Depression Therapy
Are You Unable To Shake Your Sense Of Despair?
Is depression robbing you of your productivity and sense of accomplishment? Does lethargy and a lack of motivation make it hard for you to get out of bed some mornings? When a low mood settles in, are you flooded with feelings of shame, worthlessness, or the overwhelming sense that life has lost its meaning?
Depression drains you of energy, hope, and drive, making it difficult to take the necessary steps to feel better. Perhaps just thinking about the things you could do to improve your mood—like exercising, going outside, or spending time with friends—seems exhausting or impossible to put into action. The hopelessness and helplessness that pervade your thoughts keep you stuck in place.
You Might Feel Like You Either Have Insomnia Or Sleep Excessively
Your depression may be compounded by disruptions to both your sleep and eating habits. Whether you’re getting too little—or too much—sleep and food, it could be contributing to severe fatigue, lack of focus, headaches, cramps, or digestive problems. When you feel this way, you might avoid spending time with friends rather than have to fake feeling okay. Or perhaps your relationship with your partner has suffered because you are often sad, irritable, or withdrawn at home.
Without motivation, you might feel helpless to change how you feel. Because you assume that you should be able to pull out of this malaise yourself, you might feel guilty for failing, which in turn only intensifies your sense of despair. Recurring thoughts of death or suicide could be sending your mind to a dark place that is difficult to escape from.
If only you didn’t feel so sad and hopeless and had the energy to do the things you once enjoyed, you could get back to living the life you want. Fortunately, therapy offers compassionate support to help you explore the underlying causes of your depression and effective treatment to address your symptoms.
Have any questions? Send me a message!
Depression Is A Widespread Mental Health Issue
As isolating as it feels to suffer from depression, it is a common mental health disorder. In 2021, “An estimated 21 million adults in the United States—8.3 percent—had at least one major depressive episode.” [1] According to the U.S. Census Bureau Household Pulse Survey, nearly one-third of adults—32.3 percent—reported anxiety and depression symptoms in 2023. [2] And statistics gathered by the World Health Organization (WHO) confirm that “depression is about 50 percent more common among women than among men.” [3]
Many Factors Contribute To Depression
A combination of nature and nurture contributes to depression, including physiological, genetic, and environmental factors. Further, recent epigenetic research has studied how intergenerational trauma gets passed down within families and increases the likelihood of depression. [4] [5] Depression is commonly a response to other factors, such as past trauma, the birth of a child, the loss of a loved one, dealing with a chronic illness, or a side effect of certain medications.
Unfortunately, the stigma and shame associated with depression often prevent many of us from seeking help. We might feel embarrassed to admit that we aren’t happy when we perceive that we don’t have anything to complain about. However, when we ignore how we feel and try to limp along, nothing changes, and we remain stuck.
The good news is that therapy can help address depression related to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), intergenerational trauma, complicated grief, the postpartum period, chronic illness, a relationship ending, or your current life circumstances. Working with a therapist gives you a safe space to talk about depression without judgment and collaborate on a suitable treatment plan that resonates with you.
Depression Therapy Offers A Road Map Back To Wellness
Depression is an insidious mental health disorder that can negatively impact all facets of your life. As your therapist, I can help you recognize your depression symptoms, such as feeling irritable, crying out of nowhere, or lacking the energy to maintain basic self-care—like brushing your teeth or freshening up for the day. Once you thoroughly understand all the ways depression affects you, we can work together to gradually dismantle it. In counseling, we will also identify the root causes of depression that may be linked to past trauma, attachment wounds as a child, grief from the loss of a loved one, relationship struggles, postpartum, chronic illness, orlife dissatisfaction.
What To Expect In Sessions
I take a holistic approach to therapy, addressing how depression affects the physical, social, psychological, and spiritual aspects of your life. When depression takes hold, it’s easy to become immobilized and retreat from the world. However, once you set achievable goals and take the first small step forward, positive momentum begins to build. Soon, you will realize that the routines and activities you’ve been missing help ground you in the present moment and restore joy.
Depending on your needs and preferences, you will be encouraged to:
● Establish and maintain a healthy routine that includes consistent self-care;
● Monitor your diet since what and how much you eat can contribute to depression;
● Take up new hobbies or rediscover old ones you may have set aside;
● Connect with supportive people with similar interests, such as joining a book club or hiking group;
● Engage in regular physical activities that resonate with you;
● Spend time with friends doing something enjoyable;
● Journal your thoughts to foster self-understanding and self-compassion;
● Express your emotions through art;
● Regularly tend to your spiritual needs.
The Modalities I Use In Depression Counseling
For depression, taking a solution-focused approach that identifies what is working in your life and builds upon it can be a helpful way to lay the groundwork for recovery. For example, I may ask you to describe what your ideal day would look like if you weren’t depressed so we can put a tangible plan in place to achieve it.
Fortunately, there are evidence-based treatments for depression, including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR). Using CBT techniques, we aim to identify and change behaviors that maintain your depression as well as challenge negative distorted thoughts, develop more realistic perspectives, and learn new ways of thinking. If your depression stems from traumatic experiences, EMDR can help process these memories to diminish their emotional intensity and reframe how you think about them.
Additionally, maintaining a daily practice that incorporates somatic exercises, such as deep breathing and mindfulness check-ins that tap into your five senses, can help align your mind and body to further alleviate depression.
Walking out of the shadow cast by depression takes commitment, but you won’t be alone. Working closely with a therapist offers the consistent support you need to persevere and find customized solutions that help you manage your depression symptoms and maintain hope that change is possible.
But Maybe You’re Not Sure If Depression Therapy Is Right For You…
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When you’re depressed, it’s easy to lose perspective on how bad things have gotten. Although you may convince yourself that your low mood hasn’t impacted your life, your lack of energy, negative thoughts, and brain fog may be affecting your judgment. It’s okay to admit you need help and would benefit from depression counseling. Working with a counselor offers you tools and strategies to address the symptoms of depression as well as address its root causes.
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Many people assume that a psychiatric condition requires medication, often because of the now-discredited idea that a “chemical imbalance” causes anxiety and depression. In reality, many have experienced relief from depression with psychotherapy alone, which has the advantage of no side effects. It is ultimately your decision whether you think anti-depressants would be a beneficial adjunct to depression therapy.
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Your health is a confidential subject at the workplace. State and federal laws prohibit employers from inquiring about the specifics of your physical or mental health. Further, it’s illegal for employers to discriminate against you due to a mental health condition.
Depression Therapy Offers Hope
Your path toward a brighter future starts with the first step. If you would like to find out more about depression therapy with me, please call 720-935-1702 or visit my contact page to set up a free,15-minute consultation today. For your convenience, my services are all online.
[1] https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/major-depression
[2] https://www.census.gov/data/experimental-data-products/household-pulse-survey.html
[3] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/depression
[4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4591211/
[5] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32312110/
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