often every day, issues.
- Fear of being somewhere that you cannot escape, or where you may be embarrassed. Or a fear of being in places where you could not get any help if you had a panic attack.
- Suffering from panic attacks that occur unexpectedly, for example fear of fainting, going crazy.
- Fear that others think negatively about you in social situations.
- Specific phobias, for example of spiders or heights.
- Fear of getting a serious illness with mild or extreme symptoms. You notice that you are often concerned with physical complaints and illnesses
- Anxiety complaints that do not fall within the above categories, but do fit the diagnosis of anxiety disorder.
What is trauma?
Experiencing something traumatic, can have a huge impact on your life and functioning. For example, you may experience nightmares, relive the traumatic experience, and often feel alert or frightened.
Many people remain very cautious, so they don’t end up in this situation again. You may also avoid certain places or activities, so you do not have to think about the traumatic event even more.
This can make your anxiety worse. It may get so bad that you cannot process the event. If this is the case, you may suffer from trauma.
Within Oh My Mood we pay attention to your trauma-related complaints and the ways you can deal with these. For example through EMDR, an effective trauma therapy.
What are obsessions and compulsions?
An obsessive compulsive disorder is characterised by recurring thoughts (obsession or intrusion) and/or behaviours (compulsions) that you have little control over and make you anxious. Acting on your compulsive behaviours results in a temporary decrease in anxiety.
There are different types of obsessive thoughts and compulsive acts. Some examples are having a fear of an accident or illness, or that something bad will happen to you or a loved one.
We often see that someone may feel a strong need to check things that they have little control over. This behaviour creates tension and anxiety.
These compulsive behaviours then help to reduce the unpleasant feeling of tension and anxiety in the short term. There are also many types of compulsive behaviours, for example, compulsion to do things in a certain order, not touching certain things, or excessive cleaning. Body focussed compulsions, such as nail biting, skin picking or hair pulling, are also a type of common compulsions.
The environment around you may not understand why you perform these compulsions, but if you have compulsive complaints you will experience a lot of tension and stress if you do not perform the acts. Serious compulsive complaints will strongly influence your functioning in daily life and can be very time consuming.
Physical Complaints
Everyone will experience physical complaints or pain at some point in their life. This may include fatigue, muscle tension, headache, back or abdominal pain.
Sometimes, the symptoms will not go away, or, you can’t find a physical cause that explain your symptoms. Maybe you can no longer live like you’re used to due to a (chronic) disease. This can cause you to develop a low mood and negative thoughts.
You may have low expectations for the future, see no solution to your problems and do not feel as if you’re taken seriously. Because you cannot find a solution to solve your problem, you may adjust your life and avoid doing things you previously enjoyed doing.
This means you are limiting your functioning and your pleasure in life. In the short term, these adjustments may help you as you’ll experience less pain, but in the long term the complaints often remain. The physical symptoms you experience can also cause other symptoms, such as anxiety or depression.
Within Oh My Mood you can learn to get insight into your complaints and how to deal with your complaints in a different way. This often means that you will have fewer problems with your complaints or that they have less of an impact on your daily functioning.