Depression Counselling in Lake Cowichan, BC.

Depression can be deeply painful, robbing you of energy, motivation, and hope. It creates a negative view of life, your self, and your future. It typically disrupts sleep patterns, appetite, emotions, and your thinking ability. I use the clinical practice of cognitive behavioural therapy to help people regain healthy control over their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and reclaim a sense of influence over their life style and life situation's. Coaching you to refocus, set small daily goals, celebrate your successes, and learn new behavioral and thinking skills can take time but the good news is that once you have acquired these skills you have them for life.

Depression results from a chemical imbalance in the brain. It is not the result of a personal weakness or lack of coping skills. The impairment is real and can result in feeling sad, anxious, overwhelmed and in some cases suicidal. Fortunately, depression can be treated with both medication and counseling; the combination usually being most effective. Counselling can help persons who experience depression in providing an outlet for voicing frustrations and obstacles, identifying support avenues, leaning new coping skills and exploring the most recent avenues of treatment. Counselling offers a non-judgemental and confidential sounding board.

Depression can be experienced in a multitude of ways and often differently by each person. Depression can leave an individual feeling overwhelmed, a loss interested in activities that they used to enjoy, feel a lack of energy, have difficulty sleeping, experienced pronounced weight changes, and even serious illness. You do not have to suffer or feel alone. We will work with you to uncover the elements to your depression and help you to regain enjoyment and satisfaction in your life.

As someone who has a history of depression personally and intergenerationally, I am well aware of the great challenges and opportunities for growth that this experience can bring. For those struggling with depression, healing can feel elusive, as if nothing will ever work. It often requires a wider lens, an eye for patterns and a deeply supportive and holistic orientation to shift this dynamic. My approach comes from my years of experience moving through and finally out of my own depression and integrating the ancestral patterns that laid the foundation for it in my life. I now come to you with a wide-reaching tool kit to support you in your journey.

Many people experience periods of depression in their life time. There are different types and they are diagnosed and treated differently. Situational depression may be caused by a traumatic event or life change, can be resolved with time, is more common than clinical depression, and appears to have a smaller impact on day to day life. Talk therapy can treat it on its own. Clinical Depression is often longer term and chronic, more difficult to treat, can be connected to brain chemistry differences, interferes with daily functioning, and is often treated with both therapy and medication. If you want to learn more about your mood and how we can help, book a free consultation.

In depression counseling, I work collaboratively with you to understand what's contributing to your depression—whether life circumstances, relationship patterns, past experiences, or feeling disconnected from what matters. Depression often involves losing touch with meaning and purpose, so together we'll explore what gives your life significance and how to reconnect with those things. We develop a practical, step-by-step plan tailored to your situation. This might involve challenging thoughts that keep you stuck, processing difficult emotions, or rediscovering activities that once brought satisfaction. Our therapeutic relationship provides steady support as you navigate this. Clients report gradually regaining energy, hope, and a sense that life feels worthwhile again

Depression is a condition that varies greatly between each presentation. It often is a downstream effect of other dynamics and relationships that takes a serious toll on the body, the nervous system, digestion, relationships and emotional well-being. My approach to treating depression begins with respect and understanding of the individual experience, their past, present, and concept of the future. I take that understanding of past experience, and beliefs of the future, pain in the present, and to provide safety, support, and strategy to improve your well-being and cultivate resilience through life's significant challenges. Depression can also look like anger, fatigue, isolation, etc.

Living with depression can be like wading through mud. Every step requires enormous effort. All the while, the gas tank is empty. For many, the urge is to take to bed, as the world just feels like too much to face. I like to work on the root cause of depression while simultaneously collaborating on small manageable steps to regain confidence and interest in living a valued life. I find that working on what seems to be an unsolvable problem is often the starting point of recovery. My goal is to provide support and guidance that goes beyond just the sense of feeling "better". Rather, my aim is for my client's to thrive, with the newfound capacity to experience joy and happiness.

Grey Matters International, Inc. and the work of Kevin J. Fleming, Ph.D. handles depression and other emotional disorders in a very unique way. Most of therapy or counseling processes utilize validation, unconditional positive regard, and reframing as common techniques to get someone to heal from their depression. Though this can be helpful, it rarely fixes the core problem behind it and for tough cases we then refer them usually to a psychiatrist for medication which can have tons of side effects. Instead, why not try a natural and arguably more effective way to not just change your mind, but change the brain--where the depression is rooted. Contact us at kevin@kevinflemingphd.com.