Effective Depression Treatment

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Effective Depression Treatment

Everybody feels down from time to time, but when the "blues" do not go away and when emptiness and despair take a hold of us, it may be depression. Depression can make people feel helpless, hopeless, empty, heavy, irritated, or numb, making it impossible to have a productive or enjoyable life.

Depression, just like anxiety, is our natural biological response to our experience.

While anxiety comes from a sense of threat, depression comes from a sense of defeat, often rooted interpersonally.

This sense of defeat is like a hidden timed bomb, any of the following stressful life events can pull the trigger, going off into depression:

Counseling and Psychotherapy Services for the North Shore and Chicagoland

When emptiness and despair
take a hold of us

Interpersonal disputes or conflicts;
Life transitions;
Unresolved loss and trauma;
End of a relationship;
Delayed grief;
Impoverished interpersonal connection.

You can overcome depression and get your life back with the support of counseling and therapy.

In therapy, the immediate goal is to rapidly reduce symptoms of depression and to improve problem-solving skills. The long-term goal is to help you make needed personal adjustments.

How Therapy Benefits You?

Specifically, therapy can help you treat clinical depression by helping you:

Rebuilding and remolding the old
into something new!

resolve your past trauma so that you don't get triggered by current life events;
learn tools that reduce stress in your life;
learn new ways of perceiving and coping with problems with your family, friends, or co-workers;
build up new coping techniques and problem-solving skills;
learn new ways of expressing yourself and interacting with people so that your relationships have the kind of quality that can meet your essential psychological needs;
enjoy positive activities and experiences together with people who care;
cultivate your ability to talk openly and feel understood;
regain a sense of control and pleasure in life.

Remember that stressful events in life do not cause depression. But depression occurs within an interpersonal context which is often reciprocal in nature.

It is learning to understand and adjust within this intricate interpersonal context that the therapy that I provide can be most helpful.

The Therapy Process

For therapy to work, it needs to involve monitoring your thoughts and behaviors, identifying the stressors and the reinforcing factors, and working to modify all. Clients who actively participate in therapy recover more quickly and have fewer relapses.

Therapy works best when you attend all of your scheduled appointments and participate actively in the work of treatment. Specifically, therapy can help you treat clinical depression by:

Leaping into full living!

Therapy is not a process where you can be passive; rather, its effectiveness really depends on your active participation.

Therapy is not a "quick fix " either; it takes a few sessions for it to begin to work unlike antidepressants, but its effects are long-lasting when the reinforcing underlying factors are corrected.

Generally speaking, you usually see a significant reduction of depression symptoms when you start to implement the coping techniques and relationship skills that you learn in therapy.

In average, it takes about 8 weeks for you to become competent and natural in implementing these skills.

Between 8 and 12 weeks, you often experience a remission of symptoms. During the remaining of therapy, you continue to practice the skills and to address issues related to ending the sessions.

More severe cases of depression may take longer to resolve. But for most clients, 14 to 16 weeks of therapy with occasional sessions during the first year to reinforce the new skills is usually adequate.

Dr. Mei-whei Chen, Licensed Clinical Psychologist
737 N Michigan Ave, Ste 2130, Chicago, Illinois 60611
847-915-0331
Website: www.inner-awakening-counseling.com
Email: Mei@inner-awakening-counseling.com