Depression Counseling in Union City, NJ.

I provide clients with a safe place to explore the root causes of their depression. Within the therapeutic relationship, we will also examine how the individual's thoughts, actions and feelings are connected to and feeding into their depression. We will work on breaking these negative cycles and start positive more adaptive ways of thinking, and acting to improve their mood.

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.

Depression can leave you feeling lonely and under motivated for change. Therapy with me can help alleviate those emotions and negative setbacks from depression. Furthermore, you will gain useful and important coping skills which will help you reengage with your friends, family, work and life. Depression can be scary but working with a skilled and empathic professional can help you live your life 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.

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.

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.

Children and adolescents who act out due to symptoms of AD/HD, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Autistic Spectrum Disorders, and School Underachievement constantly receive negative feedback from parents, teachers, and peers. This results in underlying feelings of helplessness and hopelessness leading to depression. I motivate such children to develop self-control which leads to improved academic and social skills. This leads to social acceptance and academic achievement and self-esteem rises. Helplessness and hopelessness dissipate and depression and anxiety lessen.

Depression can range from being draining to being completely debilitating. Wherever you land on that spectrum, so much of depression involves negative thinking of oneself, others, and the world. Talk therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy are research-backed successful tools in providing support for those experiencing depression. I use talk therapy to provide a space for clients to share their feelings and things that either lead to or are affected by their feelings of depression. Cognitive behavioral therapy helps identify and shift negative thinking patterns as well as behaviors, which ultimately creates a more positive cycle in ones life and decreases symptoms of depression.

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.

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.

Depression rarely looks the same twice. For some it is sadness; for others it is numbness, exhaustion, or going through the motions while feeling invisible inside your own life. As a licensed therapist in Manhattan, I work with people whose depression has roots in trauma, loss, or long-standing patterns that talk therapy alone hasn't reached. Using EMDR and IFS, we work at the level where those roots actually live. If you are in New York City and looking for depression treatment that goes deeper than symptom management, I would love to hear from you.

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.

Depression is anger turned inward or against yourself. As anger builds within, an individual has three choices: To channel the anger energy assertively by expressing the feelings attached to the situations causing one to feel depressed; to express the anger through outbursts that can be very destructive to the self and others; to internalize the anger and become more depressed and less functional with time. My job is to enable you to learn how to identify and express feelings that are causing you to feel depressed. The next step is to change behaviors associated with your feelings freeing you from depressive thoughts and feelings.