Our approach to treating Depression comes from the principles of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapies (CBT). CBT can be broken into two major pieces: Cognitive Restructuring (a way of changing unhelpful thinking patterns) and Behavioral Activation (an approach for adjusting behavior that adds to depressed feelings).
Cognitive Restructuring: Part of treatment is to help you challenge overly critical thinking patterns. For example, a common technique that our clients use is to track their tendency to “ignore the positives”. This simple strategy can help you keep better track of your strengths and good qualities, while also nudging you to be more fair with yourself when you make a mistake. If your thinking can be tweaked to be a little more balanced – where your bad AND good qualities count, it can change your mood in a big way!
Behavioral Activation: Changing actions can really change emotions. It can be a great therapy tool to help people analyze how they spend their time. Something as simple as developing a more active schedule, such as committing to a wake-up time or an evening walk, can actually make a huge impact on depression. Behavioral Activation techniques are very useful for helping people find pleasure in life again.
What Healing Looks Like
As you chip away at dysfunctional thinking patterns and lifestyle habits that keep you stuck, your mood will slowly begin to change.
The people we work with often feel like they are “thawing out” little by little as they begin to enjoy their lives more. They find new interests and start engaging more with things they used to do.
They find that they look forward to being with people. Their daily tasks of living feel less “heavy” and more bearable. As the “thawing” continues, they notice that their first thoughts in the morning shift from “I hate this!” to something like “Hmm, this isn’t as bad anymore”.
As time moves forward and their mood continues to improve, people start changing their big beliefs around their future being horrible, their self-worth being zero, or that others can’t be trusted at all.
This is where therapy gets interesting because people start to notice that their thoughts and behaviors don’t require so much attention – they easily find a happier norm automatically.
In the end, the point of therapy for depression is not to eliminate feelings of sadness altogether – that is not possible. The point is to have sad feelings when life is genuinely sad (deaths, losses, unexpected changes, etc) but not all the time. With the right help, you can find a better way to live your life and find the happiness you have been looking for.
There is hope. Contact us right now to start your journey towards healing.
