You are listening to Take Out Therapy, speedy sessions for everyday problems. This is your host, Rebecca Hunter. In my role as a private practice therapist, I don't really just tell people what to do, but in this podcast, I'm doing things differently.
In the next few minutes, I'm just going to be straight up with you about what to do in certain situations. Keep listening for awesome tips on how to live a more intentional and less reactive life. Clearly, this is not a substitute for therapy, but I guarantee it might help you.
Listen up. Hey, I just want to say, if you have depression or you know somebody who has depression, you might also know depression's best friend called anxiety. They do love to hang out together, and in that case, I have created a group called the Anxiety Recovery Club on Facebook that you might want to check out.
We dig in a little bit deeper on the podcast episode topics, and I also cover a lot of things in the group related to anxiety. Come join me. It's a little bit of personal growth project, right? Never hurt anyone.
The Anxiety Recovery Club is there for you on Facebook. Hi, guys. Thanks so much for joining me today.
You know what? I have decided that today is a good day to dig into some depression. You know, I live in Oregon. It's the middle of the winter.
It's pouring rain. It's the shortest days of the year, and I'm getting a lot of people in my private practice that are really depressed. And so I just thought it might be helpful to put some information out there about it so that if you're struggling or you kind of know somebody who is, hopefully this information will help you understand a little bit better what it is, what it's like.
If you're interested in things like diagnostic criteria, which basically means like you can be medically diagnosed with depression, this episode might help you just kind of figure out where you're at with depression, basically. We're seeing a lot, a huge increase of depression in people in our country, in the U.S., and also teens. And so if you have teens, which you guys know that I do, stick around and learn a few things about how depression looks, because it looks really different to every person.
And so whenever somebody comes in and they talk about this word depression, I always ask like, what does it look like in your life, depression? So I want to say something really quick about, you know, I work outside of the box of the medical system, meaning I actually don't diagnose people anymore. I just don't do that in my practice. It's something that I've chosen and something that I feel like really aligns with who I am as a therapist.
And so I've structured my practice for people that aren't interested in a label. And so I just want you guys to understand that the sentence, I am depressed, is so limiting to people's lives, because we're basically saying like we're taking this label, this set of criteria that some people came up with through, yes, research and good information, but like we're taking that and we're saying that that is us. And so I think it's really important just to start this conversation out by saying you are not a mental state.
I want to tell you that you're way more than that. And we say things all the time, right, that sort of define us. And I just want us to be really careful about defining ourselves as disorder, because.
Yeah, life is hard and some people are really, really, really struggling, but we don't have to define ourselves by that. And I'll get kind of more into that for sure. But let's talk like specifically about what depression looks like.
So if you know somebody who's depressed and they don't act depressed and you're kind of like, what is up with this person? Yeah, right. You're depressed. I just want to say like depression is is sneaky, sneaky MF, right? It can hide out in the cracks and crevices of people's lives, meaning a lot of people can drag their ass out of bed, shower, go to work, come home, do all the things.
Not not peppy, but they can do a lot of the things peppy. And when they're in their private space, they are really low. The dialogue's really low.
A lot of people just like cry a lot when they have depression in their own space. Right. So if you're like in the bathroom having a good cry on a regular basis, you might take a look at the overall picture of things to see if perhaps you're depressed.
Right. A depressed mood is one in which. We're low, it's heavy, you know, we've all experienced like a moment of just funk, and so the funk is like kind of how people feel all the time, like it's really heavy.
There's not a lot of like stoke factor or interest in doing some of the things that somebody once enjoyed. And I think this is a really interesting feature of depression because it sneaks up on people. And so like as they go through years of being depressed, they lose interest in things that they really loved before.
Like I knew a woman who was this amazing quilter and she had shown me some pictures of the work that she'd done in the past and then basically like became depressed and just like stopped quilting, which was her love in her life because she just didn't feel like it. And when she recovered from depression, because, yeah, that's possible. Don't tell the pharmaceutical companies.
She basically like just went right back to quilting. I mean, she was like pretty excited, you know, like, oh, my gosh, this is my thing. I love quilting and I'm going to do this.
So that was kind of cool. A lot of times we just see people kind of unmotivated to do stuff. So there's a lot of sitting around watching TV, watching the news going on because much else is exhausting for depressed people.
I'll tell you that they're tired all the time. And that sucks. You guys have you.
I mean, of course, we've all been in a stage in our life where we're just flipping tired. And being tired is the worst because it's like, yeah, maybe you do want to go for a walk with your dog or maybe you do want to get together with friends or. Yeah, you maybe, you know, you need to look for a new job.
But if you have any energy all the time, like it's awful. It's really, really awful. And so that is one of the major just kind of red flags for depression is like when people sleep a lot or they're just like super lethargic and really are dragging themselves from thing to thing, that's a good stopping point, basically.
So and then the other thing is like I always ask people about how their relationships are and how their relationship with themselves is, because people that identify as somebody who's struggling with depression, they have a really negative relationship with themselves. It's and they're disconnected from other people. And so maybe that happened because they don't have the energy or maybe that happens because they don't have the interest in getting together with people or the interest in reading like personal growth books.
But basically, they just feel like bad about their connections and and more like, you know, into that relationship with self. They kind of have feelings of worthlessness or there's like guilt about like they feel bad about stuff, you know, and and they kind of beat up on themselves and their their self-dialogue is not kind, which is really like that's one of the first things that we teach people that have depression is like we got to work on that relationship that you have with yourself, because in order to do self-growth work, it has to start there. So it's not like because we're being all cheesy or whatever, but like you have to work on your relationship with yourself.
It comes first. And so, you know, then if we just like get just a couple more little details about depression and just dig a little bit deeper there, what you see in people's lives on a daily basis is that it's really hard for them to focus, concentrate, think clear thinking. You know, those capacities are really limited.
And so, again, it's like, is it because they're not sleeping? Right. Because a lot of people with depression, they sleep kind of erratically because they're tired all the time to being tired and sleeping. Apparently for a lot of people are not that connected.
Right. Because some people just don't sleep well. And so, P.S., when people have chronic like insomnia, a lot of times they suffer from depression.
But regardless, it's just really hard to be focused and to like move forward. So making decisions is really difficult. And that is something that we, yeah, definitely hit that head on to in therapy.
And then, of course, you get like really severe depression, which is very, very heavy. And kind of that suicidal tendency, the suicidal ideation, right, which is basically like the most hopeless, helpless place that a person can get to with depression. And there's a ton of stuff that they can do before they get there or once they're there.
So it's not like it isn't hopeless. Basically, but the state of depression, it makes us think that there's no hope for recovery. It makes us feel so stuck that we just think, well, this isn't worth it at all.
And I'll just say, like, I've known a lot of people that have hit that edge and they're never going to hit that edge again. I mean, they basically like that was their wake up call to like start doing the deeper work that needed to be done, which again is really working on that relationship with self. And so for people that are mildly depressed, I would say like, too, there's like a million self-help books out there.
There are brilliant people have written books on depression, and I'm not even going to recommend one because everything that someone has to say, whether it's from their experience or a more research backed idea, you can go with personal preference and it's valid. And the more I always have my clients who have depression, I always have them reading whatever their choice of self-help book is. It can be anything from a book on trauma to, you know, a motivational book they get to pick.
But it's really helpful. Right. And so I just I kind of want to just say, like, there's always somewhere to start.
And then if it's been going on a while and it's kind of like you've tried a lot of different things or you've known somebody that's tried a lot of things, it's just like this repetitive pattern, then that's where kind of doing some therapy work might be really effective. That's where you want to dig in. And we call that like the mental health.
But it's kind of like just emotional health and well-being. We don't as humans typically when we're depressed, especially seek out new information about the human experience. And so that's kind of what's required of people that are struggling in these severe emotional states.
It requires people to like reach out and learn. And get some information about their own experience and how what they have going on so that they can elicit some change. So hopefully this was a helpful.
And of course, like you guys, I could talk for hours, but who wants to hear that about depression? It's deep, man. I gave you some of the common features of depression, you know, and then talked about whether you could do self-help, people could do self-help or when they want to reach out for more therapy. But what I'll say is we have an epidemic.
Let's stop being judgmental and secretive about the fact that we have an epidemic. Let's come on out of the closet of depression and anxiety and all the other things and start understanding what's needed for recovery. Because these are totally like most people can recover from these things.
So I'm just putting a little help out there in the world and hopefully this will help somebody. Okay, I hope you had a great day today. Thanks for listening.
Thanks so much for listening. This podcast is not meant to be a substitute for therapy, but I hope it was super helpful for you in any case. I want to be part of some much needed change, but I'm going to need your help.
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All right. Visit my website at RebeccaHunterMSW.com to have access to resources, videos and the show notes if that interests you. And again, I'm so grateful you're listening to Take Out Therapy.
Thanks.
