Depression has an especially cruel season called relapse. It always happens after the worst seems to be over; hope like sunlight is restored; life without depression is in full bloom. Then suddenly it’s winter again. The more often it happened to me, the more impossible the goal of recovery seemed to become. I was surprised […]
cognitive therapy
Peter’s Recovery Story – Part 2
Be sure to read Part 1 of this self-help recovery story about the development of Peter’s depression from childhood through the teenage years. Adulthood I moved a lot, even from country to country, but soon learned that the escape was merely temporary. My old self was following wherever I went, but moving about and keeping […]
Reading as a Form of Depression Therapy
Have you ever heard of bibliotherapy? I’m always trying to identify ways to start working on recovery from depression, but I never thought much about one of the first steps I took – reading. I was surprised to learn that reading books for medical treatment dates to World War II, when it proved effective for […]
Why Therapy Can Work: Ideas from Brain Research
Brain research is one of those many scientific fields that I’ll never know much about, but I find it important to get even a limited understanding of the direction of recent findings. It helps me to know, for example, that emotions are generated unconsciously through multiple brain systems before anything gets to awareness. As I […]
Posts on Self-Esteem at Health Central
Some Rights Reserved by paul (dex) at Flickr Here are two posts about self-esteem (here and here) I’ve recently published at Health Central. “Loss of self-esteem” has become the clinical term for one of depression’s key symptoms, but it doesn’t convey much about living with the contempt I used to feel for myself, day in, […]
