Depression Counseling in Melville, NY.

Feelingings of depression can be organically or situationally based. Organic depression has a strong heritability factor, with everyday stressors exasperating it. Situational depression is triggered by transitions in people’s lives where their current coping mechanisms are not strong enough to create the resilience and ongoing fortitude required to counteract the mood shift. For 30+ years in clinical practice, I have assisted my clients in understanding how to embrace their mood states and build cognitive belief patterns and behavioral routines that allow them to feel that they are in charge of their life and that the depression does not own them.

My approach emphasizes teaching people to challenge negative thoughts and maladaptive thinking. It enables clients to recognize distorted thoughts that promote negative perspectives which contribute to symptoms of depression. By learning how to accentuate strengths and utilizing one's own unique skills, clients struggling with depression learn how to achieve a more positive outlook on life.

Sometimes depression is a chronic feeling of loss of energy, sadness, and inability to take action. At times, it can be triggered by certain situations in life. Depending on the specifics for an individual, help may consist of working with internal beliefs or may consist of working to improve a life situation, or a combination of these. I get to know the client, finding out how they experience the depression, what is going on in their life, what may have first started the depression, and what thoughts they experience. I can also work in conjunction with a psychiatrist where needed. Therapy interactions help the client see and embrace more positive and effective thoughts and energies.

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.”

Depression is a feeling that can feel incredibly heavy to hold. Sometimes we experience challenging life events that leave us feeling much sadness, grief, inner pain and lack of joy, which interfere with our daily functioning. That is called depression. With Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (challenging unhelpful thoughts) and psychodynamic modalities, I can help you work through that sadness, heaviness and pain, so that you may begin the journey of healing work. This is the first step towards holding the sadness, addressing yourself in a safe space so we can slowly help you process and shift to start feeling lighter and start seeing the sunshine and tasting the small joys in everyday life.

Sadness comes in many forms, to let us know something about our lives that isn't working. We've been socialized to think there's something wrong with us, that we're imbalanced. I believe that while this has merit, it skips over the uniqueness of our situation and the way we adapted to early experiences in order to survive. We're here to help you uncover this nuance and to incorporate different stories about yourself. We can help. We're with you and we're here to help you be with you. Get in touch with us today.

Depression can present itself in many ways, together we identify symptoms that are specific to you, identify and explore what factors are contributing to the symptoms, we talk about how you can begin to improve these symptoms so that you can be on your way to a happier healthier life. For some talk therapy is enough and for others they may need linkage to other specialists.

You did not choose to be depressed and it’s not something most people can simply “shake off.” Depression is real. It’s life altering and can trick you in to believing that you can never be happy again. I am here to help. I would be honored to walk with you as we challenge the narrative of your depression while acknowledging how incredibly hard and real it is. You are not alone, and hope can be the beginning to your own healing.