Getting Help with Depression
Let me tell you a quick story.
This is not about a real person because we hold our clients’ personal details in confidence. But here is what a possible client—we'll name her “Claire”—experiences when she comes to Four Corners Counseling & Well-Being for help with depression.
When Claire first reached out to us and had her initial consultation session with a depression therapist, she was feeling heavy, overwhelmed, and like she wanted to run away from her life—and that was on a good day. At her worst, she felt shut down and hopeless and struggled to get out of bed in the morning. She described it as a numb and empty feeling, “like I was at the bottom of a deep well with no way out.” It felt like all of her energy was taken up by dealing with depression, and she felt so alone with it all.
Claire began to work with one of our skilled practitioners to create a depression treatment plan that would address her depression symptoms holistically. That word, ‘holistic’, is thrown around a lot, so let me explain what I mean. Depression and anxiety (which often go hand in hand) impact one’s whole life—their body, mind, spirit, and relationships. And so the treatment needs to benefit a person’s whole life, too. We work collaboratively with our clients to design a plan of action that both helps people feel better now, and leads to a full and satisfying life in the long-term. That’s what happened with Claire.
After a few sessions of depression counseling, Claire reported that she was beginning to have more energy and that her thoughts weren’t as dark. She began to reach out to friends again—just by text at first, and eventually by meeting up for a walk or scheduling a phone call. She started “caring about my life” more, she said, and being kinder to herself.
Through the process of depression therapy, Claire began to identify her negative thought cycles and notice them sooner, so that she could take action to get out of her head and back into her life. Claire also courageously processed some painful experiences from her childhood that had been traumatic for her. While she did go through some strong feelings from time to time in therapy, her therapist taught her how to manage those feelings without getting overwhelmed by them.
Claire also learned how to connect with her thoughts, feelings, and memories in a new way, through Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy. Claire told her therapist that she could access more calm and ease, just by noticing and acknowledging her feelings as parts of her, and that she was beginning to have more compassion towards herself. It was a game-changer! Soon her emotions were less overwhelming for her, and she began to notice and trust the information that her feelings were giving her.
At the end of her course of depression counseling at Four Corners Counseling & Well-Being, Claire reported feeling capable of responding to her life challenges and having a new sense of hope and curiosity about what the future holds for her. She said that was so glad that she took the risk to begin therapy. She knows and trusts herself in a way she could never have imagined before, and she feels stronger and more confident, and more content in her life.
