depression

 by Marty L. Cooper, PhD, MFT

May 2019 – Life’s Training Opportunities

The article in this month’s newsletter extends some thoughts from last year, (link) about the necessity of approaching depression as a training process. Here I am expanding the idea to the underlying idea, namely, that life itself can be looked at as a training, a kind of coach whose injunctions and regimen is embedded in the nature of the challenge itself.  Rather than life simply giving inflictions that we have to fight, or submit to, the idea here is that actually life is giving us training opportunities. Whether we see them, or are willing to go through the hard work to get the good results, is something that is essentially up to us. But having a lens such as “life’s training opportunities” can help open us up to the possibility.

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in Depression
 by Marty L. Cooper, PhD, MFT

April 2019 – Tool of the Month – The Desert Island Test

The “Tool of the Month” for April is a simple test for a complex problem: is the belief that we hold as ours, actually ours, or is it being held because we either inherited it, or had to believe it for safety reasons? The answer is a very important one, because if a belief is congruent with who we actually are, if it truly is our belief, then it doesn’t cause friction. But if it is incongruent, then the friction between our self and our received belief cause stress, at some level, even though initially we may not be aware of that stress. So the Desert Island Test is a little thought experiment to help discriminate which belief belongs to whom.

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in Depression / Tool of the Month
 by Marty L. Cooper, PhD, MFT

March 2019 – The Wall of Knobs

Here’s an article that is an extrapolation of what I wrote about philosophy back in December, an attempt to explain some of the deeper ways in which the mind constructs depression…without telling you. It uses the image of an old power plant control room to talk about the “Wall of Knobs”, the settings of the body-mind that define our experience, and our potential for experience.

As I said in that article, although this can seem a bit academic compared with what on the surface seems more practical—what I address in the Tools of the Month—having a better understanding of how the mind works to build depression is essential to actually both managing, and ultimately deconstructing it. Depression is not simple, despite what the popular presentation of it is, and having an appropriately complex understanding will give the possibility of having a robustly balanced life.

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in Depression
 by Marty L. Cooper, PhD, MFT

February 2019 – Tool of the Month – Walking Yourself Out Into the World

The tool-of-the-month for this month is a simple one that is often not easy to execute on. The way depression works is primarily to pull the levers and knobs of the imagination, to convince you that the world, well, just is grey and bleak. But, the solution to depression is often described by the 180 degree opposite from what it’s doing: if it’s imagining greyness for you, then you can imagine color for yourself.

So, this is a description of the process of imagining out from where you are, in concentric circles of the world around you, in order to remind (“re-mind”) yourself that there is a world of possibility and potential out there, and that depression was just forgetting it for you.

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in Depression
 by Marty L. Cooper, PhD, MFT

January 2019 – Tool of the Month – “Self-Care” as Future Self-Care

Happy New Year! I hope it is starting off well for you all, and as usual, that you’re getting enough support to deal effectively with all the inevitable, and from the therapeutic perspective, necessary challenges.

In the current tool-of-the-month, I propose a practice of approaching “self-care” as “future-self care,” of practicing making choices based on our future self being a dependent who is subject to our present choices, but has no agency in actually making those choices. It creates an interesting ethical framework for our choices, without getting so entangled in the questions of society ethics and demands, that can help clarify what the actual consequences of our actions are on our self, or rather, on our selves.

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in Depression / Tool of the Month
 by Marty L. Cooper, PhD, MFT

December 2018 – Philosophy and Depression

The article this month is a quick pointer, via the work of the philosopher Matthew Ratcliffe, at a fundamental quality of depression that’s not easy to notice or describe. Basically, what he’s saying is that depression does in not so much change the things we see, but how we see them: depression makes not certain things seem meaningless, but rather makes impossible the seeing of anything as meaningful. This is not just arcane philosophy, or splitting hairs; if we don’t know this is going on, we will be looking everywhere for solutions, without realizing that the glasses we are wearing is coloring everything dark and dismal. The good news is that knowing that depression is making this existential sleight of hand allows you to question that “obviousness,” a critical opening for hope and faith that something actually is worthwhile about this life.

I hope your various holidays are going well so far, and as always, may you be getting enough support and enough challenge to keep healing and growing.

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in Depression
 by Marty L. Cooper, PhD, MFT

November 2018 – Tool of the Month – Dan Siegel’s ‘Wheel of Awareness’

Sorry for the six-week absence from the newsletters. I’ve been very busy with school work, which is amazingly immersive sometimes. However, I was not so busy that I couldn’t listen to a great podcast interview of Dr. Dan Siegel, where he discusses his mindfulness practice/exercise, called “The Wheel of Awareness.” It’s well worth a listen, both because Siegel is one of the great explainers of neuroscience and mental stuff in general, because the Wheel is a very useful practice, and also because Siegel is a great human being to hang out with for an hour.

I hope you find it useful and hope you all are finding, as we traverse the rocky current times, a balance of enough support, and enough challenge, to keep growing and unfolding.

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in Depression / Tool of the Month
 by Marty L. Cooper, PhD, MFT

September 2018 – Tool of the Month – Getting Targeted Feedback: The Tracking Chart

The tool-of-the-month for this month is a description of the process by which we all learn, and the critical factor of getting and taking feedback. In doing this, having tools to help track our progress is important to correct for distortions in our own very human self-assessment, and to build confidence in our own ability to learn and change. This template for a “tracking chart” is applicable to virtually any definable change, and though it is not a panacea or change in itself—we are the ones having to do the hard work—it is an important support in the process.

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in Depression / Tool of the Month
 by Marty L. Cooper, PhD, MFT

September 2018 – Trained or Untrained: Depression Changes by Our Work

The article for this month’s newsletter was prompted by a remarkably wise quote from an old action film, which asserts that we are only “tough” by virtue of training. It’s an insight that is true of so many areas in life, that our brilliance is a small part talent and a large part hard and diligent and intelligent work. The same is true of depression, which doesn’t get healed by grace or by hope, but rather by training in particular skills (I define four) to build up a self which supplants depression with aliveness. This might sound like a downer bit of wisdom, but the more we embrace it, the more we heal, and the more stable that healing becomes going through our lives.

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

August 2018 – Tool of the Month – Looking For What Is There

The tool for this month is a skill that involves spotting the aliveness in our environment, when depression is telling us that it’s essentially all grey and dead out there. It never is, but depression can be pretty convincing. So we need to practice, as if we were carefully scanning for the subtle life in a desert, seeing what is already there in front of us, that carries a sense of life and interest for us. Give it a shot, but as I point out in the article, remember that healing from depression is work, and learning new tools requires work and repetition to get the hang of them.

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in Depression / Tool of the Month