Depression Counselling in Devon, AB.

I view depression as a protective response that often develops when the nervous system has been overwhelmed by trauma or prolonged stress. Rather than seeing it as weakness, I help clients understand depression as the body’s way of conserving energy and guarding against pain. Through a trauma-informed and attachment-based approach, we explore the emotions and experiences beneath the shutdown, using somatic awareness, mindfulness, and gentle reconnection to restore safety and vitality. Over time, clients begin to experience relief, self-compassion, and renewed connection with themselves and their lives.

I help clients to challenge problematic thoughts, capitalize on positive coping skills, and teach new ways of coping in order to help them manage feelings of despair, hopelessness, and helplessness. Together, we develop a plan for how to combat fatigue, problems with appetite and sleep, low motivation, a negative focus, and suicidal ideations. I support my clients in implementing, evaluating, and adjusting these plans as they work their way through depressive episodes. Additionally, creating a plan for relapse is essential for long-term success.

Depression doesn’t always look like sadness—it often shows up as numbness, burnout, loss of motivation, or disconnection from yourself and others. I help clients explore the root patterns behind their emotional shutdown, understand the roles that stress, identity, and unmet needs play, and create structured steps toward change. Therapy with me is not about endless venting—it’s about restoring movement, building clarity, and helping you reconnect with yourself and your direction in life. You don’t have to stay stuck.

Are you struggling with the constant influence of depression in your life? Please know that there is hope for you, for your life, and for relief from the burden of depression. You may be in need of the support that you will find by coming to see me in therapy. Depression can tear a whole in the normal activities of life, and keeps you feeling lost, alone, and without hope. You are not alone, and together we will work through your experience of depression and help you to move towards the things that you love and care for. I am confident that together we will find a way through pain to joy and peace.

Research has clearly demonstrated that mindfulness-based approaches to depression are so powerful that they can reduce the chances of having a relapse by 50%! That's a big deal. A depressed mind is busy creating all kinds of negative thoughts. Mindfulness-based therapy will teach you a new way to relate to your thoughts. You don't have to believe everything you think! Especially the bad stuff, becuse it's often not true.

Many people believe that in order to be "strong," they need to bury their feelings and keep them hidden from others. Over time, this can backfire, as feelings can build and take over, leaving a person feeling down and depressed, or overwhelmed. I work with clients not only to work through feelings of anger, resentment, hurt, and sadness that have built up, but to develop new habits of self-care, assertiveness, boundaries, healthy expression of feelings, communication, and stress management so that this does not occur again in the future. By doing this, they can become a more well-rounded person, who feels free to express feelings as they arise, and no longer carries them with them.

Being depressed can often make you feel helpless. You're not -there's a lot you can do to fight back. Most people feel sad or depressed at times and those feelings are a normal reaction to loss or life's struggles...but when intense feelings of being sad, helpless, hopeless, and worthless last for many days to weeks or months, it may be something more than sadness. Be kind to yourself - reach out and I will help you find an approach that will work for you.

Depression is a common problem, but this makes it no less difficult to overcome. It takes a lot of effort and great courage to enter counselling for depression, as you need to muster up the strength and hope to open up to a stranger with such a deep and vulnerable pain. I offer a few approaches to depression, one of which is CBT, a proven therapy that helps people identify certain thought patterns and beliefs, as well as some behaviors that are contributing to their feeling "stuck". These strategies have been proven to be very helpful to clients. Most importantly, I believe that providing a safe environment to explore all that is on your heart and mind, is the best gift I can offer.

Depression is a symptom that can be debilitating. The suffering is great and we often do not have the energy to handle life the way we feel we need too. Therapy is an evidence based way to treat depression. The work I do focuses on understanding the root cause of the depression, and working with you to begin allowing yourself to transform and live in a way that in congruent with who you really are.

Everyone's depression is different - uncovering the root causes of a client's depression is critical and determines which form of therapy is best. I integrate multiple therapies such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, EMDR, Internal Family Systems, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to hep clients improve. I also have experience working with Bipolar disorder.

Depression is not feeling bad – it is not feeling. When we become depressed we try to insulate ourselves from our emotions. Treatment for depression requires a willingness to feel what we are avoiding. This requires a process of exploring the buried feelings in a safe, supportive environment. As we become friends with our emotions we can gradually come back to life.

Depression can have multiple and complex causes, but most often it can be attributed to how we think. When we examine our thoughts, we can find we are struggling with automatic negative thoughts that leave us feeling depressed. Learning how to identify these thoughts and actively speak differently to ourselves armed with statements that are more true, we can see the depression levels begin to decrease.

The way you think greatly impacts how you feel, and navigating this on your own can be confusing. If you are one of the 1in 5 Canadians that experience depression at sometime in your life, there is help. Together we can take a closer look at how you think and appraise circumstances and events and explore how that impacts your overall outlook and feelings. When you change the way you think you can change how you feel and I am here to help with that.