Counseling for Depression
“A big part of depression is feeling really lonely, even if you’re in a room full of a million people.” — Lilly Singh
Are you feeling hopeless, worthless, or not like yourself? Do you feel numb, sad all of the time, or that you no longer care about the things you used to love?
Depression can shut down life and shut out what we love.
Depression, the most prevalent mental health disorder, is a mood disorder that prevents an individual from living a normal, healthy life. While daily up and down shifts in mood or short-term emotional responses to life events are healthy, depression can cause significant disruption in every aspect of life, including work, school, relationships, and impair everyday functioning to the point that affected individuals struggle to care for themselves and others.
Depression, like most other mental health disorders, can have a complex mix of contributing biological, environmental, and psychosocial factors.
Symptoms of depression include:
- Feeling hopeless, worthless, guilty
- Isolating, withdrawing from friends and family
- Crying more than usual
- Physical pain, heaviness, body aches
- Changes in sleeping and eating patterns
- Feeling like you are not yourself, feeling lost
Therapy can help individuals explore and address the causes and effects of depression, while providing support and understanding.
For example, together we can explore core beliefs (I am not lovable, I am not enough), maladaptive thought patterns (all-or-nothing thinking, discounting the positive), attachment wounds, traumatic experiences, family and relational dynamics in order to help you better understand the obstacles in your life and empower you to find hope, meaning, purpose, and work toward living a life without depression.
So often depression makes us feel alone, and our society can make you feel that depression is something to be ashamed of - but you are not alone, asking for help is a brave and amazing act of self-love, and there is hope.
If you are looking to work on your depression, please click below to get in touch with me.
Reasons clients come to see me.
Self-Esteem
If you struggle with feelings of self-worth or confidence, therapy can be a place to work on self-esteem. Self-esteem refers to your beliefs about yourself, how you believe others perceive you, your estimation of your abilities, strengths, and weaknesses. The combination of these variables can create your overall sense of self-worth. Self-esteem is not just liking yourself - it also impacts what you feel you deserve, whether you respect your own thoughts, feelings, goals, boundaries, and limits, and it can impact relationships and motivation.
Women’s Issues
Women can experience a number of gender-related sociocultural, psychological and biological challenges that can detrimentally impact mental health. Statistically, women are 20-40% more likely to develop a mental illness than men. According to several large-scale psychological studies conducted in the 1990s, “Women tend to view themselves more negatively than men and that is a vulnerability factor for many mental health problems.” Women are significantly more likely to develop depression and anxiety.
Life Transitions
Life involves a great deal of change, and change can cause a great deal psychological distress around fear of the unknown, change in role or identity, shifts in relationships. Maybe you ended a relationship, switched careers, graduated college, moved to a different state. Maybe you feel stuck and like you want to make a change but do not know what that might be or how to get started. Therapy can provide support, validation, and a place to problem-solve.
Stress and Burnout
Do you tend to feel like you cannot ever stop, or do you feel completely unmotivated? When faced with chronic stress, we tend to default to “over-functioning” and “under-functioning” - or a hybrid of the two, as we cycle through pushing extremely hard until we “crash.” Over-functioning looks like trying to reduce stress by doing everything yourself, but leads to burnout and resentment. Under-functioning involves freezing, avoiding responsibility, tasks piling up, feeling overwhelmed. American culture tends to promote individualism and over-functioning at the cost of necessary rest and life balance.
