Therapy for Anxiety and Depression: Coping Skills and Resources
Somatic Therapy: Ground in Resilience and Strength
If you frequently experience:
It is time to take the first step towards treating your anxiety.
Together, we will:
Restoring balance within
Often showing up as absence and loss, depression is the “nothing” in “nothing’s wrong.”
You may feel down or low for no apparent reason.
You may notice changes in the way you eat or sleep.
Fatigue is common. Some days it may be hard to get out of bed. Other days you may find yourself struggling to fall asleep even when you are otherwise exhausted.
You may feel unmotivated or hopeless, seeing life as a series of futile struggles.
The smallest tasks can feel insurmountable, making it challenging to do the things that you know might help.
The idea of reaching out to friends or colleagues may make you want to hide.
Perhaps you don’t want to be seen this way or feel you don’t have anything to offer.
You may notice you no longer experience pleasure in things that you once found engaging and enjoyable.
You may indulge in negative self talk as you grieve the person you once were.
Before you decide you are broken beyond repair, please know that help is available. Even when it seems out of reach, change is possible. You don’t need to continue to suffer alone.
Chronic depressive states have a way of settling into the contours of your life in a way that takes over, making it hard to separate yourself from the depression or imagine life any other way.
Perhaps one day you overhear yourself telling someone “I am depressed” and realize you have come to identify with your condition.
When all your usual strategies are no longer working, it’s time to reach out. Therapy for depression can help.
Schedule a call or text me at 415-857-5560 to set up a time to meet. I see clients for therapy in person at my office in Tiburon and online anywhere in California.
In individuals with cyclical mood disorders such as bipolar disorder or cyclothymia, a depressive episode may last for several weeks and then, almost out of nowhere, emerges a feeling of uncontainable, manic energy that builds until it urgently needs to be released, creating:
In contrast to depressive episodes, mania may seem like a preferable alternative. Many people living with bipolar disorder choose not to seek treatment for this reason—manic episodes are the times they feel most powerful, productive, energized, and filled with a distorted sense of limitless possibility.
Some individuals believe that their manic states put them in touch with their muse, allowing them to access the inspiration, creative flow states and talents they consider to be the gifts that make them unique and valuable—gifts they may secretly fear don’t belong to them otherwise. From that perspective, it’s easy to see why someone would resist diagnosis and treatment.
The truth is that both depressive states and manic episodes can be equally destructive, ruining careers, relationships and putting those who are suffering at risk of addiction out of a need to self-medicate for a low that feels too deep to crawl out of or a high from which they can’t come down.
The idea is to step off the rollercoaster long enough to see that those talents belong to you, not your muse. Perhaps then you will see that you don’t need to get perilously high in order to avoid the dark abyss. By creating balance in your life, you can integrate productivity and rest in equal measure, bringing a light into the dark instead of staring directly into the sun.
Schedule a call or text me at 415-857-5560 to set up a time to meet. I see clients for therapy in person at my office in Tiburon and online anywhere in California.
Part of what creates change in psychotherapy is a loving, supportive relationship where you can feel safe to explore those areas that you have repressed for fear of being judged or misunderstood. Allow me to hold your suffering with compassion and help you heal from your pain.
As a therapist with over a decade treating anxiety and depression and supporting clients with mood disorders, I will help you:
In the context of a supportive therapeutic relationship, you will begin to see yourself differently and, after some time, may begin to notice that your habits have shifted and you feel different—the haze has lifted, you are finding ease in the things that once felt hard, taking enjoyment in simple pleasures, reconnecting and repairing relationships with your loved ones—you are flourishing. I am here to help you see that all of this is possible. You don’t have to suffer endlessly and you don’t have to find your way through the dark alone.
Schedule a call or text me at 415-857-5560 to set up a time to meet. I see clients for therapy in person at my office in Tiburon and online anywhere in California.
Anxiety and depression are symptoms common to a wide variety of problems in the realms of relationship distress, grief and loss, gender dysphoria, addiction and trauma. The discomfort that arises here has important messages for you. Together we listen closely as your inner wisdom guides you towards transformation.
Some common signs that you may be experiencing anxiety or depression include sleep disturbances, changes in weight, fatigue, self-doubt and difficulty concentrating. While depression is characterized by a loss of interest or pleasure in activities you normally enjoy, anxiety is distinguished by excessive worry.
Often cyclical, anxiety and depression are felt as energetic states that result from your body’s effort to restore balance by upregulating or downregulating your central nervous system in times of psycho-spiritual or relational difficulty.
While a healthy degree of anxiety serves to motivate and protect us from danger, when anxiety is overwhelming it can feel immobilizing. Anyone who has ever felt trapped in their body or in their life knows that anxiety can be a crippling affliction that creates a sense of paralysis, making it incredibly difficult to make choices or take action.
The counterpoint to states of tension and anxiety, depression is both insidious & pervasive, draining vibrant personalities of motivation, interest & pleasure until it becomes them. People in chronic states of depression often feel that they have lost themselves, no longer seeing the distinction between who they are and how they feel.
Resourcing for symptoms of anxiety and depression is the process of creating tools to regulate your emotional experience by using mindfulness, breath and the body in addition to structuring your daily life and relationships to support your mental health.
Anxiety and Depression are often the first signs that something needs to be addressed in your life — valuable indications that some kind of change needs to happen. Therapy can help you avoid a range of health problems from chronic fatigue to gastrointestinal (GI) disorders to worsening heart conditions.
By bringing mindful self awareness to your physical and psychological symptoms, therapy helps you get beneath the surface of your problems to address the root causes of distress — in a way that enables you to change your outlook when simply “thinking positive” doesn’t work.
