shame

This is a new version of an early post about how my wife and I were able to keep our relationship together despite the impact of depression. It discusses a therapeutic approach to emotional awareness that helps eliminate barriers to closeness by drawing on ideas about acceptance. More than 20 years ago I stopped believing […]

Men and women have the same need and longing to connect with each other, but they also have different ways of reacting to stress that can drive them apart. That makes reconnecting depressed partners difficult. Psychotherapist Patricia Love believes that these instinctive coping strategies can trigger the fear and shame that isolate partners from each […]

Except for my first experience in therapy, I spent years working with psychiatrists (back in the days when they did more than write prescriptions), depressed the whole time, perhaps getting a temporary lift, but quickly losing whatever short-term benefit the sessions may have provided. According to many therapists, as I explain below, this is a […]

Understanding depression and getting serious about recovery take a lot of searching. Reading is one of easiest tools to use, and the classic books in this highly personal list may help you get started. They have opened my mind to dimensions of healing I had never before paid much attention to. In particular, the five […]

My getting depressed after a cancer operation almost ended our marriage. It was the blow that forced my wife to remind me of the boundaries I couldn’t afford to ignore. I had been in high spirits for the operation and right through the recovery period. My wife and I had been especially close during that […]

This revised post from the early days of Storied Mind seems especially relevant to the work I’m doing with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Sometimes I’ve interpreted certain life and career choices of the past as avoiding depression. At other times, I’ve seen them as accepting the need to deal with it rather than play a […]