Depression Counseling in West New York, NJ.

Depression, constant feelings of worry, uneasiness, panic, and uncontrollable angry outbursts, are often unseen aspects of trauma which can leave lasting effects on your emotional, mental and physical health, creating patterns which often impact your relationships and overall well-being. At Core Relationships, we recognize the unique pain that trauma can cause and provide a safe, empathetic space for you to being your healing journey.

Social anxiety and shyness can easily lead to feelings of depression. If you feel depressed because you feel alone, isolated and have trouble making friends, you might be glad to know that there is a way to learn and practice the social skills you missed learning as a child. You can learn and practice new skills, meet new people, learn how to start conversations and create your own social circle. Life can change and it takes just one step to start the process rolling in the right drection.

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.

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.

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.

I address depression by exploring its roots in childhood. What were the negative influences that made you believe things would never get better? What made you feel it was pointless to try? Where does your low self-esteem come from? Together, we can identify these factors and how they affected you, and then question their validity in your present circumstances, as an adult with adult capabilities. In addition, I will teach you coping strategies, including mindfulness practices, self-compassion and self-care, that will help you reduce depressive symptoms on a day-to-day basis.

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.

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.

Depression leaves people feeling lethargic, unmotivated and often hopeless. It can be difficult to see your way out. It has been proven that with professional help your situation can look brighter. As your outlook begins to improve you will notice increased energy, developing enthusiasm and the return of prior interests. Finding a supportive, empathic professional you can trust is key. Don't go through it alone.

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.

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.

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.”

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.