Adult Psychotherapy

When anxiety and depression interfere with a person's ability to function, they often feel desperate and helpless. Medications can help, but they do not change the behaviors or the attitude that can cause depression. Furthermore, they often produce unwanted side-effects.

Psychotherapy has been proven to be effective in treating both anxiety and depression. It offers the individual a chance to change destructive behavior patterns with no side-effects.

Psychotherapy helps in a number of ways:

Psychotherapy can pinpoint the life problems that contribute to depression and help people understand which aspects of these problems they may be able to solve or improve. I often help depressed patients identify options for the future and set realistic goals that enable them to enhance their mental and emotional well-being. Furthermore, I help individuals identify how they have successfully dealt with similar feelings if they have been depressed in the past.

Psychotherapy identifies negative or distorted thinking patterns that contribute to feelings of hopelessness that often accompany depression. For example, depressed individuals may over-generalize, that is, to think of circumstances in terms of always, or never. They may also take events personally. One of my goals is to nurture a more positive outlook on life.
Together we explore other learned thoughts and behaviors that create problems and contribute to depression and anxiety. Depressed and anxious individuals can understand and improve patterns of interacting with other people that have contributed to their problems.
I work to help people regain a sense of control and pleasure in life. Psychotherapy helps people see choices as well as gradually incorporates enjoyable and fulfilling activities back into their lives.

Having one episode of depression greatly increases the risk of having another episode. There is evidence that ongoing psychotherapy may lessen the chance of further episodes or reduce their intensity. Through good psychotherapy people learn skills to avoid unnecessary suffering from later bouts of depression.

Finally, good psychotherapy helps a person identify their feelings and remain thoughtful while having strong emotions. This is important because our physiology causes our emotions to interfere with our cognitive, (perception, reasoning or judgment as opposed to emotional) ability. The majority of my patients know what they need to do. They struggle because they have difficulty acting effectively when they are very depressed or anxious.