The subtitle of Storied Mind used to be Writing to Recover Life from Depression, and I’ve often wondered why it is specifically that writing can help heal depression, especially when so many other approaches to treatment have failed me. When I was just starting this blog, I wrote about the fear of writing or even […]

Simply getting to work when you’re depressed can feel like an impossible task. Dealing with people in the workplace and doing the most basic parts of the job seem to take more energy than you have. The routine becomes hard labor, and the stress and depression feed off each other. Over the past year, several […]

Why I try to understand depression, I find too few words with too many meanings. This isn’t quibbling over semantics. It’s about what you feel when living with depression and what you feel when you can finally live without it. It’s about the experience behind the words. Take the word, control. To control and to […]

When I’m depressed, I dwell most on the failings of the past and the expected disappointments of the future, but there is also the challenge of the ordinary moments of the present. The challenge when depressed is to recognize the things I do well but unconsciously, the daily actions I’m good at but ignore when […]

The psychologist Richard O’Connor believes that we tell ourselves stories about our lives to control stress. Stress has a way of becoming a chronic condition. It wears down your body and damages your brain, especially when combined with depression. Yet stress is a killer we often crave like a drug. We create stories that help […]

Recently, I’ve been reading about the blending of Buddhist psychology with western psychotherapy, especially the ideas about desire. I used to think that Buddhist teachings considered desire itself to be the cause of suffering and dissatisfaction with life. Not so, according to western interpreters like Jack Kornfield, Phillip Moffitt and Mark Epstein. They describe desire […]