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Anxiety and Depression

Depression and anxiety are the most common reasons people come to therapy.  They tell us that life is too painful to go on as is.  We may find it hard to face the day, or be stopped in our tracks.  Both are treatable conditions that can be greatly improved by seeing a therapist.

Depression

When we are depressed, life can slow to a crawl.  We can find no meaning or pleasure in life.  It may be hard to get out of bed, eat, or perform self care.  We may feel like we have nothing to offer, or take small slights  as rejection, when they may have nothing to do with us or how the other person actually felt.  We often misread cues to fit what is going on in our mind.  Sometimes we need cognitive tools to help reframe situations and create new beliefs.  It is also helpful to move the body, because sometimes we can gently increase range and allow more breath, which can ease depressive symptoms.  It is hard to access motivation when depressed, so we start with where you are and notice  what wants to hold back and what wants to move.  We can approach your symptoms with gentle curiosity, being respectful of what needs to be protected.  Often depression is a stuckness in patterns of the past, with an inability to move forward.  When we can modify the protective beliefs and patterns, we can better see the realities of the present and the opportunities as well as obstacles it presents.

Anxiety

Anxiety tends to be a flight to the future.  We may imagine and worry about everything that could go wrong, whether it is likely to or not.  It may be contained in certain areas of our life, or be generalized to practically everything.   We may have panic attacks and feel like we are going to die.  Our breath tends to be high in our chest and fast.  This can exacerbate the feelings, and reinforce the sense of something being terribly wrong.

To counter the out of control feelings we may start to avoid situations that make us anxious.  A pattern of avoidance can become habitual, restricting our life.   In therapy we can help you manage  anxiety by teaching some ways to alter the breathing patterns that make it worse, by slowly exposing you to situations that terrify you, or helping to change the thinking patterns that lead to the feelings that create the worry or panic. 

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