depression

 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

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.

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in Faith / Grief
 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
 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.

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in Depression / Social
 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.

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in Acceptance/Surrender / Depression
 by Marty L. Cooper, PhD, MFT

November 2022 – Depression and the Illness of Loved Ones

As with last month, I’m going to answer another question from the list that folks have sent me, with this being about depression in relation to the long-term illness of a loved one. Although the article below is specific to this question, the thoughts are relevant to any “slow-motion” loss we are experiencing, whether that of a loved one, or loss of a career, or a medical situation of our own.

As we move into winter, I hope you are staying warm, literally and internally, but also enjoying the transitions in whatever way you can.

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in Depression / Grief / Illness / Loss
 by Marty L. Cooper, PhD, MFT

October 2022 – Love Letters to Humanity

I recently tossed a request out to a diverse group of humans I know, asking them for questions they might have about all things depression. There were a lot of questions, so I’ll be writing to them over the next few months. The first one I picked out was, “Why is it important to have a list of ‘Love Letters to Humanity’ for games, movies, songs, art, etc., in terms of Depression/Anxiety?” That there is a very interesting question, which I attempt to address in the article below.

May your respective Falls be starting well, and may you both enjoy the change in season (such as they are in your part of the world) and reflect on the impermanence (that most fundamental of life’s qualities) that the falling leaves and increasing chill implies.

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in Beloved / Depression / Love
 by Marty L. Cooper, PhD, MFT

September 2022 – Depression in “Everything Everywhere All At Once”

In this newsletter, I look at depression through the lens of this year’s movie, Everything Everywhere All At Once. In addition to Inside Out (see here for my review), it is a brilliant, and beautiful, depiction of not just depression, but depression and its resolution. I’ve been talking about it for months, and thought it was time to write it up here.

As I say in the article below, the film is not intended to be a complete map to the intricacies of the journey out of depression, but rather a meta-map for the whole arc of that journey, and its key factors. And amazingly—it’s an absurdist story of a harried woman and her taxes—it’s totally correct. So, before reading, if you haven’t, see the film, and consider seeing it again. It is very rich, and totally worth the time.

So, as the Waymonds say in the film, may these difficult times be met with heartfulness, good companions, wise guides, skillful conflict (as necessary), and more than anything, the willingness and resources to practice growth.

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in Depression / Nihilism