What is Depression?

Depression is often a term that goes misused. People often use the word “depressed” to describe themselves when feeling sad. While sadness is part of depression, it is not everything. Everybody goes through "ups and downs" in their lives. But the normal experiences of life shouldn't be confused with the seriousness of a mood disorder such as depression. Mood disorders are very real and can have serious impacts.

Depression is often felt within both the body and the mind. This can feel like a heavy weight throughout your whole body, zap you of all of your energy and motivation, digestion issues and muscle/joint pain. Many people don’t even realize that they are suffering from depression and often just chalk it up to be physical pain that can be treated through other modalities. The issue here is that if the mind isn’t healing, the body won’t either. You may feel extreme sadness, numbness or a lack of caring or pleasure in previously enjoyable activities. Depression can cause problems with work, relationships, and even day-to-day functioning like hygiene.

Types of Depression

• Major Depressive Disorder

• Postpartum Depression

• Perinatal Depression

• Bipolar Disorder (manic-depressive)

Depression is a mood disorder which a person can experience as ongoing fatigue, loss of energy, low mood, impaired ability to concentrate or make decisions, insomnia, feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness, self harm and dark, often suicidal thoughts.  

How I Treat Depression

Thankfully, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy can be a very successful form of therapy. With depression, I first start by helping you to manage symptoms on a day-to-day basis so you can begin to take your life back. This includes behavioural activation, tracking thoughts and feelings and improving sleep. Secondly, I assist in finding and addressing the underlying causes of your depression experience. I will also guide you through ways in order to shift your negative and unhelpful beliefs.

It’s important to note that everyone’s experience with depression is different and there is no one size fits all approach, however this can give a quick snapshot into what we could start with.