Your life has become a struggle, and you may not even remember the exact moment you started feeling that way. Eating and sleeping are messed up. You are exhausted but either can’t fall asleep or you awaken through the night. Your sex drive is practically non existent, and nothing you loved or cared about before cheers you up. If any of this sounds familiar you may be suffering from Depression.
Depression is a Mood Disorder that causes you to feel sad, angry, and worthless most of the time. You may be tearful, and may even be experiencing “brain fog” which is when you seem forgetful or spacey.
You may be experiencing physical changes in addition to emotional ones. Your eating and sleeping schedules will feel like they’ve been turned upside down. You may not be hungry at all, or you may be eating much more than before you were depressed. You may be severely fatigued all day, unable to get off the couch because you are exhausted and sad. You may not feel tired during the day but when you go to bed at night you either can’t fall asleep for hours, or if you do you wake up frequently, tossing and turning.
Depression can also cause actual physical pain including headaches, back and muscle pain.
Seeing a therapist really isn’t as daunting as it may feel.I like to tell my patients that I don’t look at you as if you are broken and I am fixed. I have issues too. I just have a lot of education in a field to help you. I’ve spent many years on your side of the couch!
Therapy with me includes helping you to find out what is behind your emotional struggles right now. We look at all of the things in your life that are negatively influencing you. Some may be recent events, others difficulties may have their root in your childhood.
I am just someone who has been trained to help you identify where you attained your negative self-esteem and what you are feeling, and why. Then through individual sessions we help you identify what’s going on and release the feelings of sadness or being stuck .
During our first appointment, I will give you a link to a Stress Management MP3 that I created. It is a gentle hypnotic exercise to help you decrease your anxiety, improve your sleeping and balance out changes in your diet that have been cause by your depressed mood.
Our psychotherapy journey includes talking about what has been going on and more importantly how you are feeling about it. I also will teach you various relaxation, Meditation, or Hypnotic Techniques to help you reduce your Anxiety, which often accompanies Depression.
If some of this sounds a bit vague it’s because your treatment plan will be unique to you.
I understand how scary it is to even consider googling for a therapist, much less actually picking up the phone and calling a therapist. We live in a society that gives us the message that we must be strong, pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. Sometimes the messages we get from childhood and social media are wrong. Asking for help IS a sign of strength. Sometimes being strong means knowing when to ask for help.
Everyone who comes to me is scared. Scared of sharing their pain. Scared that I might think less of them after they share their story. Scared of sharing the one thing they don’t want anyone to know.
After almost 30 years as a therapist, I have heard so many stories, so much pain. I’ve supported many frightened women and men who all were scared before they reached out to me.
Contacting me right now means you are one day, one hour, closer to feeling better than you’ve probably felt in a very long time.
Being strong is sending an email or picking up the phone to call me.
Be really strong. Take that frst step. You’ll feel better if you do, I promise.
