depression Archives – Page 5 of 10 – Marty Cooper, PhD, MFT

August 1, 2018August 27, 2022 by Marty L. Cooper, PhD, MFT

August 2018 – Newsletter – Radio Interview About Celebrity

“Vinyl Thought” Interview on Celebrity and Mental Illness, With Additional Thoughts

Here’s a link to the recording for a radio program I did with Vinyl Thought (the same good folks I talked about with depression, here). I was invited in to give a psychological perspective on the phenomenon of celebrity mental health issues, with a more hypnotherapy/NLP perspective offered by the other guest. The show is about an hour, so if you’re not able to listen to it, the takeaways I’ll address in the article section below.

in Depression

June 14, 2018August 27, 2022 by Marty L. Cooper, PhD, MFT

June – Tool of the Month – 10-10-10 Breath Tool

This month’s tool…of the month…is a down and dirty way of engaging your nervous system if over- or under-activated, and helping it come back into balance. The breath is a remarkable tool for getting into parts of our nervous systems that our thinking mind can’t access (sounding like the adults in the Peanuts cartoons, i.e., making just nonsense noises). So here’s a simple pattern of breathing, with a link to a short demo, for you to experiment with and see what it does for your own system.

in Depression / Tool of the Month

June 14, 2018August 27, 2022 by Marty L. Cooper, PhD, MFT

Discovering the desire that undermines depression: Discerning versus deciding who we are

The article for this month concerns the relationship of desire and depression, and how we typically inherit our thoughts about our desires, rather than discern those desires through the process of examining ourselves. If we are to find what our authentic desires are, we have to look closely and carefully at ourselves, in an often somewhat arduous process of getting to know what this “self” actually is. So many people—parents, families, cultures—tell us what we should want, and what should satisfy us. But rarely do those simply line up with our unique desires, and in that gap of knowledge, and then action on those desires, is the fertile ground from which depression can spring.

in Depression / Therapy

May 14, 2018August 27, 2022 by Marty L. Cooper, PhD, MFT

May – Tool of the Month – Reorienting When Startled

In this second edition of the “tool of the month,” I’m addressing the need to reorient to our bodies and surroundings when we are caught off guard, surprised, by the behavior of one of our fellow humans. Being startled does particular things to our attention and connection to, and groundedness in, our selves, so it’s important to reconnect and reorient as soon as we can, in order to have a clearer sense of how to deal with the situation.

in Depression / Tool of the Month

May 14, 2018August 27, 2022 by Marty L. Cooper, PhD, MFT

“Combing Cotton” in Psychotherapy—Untangling Our Jumbled Minds and Hearts

Psychotherapy, as I say in the article for this month, is not usually going to be understood when we come rushing into it in crisis. Which is where most of us begin. But to know something about the process, in order to help us align us to its particular medicine, is helpful for a number of reasons, especially to understand why it involves pain. But the good kind. So here is a short piece using the image of “combing cotton” to talk about the repetitive nature of therapy, in which we return to the same areas repeatedly, in order to straighten out what otherwise remains tangled in our thoughts and feelings.

in Depression / Therapy

April 25, 2018August 27, 2022 by Marty L. Cooper, PhD, MFT

April – Tool of the Month – Deciding Like an Optometrist

Here is the first of the “Tool of the Month” articles, which I intend to send out mid-month, between longer articles. The inaugural tool is “Decision making like an optometrist,” a formalization of something you probably do anyway, but perhaps without noticing you’re doing it. And for this inaugural TofM, we have an article by myself and also by guest writer, Janice B., to give two takes on the same tool. I hope it’s helpful to you all.

in Depression / Tool of the Month

April 12, 2018August 27, 2022 by Marty L. Cooper, PhD, MFT

Your Intolerables Choose For You

In this article, is a short piece about the paradox of hard, fixed stances in one’s life, and the way that we think they give us more control, when actually they are the ones limiting our choices. As usual, much of healing and growth, particularly in relation to depression, is about acceptance.

in Depression

March 20, 2018August 27, 2022 by Marty L. Cooper, PhD, MFT

Radio Interview About Depression

“Vinyl Thought” Interview on Depression and Obsession

Here is an interview I did with the good people at the Vinyl Thought, a radio program here in San Francisco. Originally slated as a short talk on depression, we ended up talking for 45 minutes about depression, medication, and regulation versus healing. Then we explored the nature of obsession, as they had earlier interviewed a journalist who was connected to an OJ Simpson interview that is now being released. So, a wide-ranging conversation.

This is the link to the Vinyl Thought’s webpage, and to get to the recording you click on the icon labeled “Audio MP3”. My section begins 45 minutes in.

Click here for the interview.

in Depression

February 1, 2018August 27, 2022 by Marty L. Cooper, PhD, MFT

Depression and the 12 Steps

In this issue, I give a brief take on the comedian Russell Brand’s brilliant new book on addiction, entitled “Recovery: Freedom from Our Addictions”, and its connection to depression. If depression is a compulsive behavior, both literal and mental behavior (beliefs), then depression would qualify as addictive: it kind of runs on its own, but draws our energy and input, and rewards us with a kind of protection from the overwhelming larger realities of the world, and ourselves. I don’t go into the 12 steps themselves—Brand covers those all in depth—but the basic principles all translate to healing from depression: admit there’s a problem, be open to a solution, get resources to support the change, put in appropriate work towards that change, and be open to feedback.

in Depression

January 1, 2018August 27, 2022 by Marty L. Cooper, PhD, MFT

Buoyancy control: Balancing highs and lows as an end in itself

In scuba diving, “buoyancy control” refers (generally) to the skill of maintaining “neutral buoyancy” while underwater. That is, through regulating your breath, you keep an internal density that’s equal to the density of the water around you. Meaning, it’s your ability to float while immersed, rather than getting pushed around by the always changing currents.

When we’re feeling balanced in our lives, we are experiencing the all-around sense that we get physically when we’re amongst the kelp. Things are happening, changes are occurring, the boss did that thing again, and Uncle Harry has the politics of 1955, but we don’t internally feel upset, thrown, or imbalanced. We’re buoyant. It has the qualities of feeling grounded, often pleasant, but primarily safe and under control (without being overly controlling).

in Depression