Posted by pegasus on June 15, 2004, at 17:17:16
In reply to Re: Where to go next with therapy? » Dinah, posted by littlep24 on June 15, 2004, at 16:58:48
Maybe what they meant about depression being easier is that after being depressed for a long time, the neurons in our brains can change so that the neural pathways to depression become stronger than the neural pathways to happiness. It's not the same thing as depression being more enjoyable, but it might be the pattern that your brain uses by default at this point.
The type of therapy that I hear about most in terms of dealing with chronic depression is Cognitive Therapy. Have you ever worked with a therapist who does cognitive therapy? It is a type of talk therapy. It isn't fun or easy, but I've done it for major depression and it was very helpful for me. The hardest part, I think, is being willing to challenge the types of thoughts that I have that lead me down the path to depression. Usually cognitive therapy starts by having you recognize what those thoughts are. For me, that was really tough, because I didn't even notice that I was having the thoughts. They were such an internal part of my everyday experience.
I don't know if this helps. If you've been doing therapy for 10 years then you might already know this stuff. But maybe it's a place to start a useful discussion anyway.
- pegasus
poster:pegasus
thread:356656
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040614/msgs/357000.html