Fear has a way of setting boundaries that can’t be crossed. If you do cross them, you know you’ll pay a price – a pain or terror you can’t endure. The boundary is protection. Inside it, you’re safe. I think of the anxiety I feel when moving through depression as the warning sign. You’re getting […]
cognitive behavioral therapy
Martin Seligman’s Approach to Cognitive Therapy
Many people with depression believe that nothing good will ever happen for them. The norm is failure and disappointment, the exception is success, and when something good does happen, it doesn’t count. This is just the sort of inner belief and self-talk that cognitive therapy addresses, and one of its leading advocates is Martin Seligman. […]
Coping with Stress in Depression
What’s the best way for coping with stress? Sometimes, when I’m starting to feel overwhelmed, it’s easy to forget everything I’ve ever learned and every skill I’ve ever mastered to stay sane. So then I have to retrace my steps and go back to first principles. It’s like being a musician who practices scales every […]
Starting on a Path toward Acceptance
For some time I have been working with the idea of accepting depression rather than trying to fight it. That’s an approach to therapy based on mindfulness and an attempt to broaden the range of experience you can live with comfortably. Although I haven’t worked with a therapist trained in any of the acceptance and […]
How Do We Change in Psychotherapy?
The first session I ever had with a psychiatrist proved to me that I could achieve a real change through psychotherapy. While in college, I had been immobilized by panic attacks and was desperate to get help. I spent three hours with a psychiatrist deeply engaged in the confusing mass of experience I needed to […]
How Well-Being Therapy Works
The need for an innovative treatment like Well-Being Therapy hits you hard when you learn a bit about relapse. It happens – a lot. In fact, the majority of people who recover from depression will relapse in the months or perhaps years following the end of symptoms. Medications don’t prevent it, neither does cognitive behavioral […]
