Is depression keeping you from connecting to yourself and others?
Have you lost interest in the things that used to give you pleasure? Are you feeling as if you’re walking around in a fog?
Maybe you’re having trouble getting out of bed in the morning, full of dread at the prospect of muscling through another day. Perhaps the easiest task or the simplest decision overwhelms you. You might be gripped by feelings of shame, sadness, worthlessness, helplessness, and apathy, as if you’ll never be able to take pleasure in anything ever again.
Depression robs us of who we are, sapping us of the energy that allows us to live our lives, be productive, and connect to others. It causes changes in appetite and in sleep patterns. If you’ve suffered from depression before, you’re all too familiar with waking in the early morning, unable to fall back asleep—or wanting to sleep a lot.
Struggling with depression may demand every ounce of strength you’ve got, which is why managing it is so hard to do by yourself. To make things worse, the tendency to isolate is one of depression’s most paralyzing symptoms. But what if you didn’t have to go it alone? What if there were someone to sit with you, support you, and accompany you? What if you could get help for depression?
Depression is more common than many of us realize, yet it’s hard to talk about.
It's estimated that almost seven percent of U.S. adults experience at least one major depressive episode each year. The actual number is higher, because that seven percent doesn’t include depression linked to a particular situation. Your depression may be in response to a specific life event, or because of symptoms that have plagued you steadily or recur from time to time.
Depression is still stigmatized, which can make it difficult to discuss. Those who don’t know first-hand how it feels may be hard-pressed to understand why you just can’t grit your teeth, gut it out, and power through. You may have received advice from well-meaning friends and family who believe that if you throw your shoulders back and get out of the house a bit more, it will pass.
Whether you’ve struggled for years or this is your first time contemplating help for depression, talk therapy is a first-line strategy for depression treatment. That’s because it works.
Depression treatment is a good use of the limited energy you have right now.
Many people believe that talking about depression will only serve to make it worse. Interestingly, the opposite is true: Naming your suffering helps take away its sting.
My approach to depression treatment involves a combination of going deep and finding practical solutions. This means that I’ll want to get to know you really well and hear as much about yourself as you’re ready to tell me, as well as help you acquire practical and healthy coping strategies to manage your symptoms.
I’ll place a lot of importance on listening to how you talk about depression. Working together, you and I will explore your past so we can make sense of your present. We’ll examine patterns and responses. We’ll look at your relationships with siblings, friends, romantic partners, parents, other caregivers, and even teachers to explore previous interactions that are being repeated in your day-to-day life.
Sometimes those who come for depression therapy express a fear of depending too much on a therapist. My observation is that increased independence is a common result of psychotherapy. When you get help for depression from a therapist you feel connected to, you learn to carry therapy with you after session, throughout treatment, and long after treatment is over.
Therapy is an intimate relationship and like any close relationship, trust is crucial in order to feel safe. That safety is encouraged and supported by specific boundaries that can be puzzling because they don’t exist with other close connections. It might seem counterintuitive, but those boundaries are actually what help make therapy a secure and healing place. The relationship that you and I will form is hugely important to treatment—in and of itself, it’s an agent of change.
Together, you and I can push against your depression by focusing on giving you increased awareness, realistic strategies, and even enjoyable ways to manage symptoms of depression.
Maybe you still have concerns about depression treatment….
Therapy costs money.
Yes, it does. I make every effort to keep my fee reasonable and reserve spots for sliding-scale patients, though those spots are often full. If your tooth were hurting you’d go to a dentist. If your back went out, you’d get physical therapy. Depression therapy is about the care of your mind and emotional life.
I’m not sure that therapy for depression will work.
One of the most insidious things about depression is that it makes you feel hopeless because it seems endless. My experience is that when you find the right therapist, treatment for depression does work.
In the course of therapy for depression, it’s often the case that you gradually start to see the cloud beginning to lift. You notice that the ratio of days and weeks that you’re depressed as compared to not depressed begins to change. And if depression does return, you’re better equipped to face it. You’ll tend to isolate for less time, start to regain a sense of yourself sooner than you did the last time, and symptoms won’t linger quite as long.
I should just take medication and skip talk therapy.
Medication can be helpful for those whose depression has clear biochemical roots, and for many, it’s an essential tool in moving through the roughest phases of depression. In other instances, staying on medication for an extended time is what’s needed.
Even if you decide that long-term medication is right for you, the research is clear: Medication works best when paired with talk therapy in treatment for depression. Yes, medication can help you function better so that you’re able to address painful issues. But it can’t resolve past traumas or banish harmful beliefs, behaviors, and patterns.
Depression treatment offers relief from suffering.
If you or someone you love is struggling with depression, call me at 213-807-6021 to schedule a free, 20-minute consultation. Let’s talk about how I can help.
