How does therapy work for depression?
I'm talking about run of the mill depression not the clinical one. How can someone help me when it seems like something only I can fix?
Posted Oct 7, 2019, 4:00 AM UTC
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The trick here is that a trained professional can give you advice, teach you techniques to help manage your mood, let you vent to them in a safe fashion, and because they are experts, will know what to say that will help you get to a better place mentally.
Think of it like having a really good friend you can talk to, who knows exactly what you are going through, and is really good at saying the right things you need to hear.
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They give you a different perspective on how to view things, and mine really helped me be less hard on myself and understand that I need to be kind to myself every once in a while.
They can also teach you coping mechanisms, such as how to ground yourself before and after a breakdown.
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Most people have thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that feed into each other in a loop. So a classic loop is you feel lonely, so then you think "I have no friends," so then you don't go hang out with anyone, so then you feel lonely, etc, repeat.
Or you feel angry, so you think "I hate that person!" so you yell at them and you're in a fight, and then you feel angry, etc, repeat.
You can get into this loop in the first place because of things that happen in your life or because of your genetic brain chemistry, but either way, therapy can help you learn to break the loop. Because if you can learn to talk back to your thoughts and change your behaviors, then you can stop doing the same things that will keep causing the same feelings
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Why is it recommended to go to a therapist instead of learning by yourself?
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It's kind of like learning anything else-- you can try to learn it on your own, but it's kind of hard to do and hard to make yourself actually do it, and it often works better with someone who's had years of training in how to help you learn it.
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Sometimes you can't learn by yourself, or it's a lot easier to have someone help you along the way. Why do we go to school instead of reading textbooks at home?
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So I’m going to avoid getting too technical, but with one of the most common treatments for depression, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), the therapist is largely there to help you identify patterns of thought that cause those cycles. Essentially this therapy holds the idea that we all have internal thought processes for organizing information, called schemas, which we need process all the experiences we encounter over the course of the day. However, while these schemas always have some bias, people with depression tend to have schemas that process information in a way that’s unfavorable to them (overly sensitive to negative information about the self, surrounding world, and future). This in turn often leads folks with depression to generate these automatic thoughts that arise from how they process information, like assuming they’re unlovable or will fail.
On a day to day basis we may have these thoughts without ever realizing they might not be true. While we all experience them, folks with depression are more likely to have cognitive distortions that interfere with accurately processing information and reinforce those automatic thoughts. For example, depression might make someone engage in the distortion of catastrophizing (assuming to worst possible outcome) after a difficult test and worrying they’ll fail their class, even if their overall grades are good and logically they’re more likely to have done ok. This would in turn feed into an automatic thought that they’re not smart or a failure. Even though this isn’t backed by evidence, the automatic thought and the schema underlying it cause the individual to have thoughts that can be super stressful.
When you work with a CBT therapist, they may try to help you identify those cognitive distortions, and explore how those thoughts and the feelings they cause impact your behavior. Equally, they may try to see how your behavior could be reinforcing those thoughts. For example, if you feel socially unappealing you might not talk to people, leading you to develop no friendships, and thus incorrectly reinforcing the original thought. A good CBT practitioner will initially help you use skills to identify these patterns and distortions, with the goal being that you will gradually be able to do so on your own. Once a person is able to recognize distortions in their thinking and change their behavior to fight these distortions, it can often lead to positive changes in their underlying automatic thoughts/schemas. If a person feels that they are able to implement the skills they learned independently, they may cut back on how often they see their therapist, or even end therapy.
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everyone i know personally who have it, including myself. Therapy never worked but councilors somewhat did but for me, a lotta drugs, it's not curable so have fun instead.
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It really depends on what's triggering your depression, regardless of it's current severity.
A therapist would probably be great if the root of your depression is psychological; if it's physical, a general doctor could be a good place to look for assistance. You won't know where your depression stems from, so a doctor would be a good first step; they can do the necessary tests to determine if you'd have better success elsewhere.
Back when my depression was in bloom, I didn't even consider a physical cause. The only reason I went to a doctor was to see if he could recommend a therapist, for insurance purposes. He ordered a blood test to be done and identified the cause of my issue -- his treatment plan quickly led me to recovery.
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Because it changes the outlook you have on things. And helps break the cycle.