Understanding Depression

Depression can feel like a deep emptiness, a profound tiredness, or a sense of being disconnected from yourself and the world around you. You might feel like you’re always kind of in a bad mood, struggle to enjoy things that used to matter, or move through your days with a quiet sense of “what’s the point?” For many people, it feels like being stuck in a fog: living, but not fully alive.

These experiences aren’t signs of weakness. They’re part of our body’s natural shut down response.

When we experience difficult situations, sometimes our nervous system moves us into a state of shut-down to dull the pain and help us get by — it’s a bit like switching your phone to low battery mode, where certain functions are reduced to conserve power. This switch is especially likely to happen if the difficult things we experience feel persistent or unavoidable. In the short-term, this shut down response might really help us get through some hard stuff. But when we’re chronically in low battery mode it can feel debilitating, and that’s what we call depression. 

Why Depression Happens

In today’s world, the difficult things we experience often do feel persistent or unavoidable, because they’re often systemic. The stress of oppressive forces or ongoing pressures to perform can feel like they permeate everything. And on a personal level, implicit messages about ourselves, others, and the world that we’ve picked up along our journey can contribute to depression too. If somewhere inside we believe we’re incapable or alone, or pain isn’t okay to feel, we might default to shut-down when life starts to hurt.

None of this means you’re broken. It means your nervous system has been working overtime to keep you going.

Living In Shut Down

Living in shut down can make everything feel harder: getting out of bed, making decisions, connecting with others, or simply caring about yourself. You may feel guilty for not being more motivated, or shame for struggling when you “look fine” to the outside world. Many people describe feeling both overwhelmed and numb, stuck between wanting things to change and not having the energy to try.

How Therapy Can Help Depression

My approach to therapy gently explores the protective role of depression. We create space to slowly reconnect with the parts of you that have been muted in order to survive. Where there’s space to witness the sharp pain of life’s difficulty, there’s also freedom to release the dullness of depression.

We focus on helping your nervous system find states beyond collapse. And we don’t get there by pushing or forcing, but by building safety and connection at a pace that feels manageable. This might include shifting implicit beliefs held in the body, exploring what has felt too heavy to hold alone, or finding places of agency in a world that can feel disempowering.

My stance through this work is warm, collaborative, and respectful of your lived experience. Together, we move toward more energy, more presence, and more space to feel like yourself again.