Depression

Depression, sadness, grief, feeling “down” are all normal experiences. Often given a few weeks people feel better on their own. Sometimes, however, these feelings persist and are complicated by things going on in your present life or things from your past that make feeling better, today, difficult. When this happens people begin to feel hopeless, unmotivated, deflated and unable to enjoy their lives. You might feel overly sensitive to others. Your head might be filled with troubling thoughts that distract and disturb your day and disrupt your sleep. You probably have begun to question whether you actually CAN feel better. You’ve become hopeless.

I help people who are experiencing depression by helping them understand the meaning of their reactions which helps the healing process unfold. We look closely at the thoughts that are related to the depression, deciding if they are realistic or, as is often the case, are thoughts that may FEEL realistic but actually are NOT. Research has established that psychotherapy is a very effective way of relieving these feelings, with or without medication. Understanding why your feelings make sense, given the experiences that you’ve had, lifts the feeling of hopelessness so commonly associated with depression and helps you more actively and assertively engage with your life.