If you are suffering from depression and anxiety, counseling and therapy can help… but how exactly does it help?

Too many people think that counseling and therapy can’t help their depression/anxiety because they don’t understand how it is designed to work. This article will help you understand the mechanisms of counseling and therapy, and learn exactly how therapy helps depression.

How Therapists Help Depression & Anxiety

People need the help of a therapist or a counselor in dealing with depression and anxiety for two main reasons:

1. 1.  Therapists can teach you skills to deal with the emotions and thoughts that cause or worsen depression.
   2. The ongoing sessions give an outlet for stress and allow an individual to go through the very important action of “unloading” their thoughts and emotions (opening-up, getting it off your chest, venting).

Why You Should Talk To A Therapist About Your Depression, Not Your Friends and Family

When it comes to “venting” or letting-out all the thoughts, feelings and frustrations surrounding your depression, your friends and family are NOT the best choice. It is fine if your family and friends just listen and don’t get too involved in trying to fix your problems.

The problem arises when family and friends give bad advice about your depression and anxiety. This can lead to a worsening of the smaller issues that lead to the bigger issue of looming depression and anxiety.

Depression and anxiety is like a knot your body and mind that needs to be worked-out. To work out that knot, you need precise actions in-order to untangle all of the strands. There are many smaller strands (problems, thoughts and frustrations) that make up your depression and anxiety. It requires focus on the individual strands to loosen the knot and relieve the depression and anxiety that have you “all tied up.”

What Skills Help Fight Depression?

There are numerous skills that therapists teach that can help with your depression and anxiety. The triggers for depression are just as numerous (a bad day, anxiety about an upcoming event, financial/life worries, etc.). Different skills can help to battle different triggers for depression.

For instance, if your depression is triggered or worsened by memories of childhood trauma or adverse childhood experiences, a therapist will teach you skills for dealing with the thoughts and feelings that re-surface in the form of depression and anxiety.

Skills to battle depression and anxiety may include any of the following:

• • • CBT
    • EMDR
    • DBT
    • Analytical Psychotherapy
    • More…

The best medicine truly depends on what exactly triggers your depression.

Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) For Depression

CBT, or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, is one of the leading forms of psychotherapy for depression. It is also used to help treat those with addictive behaviors (Addiction, substance abuse, and/or alcoholism), and can help you break personality traits and habits.

How CBT Helps Depression and Anxiety

Depression is characterized by periods of time when a person’s sadness is overwhelming and interferes with their day-to-day lives. Those periods of time are usually caused and worsened by “triggers.” For instance:

• • A song could remind you of an ex-friend or lover…
  • The thoughts of this person can remind you of past actions you are ashamed-of…
  • This feeling of shame leads to doubt in yourself and thoughts/feelings that are painful or scary…
  • You become anxious about your future, feel like there is “something wrong with you”, and/or feel hopeless…
  • The cycle of depression digs deeper…
  • More triggers cause a pileup of negative thoughts and feelings until every moment of the day is filled with only negative (Sadness, shame, anxiety, self-doubt, etc.)

The triggers are different for each person, but this is a real example of how one small strand can snowball into extended periods of depression and melancholy.

CBT Therapy teaches you how to deal with these triggers and not allow the small strands to build up into a bigger knot. CBT teaches you to look at that sad song trigger for what it really is — it is just a trigger that will lead you down a negative road if you let it… You don’t need it, and it has no bearing on your life and your happiness, whatsoever.

An individual that is experienced with CBT and has-practice will easily shrug-off the trigger and will not allow it to get to them. This is the magical difference between someone with untreated depression and someone that is working with a therapist.

The untreated may ask, “How am I supposed to just shrug it off? How am I supposed to NOT let it bother me?” Whereas, those with the skills to fight depression and anxiety recognize the trigger as something that will hurt them or make them feel bad, so they avoid it just as they would a dangerous snake or spider. CBT creates learned behaviors that keep the body and mind away from the pain and dangers of depression.

Treating Depression and Anxiety from Childhood Trauma

Depression that stems from childhood trauma, adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and PTSD, is slightly different that melancholia or depression that stems from a chemical deficiency.

With trauma, there is a past experience that put the person into a state of danger. The danger might be from a sexual assault, physical assault, mental assault, or other perceived threat to a person’s safety. The traumatic experience itself left a “learned behavior” in the individual’s mind. The triggers for depression and anxiety in trauma victims trigger feelings of sadness, anxiety or fear in-order to “Warn” of a dangerous situation.

This warning is kind of like a short-circuit in the brain that was hard-wired by the trauma. This is why a survivor of sexual assault my be triggered into depression and anxiety by the thoughts and feelings of sex, even with a trusted partner in a safe setting. The brain is still warning of a situation that it fears.

Re-Setting Trauma Triggers for Depression

Seeing a therapist for depression can help you to learn techniques to re-wire your brain in a positive manner. Utilizing CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy can show you how to teach your brain new positive learned behaviors. Teaching your brain to relate touch of a loved one to happiness, safety and love can help to re-set the trauma triggers for depression seen in those suffering with trauma from a past sexual assault.

Learn More About CBT For Treating Clinical Depression

CBT for depression has shown such great results, that we encourage readers to read-on in our companion article HERE >>