Time to renew your commitment to life without worry and depression

The beginning year is always a good time to renew your commitment to life. This past year has been hard for so many people and the stress has gone through the roof! But you are still here and every day is a new opportunity to say to yourself that you are ok and that you will slow down and be present every day.
When you worry about the future you are unable to be in the present. Worrying can cause so much stress and many people can feel depressed because they cannot stop worrying. If you say to yourself, "Come back to the present" when you find yourself worrying about the future, you can start to be more present.
I encourage you to try this, experiment CHANGING THE CONVERSATIONS YOU HAVE WITH YOURSELF. This is most important. When you find yourself in the vicious cycle of continued worry try saying this simple phrase over and over. It can reboot your thinking. It really does work!

help for depression-changing your perspective

As I was hiking and running this morning I came upon two large rocks that I see on this trail every day. One rock is covered with a wonderful bright green moss, the other, because of its location is just covered with fallen leaves from the trees above. I began to acknowledge these rocks when I pass, touching them gently as I pass them. It made me think of a tale I heard lost ago about a man who felt empty, who felt there was no meaning in his life and was sitting by a stream one day. He noticed that a stream of water was constantly hitting on rock and had been doing so for many, many years and now there was an indent in the rock. He realized that even a rock can change when some force was pushing it to so he could change if he pushed himself- if he had the will, the motivation. He began to think differently about his life from that moment on and he became a very wise man.
If doesn't matter how long you have been sad, depressed, angry or defeated you CAN change when you change your perspective.

Ever wonder what a therapist actually does?

My brother has a love bird that is blind and it cannot fly. Its mate died years ago and this bird was stepped on by mistake. And my brother has this bird, who cannot see, by his side. And the bird won’t let my brother touch him even though he is blind and alone.. What a dilemma for both of them. This is what happens to us in life. We want closeness but we can’t bear to be close, we want love but we run from it. And we look out from the box of our own making, shaking ours heads because we don’t know how to fix it. That is when they may decide to see a counselor.
I see people who want better lives but are unable to see how to do it. They want to be close but they can’t, they want to feel happy but they won’t allow themselves. And they enter my office looking to me to give them something, anything, that they can take with them to help them. It seems to me sometimes a daunting task and a big responsibility.
As someone talks to me in my office on that first day I begin to get the feel for the person. I look at how they are telling me their story, what piece of their story they choose to tell me first, what piece may get left out until the very last moment of a session. All of this is important. I observe how they are sitting, how their body remains motionless or can’t stop moving as they tell me why they are in my office. I listen as they tell me their hope for our time together and the fears they have about their lives.
As they talk to me I feel patterns appearing in my head, the swirling patterns of lives lived and stories told the shocking similarities between the most different of people and the wonderful uniqueness of everyone I see. Patterns arise and a picture can appear of interconnected energies all feeding off of each other. My task is to try to separate and clarify what is really happening in that person’s life. It is most often not the thing that the person has turned to me to fix or cure. If only it were so simple.

help for depression-understanding the brain

Did you know that the brain likes the familiar? Did you ever wonder why you may notice that you do the same behaviors your parents did EVEN THOUGH you hated when they did it? well the brain got used to the interactions you had with your parents based on those behaviors and now, since the brain loves the familiar, you continue to do the SAME behaviors EVEN THOUGH they don't work in your life and the behaviors may make you depressed or anxious. As I have written many times in this blog, understanding this and becoming aware when you engage in the unsuccessful, ineffective behaviors will allow you the space to start thinking differently and actually change your brain. Remember, the brain likes the familiar, so if you begin to interact and think in a more positive way ON A REGULAR BASIS than THIS will become familiar to your brain and you will feel better,feel more successful in your life and certainly happier because things are working for you! It's all in the brain and its YOUR brain so you get to change it

Do you believe you deserve to be loved? help for depression

A few years ago a client walked into my office and said to me, "I was thinking today about how I really deserved to be loved". What a wonderful, positive thought. And of course it was true. But how many times have you thought negative thoughts like, "I am alone", No one loves me" "I don't deserve to be loved". These are common thoughts when one is depressed and feeling isolated. Negative thoughts take a life of their own and pretty soon you may be thinking the same negative thoughts over and over. These thoughts can cause further depression because what we think about affects how we see ourselves!.
So when my client walked into my office and said that they were thinking about how they deserved to be loved they were actually changing the way they thought about themselves.
Most people seek counseling because they don't feel good about themselves and they want to feel better. Thinking positively can help change the way you think about yourself. It is a powerful tool for change but it is not easy. You must be mindful when you are thinking negatively so you can change the negative thought to a positive thought. You deserve to be loved, you can be sure of that.