Online therapy · New Jersey & New York
Therapy for Depression
For when everything feels heavier than it should.
Depression rarely looks like a dramatic breakdown. Most of the time, it looks like a quiet, heavy exhaustion. It can feel as though everything has slowed to a stop. You might be going through the motions of your routine, but you’re not really living your life.
I work with people who feel weighed down by something they can’t seem to shake, and who are ready to understand what’s keeping them stuck.
What brings people in
- Getting out of bed, returning a text, or making a simple decision feels impossibly hard
- Things that used to bring you happiness no longer feel like much of anything
- You feel a heavy, constant flatness that colors your whole day
- You’re sleeping too much or too little, can’t concentrate, or snap at people more than you’d like
- You feel isolated because it takes too much energy to explain how you’re doing to friends or family
- You’re exhausted by the effort it takes to pretend you’re fine
The weight of depression
Depression is complex. Biology, genetics, and life circumstances can all play a part, and for some people it’s something they live with for years. But alongside that, there’s often an emotional layer.
Depression can hold pain or grief you haven’t had the space to feel. Sometimes it’s anger you were never allowed to express, turned inward. Other times, it’s the exhaustion of carrying what the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott called a “false self”: presenting yourself to the world in a certain way to meet expectations, for so long that no one ever really meets the real you.
How I work with depression
Building routines, moving your body, and learning coping skills can all help. But if you’re doing the things you’re supposed to and the heaviness keeps coming back, it’s worth looking deeper.
I take a psychoanalytic approach. Put simply, we look at how what you’ve lived through has shaped the way you move through the world now. Along with how you’re feeling day to day, we make room for the pain, the old expectations, and the parts of yourself that haven’t had a voice. As you understand what you’ve been carrying, the weight often starts to lift.
How therapy helps
Having a place to say how you really feel, without having to pretend, can slowly start to let some light in. For many people, especially when depression is more severe, therapy and medication together work better than either one alone. There’s no shame in that kind of support, and we can think through together whether it makes sense for you.
When depression is more severe
For some people, depression is severe, long-lasting, or doesn’t improve with the first treatments they’ve tried. If that’s been your experience, it doesn’t mean you’ve failed or that nothing will help. Psychiatric care is often an important part of treatment, and a psychiatrist can talk with you about other options.
Questions people often ask
What if I don’t have a “reason” to be depressed?
You don’t need a tragedy to justify how you feel. Many people feel guilty for being depressed when their lives look fine on paper. You don’t need to arrive with everything figured out. Feeling flat or disconnected is enough to begin.
Will therapy mean talking about my childhood?
Partly. We’ll look at your past when it helps make sense of the present, because early experiences shape how we see ourselves today. But the focus stays on what’s happening in your life now and how you’d like it to change.
Do I need to be on medication?
That’s your choice, and we can talk it through together. I don’t prescribe medication, but if it seems like it could help, I’m glad to coordinate with a psychiatrist or your primary care doctor.
Do you work with bipolar disorder or more severe depression?
Yes. For bipolar disorder, I work only with clients who are also under the care of a psychiatrist, and I coordinate with them. Because my practice offers weekly outpatient therapy, I’m not able to provide the more intensive support needed during a psychiatric crisis, or for depression that calls for an intensive outpatient program or hospital care. If you need that level of support, I’m glad to help you think through options. Depression can also be part of bipolar disorder, so please tell me and your doctor if you’ve ever had periods of needing much less sleep, feeling unusually driven, restless, or irritable, having racing thoughts, or acting more impulsively than usual. It changes what kind of treatment helps most.
Is depression common?
Very. It’s one of the most common reasons people come to therapy, and it’s treatable. But common doesn’t mean you have to accept it as a permanent way of living. If you ever feel unsafe or have thoughts of ending your life, call or text 988 right away.
Further reading
When you’re ready, start a conversation.