Depression Counseling in Elmwood Park, NJ.

Our credentialed music therapists tailor sessions to each individual, utilizing personalized music exercises and interventions to address each person's unique symptoms of depression. Our music therapists work with each client using musical elements like songwriting, processing, and guided imagery to help clients find their own voice and learn new coping skills to help manage depression of any severity.

Depression is defined as a mood disorder that so many people experience nowadays. It can be induced for many reasons such as grief/loss or even be environmentally based. Depression is when you feel persistent bouts of sadness and hopelessness. You will often lose interest in activities that you once enjoyed, have a loss of appetite, feel fatigue and withdraw socially. Things that once seemed easy may feel difficult to do now. At Emerge, you will regain your emotional and physical strength by exploring and becoming knowledgeable about the triggers that cause your depression. Together, we refocus and define your goals to becoming emotionally and physically well again.

I will determine the severity of depression and the need for medication. We will figure out if depression is an acute response to a crisis or situation. We will look at the causes, your experience of depression, what are triggers for depression, and ways to cope with it and give you better control of it. If it is a recurrent depression we will find ways for you to cope, and develop good support networks if you don't have them.

While implementing a cognitive behavioral approach, I have extensive experience in helping clients improve their mood and quality of their life. I utilize evidence-based methods that can relieve emotional pain and aid clients’ recovery from debilitating symptoms. Treatment can bring back positive feelings, allowing you to improve your connection with yourself and others, achieve fulfillment and help you to function at your best.

I will help you explore the roots of your depression, whether it stems from relationship issues, low self-esteem, biochemistry, or some combination of them. We will formulate an individualized plan of action to help you address the sources of your unhappiness so that you can shed what no longer works for you and begin living a more authentic and fulfilling life.

My approach attacks depression by quickly focusing in on the primary cause of depression. I show people how their current beliefs about their adversities, past and present, are the primary cause of depression. I teach people how it is well within their power to adopt, without delay, alternative beliefs that help them cope with and prevail over these adversities. I also show my patient how to feel worthwhile and adequate even if she is depressed and performing poorly in life. Often self-downing goes with feelings of depression and makes for depression over being depressed. REBT tackles the rut of depression by attacking both the original and the secondary feelings of depression.

Depression is exhausting and isolating, but it’s also highly treatable with effective psychotherapy. My approach is collaborative and gentle, and I believe that healing happens when we feel connected and supported. I integrate a variety of therapeutic techniques including CBT, mindfulness and insight oriented interventions. I help my clients alter thoughts and behaviors that exacerbate depression, improve their relationships, and address underlying and unresolved feelings that lead to depressed mood. Together, we can help you through and out of your depression to live a balanced and happy life.

Depression doesn't always look the way people expect. Sometimes it's not sadness so much as numbness, disconnection, or just going through the motions. I work with clients experiencing depression using CBT, EMDR, and interpersonal therapy to help you understand what's driving it, shift the thought patterns keeping you stuck, and build coping skills that actually hold up. We'll also look at the relational pieces, because depression rarely exists in a vacuum. This isn't about putting a positive spin on things. It's about doing the real work so you can start feeling like yourself again.

Almost everybody has depression of some type or another. Sometimes depression is linked to a childhood trauma and sometimes it comes from a recent traumatic event. No matter where it comes from, it can affect your mood, your thinking and your behavior. Because I have learned to deal with my own depression, I can help you deal with yours. I use a variety of modalities to work with you and get you out of your depression so that you can function better in your personal life and your career.

If you have a pulse and a heart, you have been sad. Using the science of happiness rather than standard interventions for depression we focus on increasing positive emotion, engagement, and meaning rather than directly targeting depressive symptoms. In using these interventions with clients I have noted the effects of these interventions in a variety of settings. In informal and clinical settings these interventions have commonly been reported to me and referred to as “life-changing.”

I work with many people with depression whether as individuals, or in the context of couples therapy. I help people to become aware of their thoughts, feelings, and the experience they have in their bodies around their depression. I work cognitively and behaviorally to help them understand distorted thinking. I also work to "externalize" the feeling of depression, and help people understand that, "you are not your thoughts." Depression may be visiting you, but you are not depression. Mindfulness is a tool I use with depression to help people understand what is happening to them in the moment, and to begin to open to emotions that may be blocked.

You can find a way to eliminate depression, get depression help with depression counseling, and jump start your life. Depression is not just emotional it is physical as well. The exhaustion and fatigue can be the hardest part. We will work on becoming more connected to your life and your loved ones. When this happens you will get a renewed sense of energy and begin to feel good once more.

Hal helps clients understand depression and better cope with the nasty and persistent erosion of hope. Hal encourages his clients to understand the reason(s) for their depression and unique ways to climb out of it. He also encourages clients to connect to, express, even write about their depression. Hal believes that only by facing it head are we able to effectively disarm depression, while increasing self-esteem.