Anxiety and Depression
“I Just Feel Depressed All the Time”
That’s how you’d put it if someone asked, and you’ve said it to yourself so often that it sounds like a plain fact.
There’s no dramatic version of it.
It’s the same low mood this week as last week, and somewhere along the way you quit expecting next week to be any different.
Then there’s a second sentence. That one you keep to yourself.
“I Don’t Like Myself”
Of the two, this is the one that gets a vote on everything else in your life.
Something goes right, and it doesn’t count.
Something goes wrong, and it proves the point.
And worry is usually somewhere close behind that one.
The Dread Gets to Your Week Before You Do
A deadline, an appointment, a conversation you know is coming, and the dread arrives days ahead of every one of them.
You spend the time in between bracing for how each one will go badly.
Then it happens, it’s over, and your mind has already picked out the next thing to worry about.
The worried thoughts and the depressed ones share a habit of talking in words like always, never and all the time.
Ask Your Depression to Show Its Work
I use Cognitive Behavioral Therapy more than any other approach, and plenty of adults come to me because they were already searching for CBT by name.
My training in it was through the Beck Institute.
In session, we take an automatic thought like “I don’t like myself” and ask what it’s actually based on.
Sometimes there’s a real point buried in there, and that part becomes something we work on.
The Rest Is Just the Depression Talking
Learning to hear the difference between that real point and the depression talking is a big part of what CBT is for.
The prediction that something coming up will go badly gets the same questions.
How we go about any of it depends on the person, and I keep it down to earth and practical.
Get Ready for the Next Hard Day
Hard days are still going to come, because that’s part of having a life.
What we’re working toward is how it goes when one does.
The old sentence turns up word for word, and you recognize the depression talking before it settles in for the afternoon.
When the dread shows up days early again, you go into the thing itself with a better sense of how it’s likely to go.
Spend 15 Minutes on the Phone With Me
The 15-minute phone call is free, and it’s for telling me what’s been happening and asking what CBT with me would actually involve.
It also gives us both a fair read on whether I’m the right person to help with this. No pressure to book anything.
Call (214) 452-5237 to set it up, or write to hopenowcounseling@gmail.com if email is easier.
Set Up Your Phone Call
You Can Come Back Without Starting Over
You finish, and you can still write to me. If something new shows up down the road, I’d rather hear from you again than have you start from the beginning somewhere else.
I mean that as a standing arrangement rather than a nice line to end on.
When a message lands in my inbox, I’m the one who reads it. I’ll write back and ask what’s going on and what you’d want to be different. Writing that first message is the hard part, and it doesn’t have to be a good one.