Depression

 by Marty L. Cooper, PhD, MFT

February 2026 – The Pragmatics of Play

In this month’s newsletter, I’m following up on the article from last month (here) that discussed the importance of play in dark personal and political times. But how one is to play I left to address in this article, so below you’ll find my thoughts about the hows and whys of play, as well as a grab-bag of ideas for very particular instances of play. I don’t mean any of them as prescriptive, or claim they’ll be to your taste; instead, they are presented to give an overall flavor of the experiential and behavioral modes of play across just a handful of possible life domains. When one starts grokking (or often for adults, remembering) the heft and feel of play, one’s mind tends to respond with an outpouring of ideas. When we feel safe and oriented, we play.

So, I hope this article gives weight to the theory of the previous newsletter, and that you come away with a little bit more encouragement to play as a general rule, and particularly at dark times, and some ideas that point to how that play mode feels and flows.

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in Authoritarianism / Depression / Play
 by Marty L. Cooper, PhD, MFT

January 2026 – The Necessity of Play in Dark Times

I’ve been recently thinking a lot about play. Last year I put out a broadcast to my professional email lists and collected a small group of psychotherapists interested in experimenting with role-playing games as applied to psychotherapy (and group process). This was engendered by a surge of creative and playful energy released by finishing a very not-playful PhD dissertation several years ago. It might seem from the outside like this would be a diversion or distraction from the serious endeavor of the healer, but what I found confirmed what I learned as a young activist in the 1990s and from my work treating depression: play is one of the most serious things we can do.

The following article attempts to articulate that. It’s a big subject, so this is not a treatise or manifesto, but rather an attempt to reflect and comment on the psychological realities of living in authoritarian regimes, one’s own depression being one of them. May it be useful as inspiration and validation to figure out how to weave play both into one’s external and internal revolutions, to fighting with serious play and playful seriousness, for what is the through-line of goodness that defines this collective human life.

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in Authoritarianism / Depression / Play
 by Marty L. Cooper, PhD, MFT

July 2025 – The Proper Use of Our Depression Tools

It’s been a fairly heady run of Internal Family Systems articles these last months (here), hence I wanted to address something a bit more tangible this month. What follows, then, is talking about the tools for working on depression, although not so much in their particularities (the mood journals, exercising, gratitude journal, etc.) but in how to orient in general towards using them (pacing, selection, etc.). As much as we might want a fix-all device, unfortunately tools do not deploy themselves; we are the ones holding the handle of these tools, and thus how we approach them has a lot to do with how useful they are. So, I hope this gives you a clearer framework, a kind of protocol for using all of your tools.

May your summers be appropriately languid and not ennui-ridden; may the heat be enlivening rather than just wilting; may the river water be refreshing rather than merely cold; and may your connections be heart-lifting and plentiful, and not empty. Where it’s the latter rather than the former, I wish your courage and support to meet the difficulties with effective tools, and a willingness to believe that there’s still goodness in the world.

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in Depression / Tools
 by Marty L. Cooper, PhD, MFT

December 2024 – Internal Family Systems: Seeing the World (and Self) Through an IFS Lens

In this article, I will be continuing on with the run of IFS articles (on Exiles, Protectors, and the Self) to give a sketch of IFS applied to ourselves and macro-level actors at a time of such social and political upheaval. To see current reality clearly, we need multiple lenses, but it would seem that an accurate psychological lens is sorely missing. There is much more to be said and explored about psychology and groups than I can cover here, but hopefully the article can give you a sense of what IFS can offer both to understanding, empathy, and compassionate social relationships. Whatever side of the aisle you sit on, hopefully it’s clear that all of those qualities are desperately needed.

If you are in America, may your Thanksgiving have been filled with genuine gratitude, and otherwise may you be finding strength, resilience, and useful challenges in these interesting times.

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in Depression / Internal Family Systems
 by Marty L. Cooper, PhD, MFT

November 2024 – Internal Family Systems and Depression: The Self

In this month’s article, I continue the depiction of how the Internal Family Systems (IFS) “plural mind” model intersects with the phenomenon of depression (you can find the previous article on Protectors here, and Exiles here), with a focus on the Self, what IFS considers the central organizing principle and force of the psyche. Essentially, the Self can be thought of as the archetype of the ideal parent, but one that can and needs to be installed in the middle of our psyche for all the various parts to calm down and collaborate. Arguably, this installation is both what heals depression, and what psychotherapy itself is ultimately about.

IFS is a very rich model which these last articles are only sketching, so if you get interested and want to go further, you can check out the popular version of IFS, No Bad Parts, and the clinical manual, Internal Family Systems Therapy, both by Richard Schwartz.

May your late Fall be full of the richness of darkness, both in its quietude, and in its opportunities for contemplating losses and change.

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in Depression / Internal Family Systems / Self
 by Marty L. Cooper, PhD, MFT

October 2024 – Internal Family Systems and Depression: The Exiles

In this short run of articles about Internal Family Systems (IFS) and depression, we covered last month (see here) the Protector who deploys depression in the service of exiling unwanted parts of the personality. These parts who are ostracized are known as “Exiles” in IFS, and they will be the focus for this month, what they are and how they are related to depression. (To explore in more detail, see No Bad Parts, by Schwartz.)

As another summer is drawing to a close, may you have the space to reflect on these endless cyclical changes, and if you feel any loss with this transition, may you be able to feel that measure of grief and listen to it respectfully. The more we do that, the less our griefs get stuck.

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in Depression / Exiles / Internal Family Systems
 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.

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in Depression / Grief / Internal Family Systems / Protectors
 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.

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in Archetypes / Depression / Grief / Inner Child
 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.

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in Depression / Grief
 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.

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in Depression / Futility / Grief