Depression, believe it or not, is not always depression. Sometimes, yes, it’s a brain thing, but other times it’s something else that is more connected by stuck feelings in in the body. Or it can be a combination of both. As a human, when you feel unsafe or have trauma, you use various strategies to dampen feelings and lock away experiences that were scary. Depression is one way of locking that door. Though depression can make you feel terrible and numb and shut down, it also keeps you from feeling other, more ultimately transformative feelings like grief, hurt, or fear.

When you get stuck in the muck of depression, it can feel like there’s no way out. It’s lonely and disconnecting because you stop feeling connected and intuitive.

Our therapists use parts of AEDP and Emotionally-Focused Individual Therapy to access locked up feelings that are causing stoppage and stuckness.

The way that we work with depression is first by establishing that you are not alone. We create connection in the therapy through trust and safety. We then work on accessing feelings that may be hiding underneath the depression together so that you are no longer alone in feelings that before felt threatening. Now we can process them together so that you can become freer, less stuck, and more confident to feel.

Attachment based approaches like AEDP and EFIT believe that the human being is adaptive and that the brain has an immense neuroplasticity that can adapt to change including positive change. The key to adaptability is feeling that you have a loving presence accompanying you on that journey. When you have that care and safety around you, there is more confidence to move forward and start to heal stuck parts. You can then also gain the confidence to feel scary feelings. This can start to relieve the grip that depression had as a numbing agent to stop you from feeling those hard feelings. When feelings become less threatening, you can start to feel a greater range again as well as releasing them, creating the freedom to become more joyful and limitless in your life.