Depression Therapy
Has Depression Robbed Your Life Of Hope And Joy?
Are you coping with a deep sense of sadness or despair that’s affecting your emotional, physical, and relational well-being? Do you struggle with:
moodiness, irritability, fatigue, sleep problems, or weight loss/gain?
lack of motivation or interest in activities you once found pleasurable?
feelings of worthlessness or emptiness—even thoughts of death?
Perhaps you want to talk to friends or loved ones about what you’re going through, but you’re afraid that you’ll burden them or they won’t understand. Or maybe you just feel stuck or lost, and you’re hoping that depression therapy can help you figure out what you need in order to be happy.
Depression Can Affect Your Life On Nearly Every Level
Emotionally, you may feel agitated, angry, frustrated, or even worried/anxious. You likely avoid other people or retreat into yourself, causing relationship issues and feelings of isolation.
At times, you may experience unexplained headaches, muscle tension, or brain fog, including difficulty concentrating and making decisions. Even if you manage to get a good night’s sleep, you probably still feel tired the next morning. And although you try to help yourself the best you can, every day seems like an uphill battle of trudging through work or school or life, waiting for something to get better.
Thankfully, things can improve. With support and guidance, it is possible to feel better, have more energy, and change your outlook on life. At Integral Psychological Services, our compassionate and empathetic therapists are trained to get to the core of what’s driving your depression while helping you discover a happier, healthier way of being.
Depression Is A Prevalent Health Concern Worldwide
Everyone experiences sadness, grief, and even times of hopelessness, but depression is different. It steals the joy and meaning out of life until it feels like you’re just a shell of the person you once were. It can disrupt relationships, careers, and your physical health. And it turns life into an unfulfilling—even painful—experience.
According to the World Health Organization, over 280 million people worldwide are living with depression, and only a fraction of those people ever receive treatment.* Although each person’s experience is different, many shared social, biological, and environmental factors contribute to depression:
genetics, brain chemistry, family history
pregnancy, childbirth, menopause
bereavement, loss, painful life transitions
illness, medications, alcohol/substance use
trauma, childhood abuse/neglect
All of these factors make depression a very complex issue that can be difficult to overcome without treatment. Because depression flourishes in isolation, one of the most powerful tools you can use to heal is community—and that’s what working with a therapist gives you. It offers you a support network and an ally who can identify the root cause of depression, heal that original wounding, and help you start living fully.
Offering Solutions
Depression Therapy Can Reawaken Your Sense Of Hope And Joy
Depression can make you feel ashamed, guilty, even broken at times, so reaching out for help can be a daunting experience. However, working with a depression counselor gives you an impartial confidante and a safe space where you can finally feel understood and accepted as you are. It allows you to explore and resolve problematic thoughts and emotions without judgment.
Therapy also offers you a chance to understand the factors contributing to depressive episodes while learning how to prevent them. We can even teach you how to gradually “rewire” your brain by building more adaptive neural pathways that allow you to think, feel, and live in more positive ways.
What Happens In Depression Counseling Sessions?
In our initial online or in-person counseling session, we’ll first assess various aspects of your depression, when it began, and how it’s affecting you. This will help give us an idea of what’s going on both in and behind the scenes, enabling us to hit the ground running in our subsequent sessions.
As we progress, we can explore your thoughts, feelings, and experiences in greater detail, looking for any underlying factors that may be responsible for your situation. That could involve identifying and resolving issues related to grief, loss, trauma, adverse childhood experiences, etc. Or we could work on challenging feelings of self-doubt, low self-worth, or poor self-image.
While we are doing that deeper work of healing old wounds, we can also address challenges that come up between sessions. In that way, we help you tackle the core issue while giving you the tools and support to manage depression and its symptoms on your own.
Some Of The Strategies We Use In Depression Treatment
At Integral Psychological Services, our therapists utilize a range of treatment methods to create a comprehensive, tailored approach to overcoming depression. Some of the tools we use:
CBT for depression, an extension of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, improves how clients think, feel, and experience life by shifting negative, maladaptive thoughts toward more positive and adaptive thoughts.
Drawing from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, ACT for depression helps clients take practical steps toward achieving change while building acceptance around those things which are immovable/unchangeable.
EMDR for depression, an extension of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, is useful for healing underlying trauma or emotional pain that’s contributing to the issue.
We utilize mindfulness strategies for managing emotions, reducing symptoms, preventing depressive episodes, and building new neural pathways. We also draw from Internal Family Systems (IFS), interpersonal therapy, psychodynamic theory, and humanistic approaches to treating depression. So whatever you’re going through, our depression counselors are expertly trained to help you find relief.
We understand that things may be tough right now, but you don’t have to live with the dark clouds of sadness and hopelessness hanging overhead any longer. With support and guidance, it is possible to change the way you think and feel and experience this life. You deserve to heal—to be happy, to have more energy, and see the world for the way it truly is. Why not let us help make those things a reality?
Perhaps You’re Considering Therapy For Depression But You Still Have Concerns…
How long does counseling for depression take to be effective?
Although many individuals experience significant improvement around 12 sessions, everyone is different. Some depression is situational and can be resolved relatively quickly. Other people struggle with more harmful and persistent symptoms arising from deep emotional wounding that requires more attention. Ultimately, the duration of depression therapy is up to you and how you feel.
Can I use depression medication while in counseling?
Medication can be a powerful ally when used in conjunction with therapy; however, it’s not meant to be a permanent solution. Ideally, depression medication is used to facilitate the therapeutic process by removing certain internal barriers that stand in the way of effective treatment.
It’s meant to help make the exploration process more comfortable, information more accessible, and healing more efficient. So it’s important that medication is taken in tandem with therapy for optimal benefits.
How can depression counseling help me in the long term?
Using evidence-based tools, such as EMDR, CBT, and ACT, it is possible to change the very way you think, feel, and move through this world. Research demonstrates that depression therapy reduces symptoms and helps prevent the relapse of depressive episodes while decreasing their frequency and intensity.**
Healing may take a little time and effort, but while you’re at it, you can rebuild relationships, develop greater emotional intelligence, and learn to love and accept yourself fully.
Let Us Help You Discover A Happier, Healthier Way Of Being
If you’re feeling sad, hopeless, or stuck—and you don’t know who to turn to, our depression counselors at Integral Psychological Services want to help bear your pain. Please use our contact form, email us, or call (616) 600-2845 to schedule your first online or in-person depression therapy appointment. We have offices located in Grand Rapids, Comstock Park, Walker, and Rockford, Michigan.
*https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/depression
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