Anxiety and Depression Writing – Marty Cooper, PhD, MFT

September 4, 2024September 24, 2024 by Marty L. Cooper, PhD, MFT

September 2024 – Internal Family Systems and Depression: The Protectors

The next few issues will be looking at depression through the lens of Internal Family Systems Theory (IFS), a model of psychotherapy that dates back decades (with its roots going back even further to the early days of Freud and Jung) but is seeing a huge surge in interest amongst psychologists and clinicians. Although depression can be seen through multiple lenses (as you can read here), IFS has probably one of the best lenses on the condition, particularly in its framing depression as related to what IFS calls the Protector. Depression is best seen as a systemic defense, rather than a persecutor, and IFS offers an elegant way of highlighting this vital point.

May your late summers be not too sweltering, and if you’re heading back to school, I hope the transition is easy, or at least a useful challenge.

August 20, 2024September 4, 2024 by Marty L. Cooper, PhD, MFT

August 2024 – Depression and the Divine Child

I try to give a “pointillistic” view of depression in these newsletters, from the very pragmatic (as with here) to the rather abstract (like here), to give multiple ways to think about this complex experience. Today’s newsletter will be more of the latter, although in a weird sense (as hopefully you’ll see) fundamentally pragmatic. So, this month I’ll be describing what Carl Jung called the archetype of the Divine Child, specifically seen through the lens of a Jungian analyst named Donald Kalsched.

Kalsched writes about what he calls the “self-care system”, which is essentially the way our psyches protect themselves from damage when in contact with a threatening or caustic outside world. We’re all aware of the normal protections, such as defensiveness (“I didn’t do anything wrong!”), but Kalsched unpacks a more primal phenomenon, a defense system at the level of the basic archetypes which is organized around the protection not of the personal “Inner Child,” but of the more fundamental Divine Child.

Take a read and see if or how this idea might apply to your own life. Once you get the concept, it can be a very useful addition to the pragmatics of dealing with depression.

May your summer be progressing with the right mix of comfort and challenge.

in Archetypes / Depression / Grief / Inner Child

July 20, 2024September 2, 2024 by Marty L. Cooper, PhD, MFT

July 2024 – Faith in the Age of Overwhelm

Unsurprisingly, I’ve been having many conversations this week about national and global politics, about power vs. powerlessness, and survival. With the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, the assaults on democracy worldwide, and the uncertainties of our future, it is no wonder that these subjects are part of the therapy conversation. Yet, for all the details and myriad particular concerns, the central questions all essentially seem to boil down to: How do we remain active? And how do we stay centered in the storm?

The article below was written around the beginning of Trump’s presidency, as I was working with clients (and myself) around these questions. The same discussion is returning and I’m seeing how my response, and my suggestion about how clients can orient themselves, has remained the same since 2016. In essence this is: practice grief (there are vast losses that the world at large, and we as individuals, are refusing to, or too overwhelmed, to grieve) and faith. But here I mean faith in a specific sense, being the intentional and conscious choice to assume that the world is, in essence, good not bad, given that the existential question of “Is life/these times good or bad?” cannot be answered simply by data. Change-oriented action, in whatever appropriate form, almost naturally follows on locating ourselves in that matrix of grief and faith. But if we do not root ourselves there, our actions with either be spastic and poorly considered, or frozen.

So, may you find some measure of footing in this stormy and uncertain time, and a faith that allows you the space to grieve what is being lost, in order to find and embrace what still remains.

in Faith / Grief

February 24, 2024 by Marty L. Cooper, PhD, MFT

February 2024 – The Ghosts of Stalled Grief

In this month’s article, I’m writing about grief again, given that it is so central to the process of depression, its emergence and resolution. Specifically, I’m discussing how “ghosts” get created when our capacity to tolerate the loss of something that has been life-structuring gets overwhelmed. There’s no quick solution, but more of my point here is that knowing that you are camped out in a necropolis, and not actually in life anymore, is the necessary step to restarting grief and returning to life.

May your winter be progressing with only a manageable level of chill, and may you have the grace to remember that it is always just a phase in the rotation of the seasons.

in Grief

December 4, 2023February 24, 2024 by Marty L. Cooper, PhD, MFT

December 2023 – “The Stream Which Seems an Endless Lake”: A Metaphor for the Grief Process

Following on the last two newsletter articles (here and here), this month’s thoughts focus on a metaphor for grief that I use frequently, because of the way it seems to usefully embed the different phases of grief as it unfolds from shock to acceptance. Of course, find the metaphor that works for you, that describes your actual experience in a way that gives it shape and language and meaningfulness. But here’s a suggestion of one which you can tuck in a pocket, and bring out in times when it’s hard to find an understanding of loss that isn’t simply endless misery. Given that we’re fully heading into the holiday season (like it or not), and that the archetypes of family are getting lit up along with the fairy lights, it seemed an apropos time to offer up this lake-and-river imagery.

So, however your December is shaping up, may you find a joy that matches your unique self, and enough supports to make use of whatever the stress of the season brings you.

in Grief

November 6, 2023February 24, 2024 by Marty L. Cooper, PhD, MFT

November 2023 – The Protocols of Grief

Fall (in the Northern half of the planet), with its increasing dark and insularity, as well as the setting in (for some of the planet) of the holiday season, can bring on experiences or re-experiences of loss. Sometimes these are new losses, and sometimes these are losses that we tried to tuck into the attic but nonetheless have made their way downstairs. Given the build of our human psyches, these losses trigger the grief process as the way we’ve been designed to resolve those losses. But as natural as that is, we often initially resist or deny or rationalize the loss. Which doesn’t work.

So, in this month’s article, I lay out a sketch of the “protocols” of grieving, the stripped down elements or principles that make the process flow as smoothly and elegantly as it can. Hewing to these as best you can is a decent (if not cookie-cutter) recipe for engaging a process all of us would prefer to ignore. But since hiding grief is the invitation to depression coming on, it behooves us to surrender to the grieving, and these rules of grief are here to support us in that surrender.

in Depression / Grief

July 3, 2023July 3, 2023 by Marty L. Cooper, PhD, MFT

July 2023 – The Mind Is Inherently a Really Really Weird Place

In this month’s article, I’m stepping back for a second from my usual focus on mood to talk about something that impacts all sufferings, being the commonly held misconceptions about the nature of our minds. For us to engage in our own healing, we need a good map and model of the process. Why? Well, try building a bridge if you’re assuming bridges work on the same rules as writing fiction. I hope it stirs up some interesting thoughts and self-inquiry.

Otherwise, may your summer be starting with a sufficient mind and heart space to appreciate the changes in the season, and if not, that you have enough support and trust in the possibility of change to keep going.

in Mind

March 24, 2023 by Marty L. Cooper, PhD, MFT

March 2023 – Our Friend, Futility

For this month’s article, I’m revisiting directly one of my favorite topics, being the boons of aligning with futility. I know that saying futility is full of gifts does not sound right (to say the least), nonetheless the assertion here is that futility, understood and approached properly, is a profound friend. Read through the following piece and hopefully you will come out with a different view of what futility actually is, and what it offers.

Otherwise, I hope that the change in season (such as it may be in your neck of the woods) is bringing energy, reflection, rightly accepted grief, and deeply welcomed joys.

in Depression / Futility / Grief

February 1, 2023March 24, 2023 by Marty L. Cooper, PhD, MFT

February 2023 – Swimming Upstream: Social Life During Depression

In this month’s article, I answer a reader’s question about how to build and maintain a social life during depression, and give an outline of the program elements that help. As ever, there’s no guarantee with depression, and it is work to come out of depression. There’s no way around that, but when you come to terms with that, you have a big advantage in the inevitable wrestling match that depression presents.

Wherever you are in the world, may your February be full of the right mix of challenge and support, work and grace.

in Depression / Social

January 20, 2023March 24, 2023 by Marty L. Cooper, PhD, MFT

January 2023 – Acceptance Comes Before Understanding

Happy 2023, and I hope the first few weeks of the year are starting off well for you. If not so much, then I wish for you to have enough support and inspiration to work with whatever is arising, especially the awareness that, “Even this will pass.”

In this article, I’m addressing what we often are confused on, the belief that understanding has to come before acceptance. The counterintuitive thing is that actually the two are decoupled, and acceptance requires no understanding, just acknowledgement of the reality of something, and letting that reality be true within ourselves. Which, although it is not easy (we have defenses against foreign stuff), works a lot better in the long run.

in Acceptance/Surrender / Depression