Depression Counseling in Passaic, NJ.

In my approach to depression counseling and treatment, I provide a compassionate and holistic perspective, tailoring my interventions to the unique needs of each client. Drawing upon my 8 years of experience as a Board-Certified adult psychiatrist and specialization in Reproductive Psychiatry and Integrative Women's Mental Health, I offer evidence-based therapies and medication management.

Sometimes depression happens because you have experienced a loss: perhaps a loved one died, or a relationship has ended, or you have lost a job or an opportunity. When these and other events happen, you may feel depleted of energy as if there is no reason to go move on, you may lose sleep or sleep more, you may lose weight or gain more. I will help you understand what you are feeling, and together we will find ways to replenish your inner energy so that you are able to be a peace with what has happened and move forward in a direction that brings a sense of fulfillment in life.

Depression is often controlled by our unconscious feelings, thoughts, memories, and dreams. Drawing on Positive Psychology and other therapeutic models, I help clients to understand how we relive early experiences unconsciously, and I coach them on behavioral techniques they can use to overcome the vicious cycle of negativity and change their present. These include a blend of empirically based techniques clients can use at work or at home to overcome depression, end self-sabotage, and get unstuck.

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.

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.

You did not choose depression, and it is not something that can simply be “shaken off.” Depression is real, life-altering, and can convince you that happiness or peace will never return. Yet depression does not define you. Together, we can acknowledge its weight while also challenging the painful story it tells. My role is to walk with you through the heaviness, to hold space for the difficulty, and to help you discover that hope and healing are possible. You do not have to face this alone.

Our work starts by acknowledging the social, cultural, and environmental conditions that may contribute to the problems that affect your quality of life and capacity to receive or engage in mental health care. Therapy is tailored to your preferences to minimize stressors and build skills for interacting more effectively with the outside world. The behaviors, emotions, relationship patterns, or self-beliefs that no longer work for you can be transformed, rather than pathologized by identifying external power imbalances that impede quality of life and highlighting the good intentions behind difficult interactions.

Some of our staff here at the Mars & Venus Counseling Center are experts in the treatment of depression. These experienced counselors, through the techniques and philosophies of leaders in the field of counseling, will provide compassionate, comprehensive treatment of depression for adults, adolescents, and children. Counseling is provided on an individual basis for adults. Family involvement is necessary for the treatment of children and adolescents. Some of the typical symptoms of depression are low energy, low self-esteem, insomnia, over-eating or poor appetite, difficulty concentrating or making decisions, and feelings of hopelessness. These symptoms can be from mild to severe with different periods of time. The counselor will help the client...(view profile to read more)

Dr. Marty has developed his own approach to handling depression he calls Focused Short Term Therapy (FSTT)* It combines new cutting edge therapies in the field of energy psychology as well as short term focusing on the depression. When appropriate Dr. Marty uses hypnosis and self hypnosis as well. To learn more about this approach you can go to: http://drmartytashman.com/focused-short-term-therapy-fstt-2/

Is sadness and despair overwhelming your experience of yourself and the world? Do you feel as if a dark cloud is hovering over you? Do even the simplest things seem too difficult to accomplish? Do you wish you could just leave, even though you don’t even know where to go? Are feelings of helplessness overwhelming you? If you can identify with these descriptions, then you may be struggling with clinical depression. Depression can be temporary striking because of overwhelming life events or it can be more persistent. Regardless of its source, there is effective treatment for these symptoms. Let's work together to help you bring hope and joy back into your life.

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.

Depression is widespread and can also serve a function that allows one to move on in life. The catalyst such as PTSD or loss, when explored appropriately, can enliven a depressed individual. Although depressive feelings and thoughts are debilitating, the process of Working through these feelings can serve as a catalyst for personal growth.

Depression often occurs when when we are only able to imagine a future governed by our past. The depression is held in place by memories, and beliefs acquired in the past that have been misfiled in projections of our future. Therapy, properly conducted, helps us place the past where it belongs leaving plenty of empty space and freedom in which to imagine invigorating possibilities for the future. Medication may or may not be needed to get the process started. When one gains the ability to imagine engagement in that which beckoned but seemed impossible, depression dissipates.