Depression Counselling in Ottawa, ON.

Helping clients understand what depression is and ensuring that they are aware of what the various treatment options that are available to them (i.e therapy, traditional medicine, naturopathic medicine, etc). Helping clients determine what is at the root of it all and finding strategies that work for them to cope with the emotional roller coaster and other symptoms associated with depression. Normalizing client's experience and determining a treatment plan that aligns with the client's goals for therapy.

In many cases, I view depression as an "alarm bell" that tells the individual that there is something wrong in their life. Have they turned their anger in life toward themselves? Are they not living their best, or preferred, life? Is there something that's happened in their life that is getting them down, but they don't realize how much power it truly has? Depression can also be about learned helplessness, or having a sense, through experience, that there is no point in even trying at something. Such helplessness can come from feeling defeated, feeling significant guilt about something, & even from self-defeating 'self-talk' that an individual engages in (without completely realizing it).

Depression can feel isolating and that every day tasks and social interactions require a lot of mental and physical effort. The approaches that will be used are cognitive behavioural therapy and narrative therapy. There will be a particular focus on a change in behaviour as it influences one's thoughts and therein offering an alternative decision-making process.

Do you experience low mood most of the time? Are you unable to cope with day-to-day activities? Comparing yourself to others has become your norm and this may leave you feeling empty, lost, and dissapointed. Together, we will look at how low mood affects your life and find straetgies to propel you forward. You want to feel strong and in charge of your life.

The Depression & Mood Service at the Centre for Interpersonal Relationships offers children, adolescents, adults and couples psychological assessment and treatment of depression and other mood disorders. Finding a path toward recovery can be challenging, but the good news is that depression is treatable; recent research indicates that psychotherapy is extremely important in your recovery from depression.

Through our work together you will experience a shift in your understanding of the cause of your depressive symptoms. My clients often experience a sense of relief, a release of shame and guilt when we explore how their depression has come to exist. The experience of depression can isolate you from yourself, your family and even your future. Together we understand how you came to feel depressed and actively work on releasing the feelings that you've held onto for so long.

Saint Paul University’s Counselling and Psychotherapy Centre welcomes a diverse clientele, for individual or couple’s therapy. Services are provided by counselling interns at the Master of Arts and Doctoral level in Counselling and Spirituality at Saint Paul University. *Services in French available

The combination of schema therapy and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is an effective approach to dealing with depression. The CBT aspect of the therapy provides insight into HOW depression affects our lives. The schema portion of the therapy addresses the question of WHY depression exists in our lives. The therapy is comprehensive and intense and I encourage you to give it a try.

Depression can leave us feeling hopeless and sometimes even the way our loved ones respond can actually increase our sense of isolation. In my work with clients experiencing depression, I focus first on understanding and appreciating each person’s unique story. Fostering a trusting and collaborative relationship creates an environment that feels safe to explore our emotions and paths to healing. Contact me today to book a free consultation to start your healing journey.

I believe that depression is one of the most common mental health issues and I always tell my clients how it is normal to experience emotions like heavy sadness. I will work with you to find the root causes of the depression. We will work to better understand your triggers and how those link to the types of thoughts you are getting. From there we can plan new responses to the thoughts that are the result of a collaborative effort to ensure the new responses will work for you specifically!

Depression can often feel debilitating and manifest in a variety of ways bringing on feelings of hopelessness, overwhelm, and low mood. Building awareness, coping, and resiliency can be important first steps to starting to find our way back to the things that are most meaningful to us. Together let’s develop a roadmap toward managing your unique situation to help you regain joy and balance again.

Getting to the root of one's depression, why it occurs, and how it presents itself is imperative in understanding how one can remedy it. By working with clients to explore and comprehensively understand their depression, we will be able to better manage, mitigate, or eliminate the cognitions, behaviours, and feelings tied to our depression. How we became depressed is only the first step in ones work on depression; figuring out how to create change, support, and maintain change is the bulk of it.

When engulfed in the blackness of depression we loose site of the debilitating negative cloud casting despair over all aspects of our life. We come to see our lives solely through the depression lens rather than being able to construct an accurate map of our reality. With psychotherapy we can learn to once again access a more balanced vision of our living that better recognizes the goodness in our lives and provides direction to possibilities. Depending on the level of clinical depression, medication is often recommended temporarily in conjunction with psychotherapy to alleviate depression symptoms and help bring motivation for movement--the client can begin to help themselves