Here to answer your questions about therapy

I thought I would kick start this blog off by taking time to answer questions that are asked of me to give some insight into the therapy process, and address the question, how does therapy actually work.

The question is: How do you treat depression?

Depression is a common problem and can often lead to loss of functioning and also to suicidal thoughts (but not always). Depression can also be cyclical, effecting people for a few days or weeks then pulling back for a while so they can get back to "normal." One of the other pieces is the shame of having times that you cannot get over this thing, and feeling like a failure for giving into low motivation.

Lets say I was working with a Client, Tom, who comes in saying he is depressed I would start using what is called "Cognitive Behavioral Therapy." I would start trying to identify any triggers for depression and then looking at the emotions, physical responses, and thoughts that accompany the depressive episodes. Thoughts like, "I'm a loser" "I am letting people down" or "Why can't I hold it together. "

Looking at those depressive thoughts usually shows illogical thoughts that are easy to refute when a person is calm and doing well, but the thoughts are strong and hard to challenge when the person is depressed. I would drill down on these thoughts by asking, "What if that thought (I'm letting people down) was true, what would it mean about you Tom?" Tom might say, "I'm not dependable", "I'm inconsistent", "I am controlled by my moods". Then I'd continue to ask what if that was true, what does that mean about you? Eventually this comes to what is called a core belief, or a deeply held, usually unhelpful, belief about themselves or all people or the world in general.

These beliefs are also what are called schemas, or rules about how the world works, and the next steps involve challenging these unhealthy schemas. This will be a topic of another post, but I feel like this is a good place to stop, because this is usually a "Eureka" moment for people to see that they are being driven by past beliefs that do not usually make sense.

I will dig more into this question later, but for now I just want to make sure that I saw that this post (and this blog for that matter) do not replace professional therapy advice and does not constitute medical treatment. If anyone is feeling depressed enough to be suicidal, they should seek professional help for their own safety.