psychotherapy

 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

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

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.

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in Depression / Therapy
 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.

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

How Therapists Avoid Becoming Depressed, Embittered Burn-Outs

I have been practicing psychotherapy for about 15 years now. I’ve worked with abandoned children, abandoning mothers, schizophrenics, a few sociopaths, folks who want to kill themselves more often than not, and deep, chronic depression and anxiety (which is the center of my private practice). In these years, I’m asked by patients, with some regularity, and bafflement, “How can you stand to listen to all this all the time?” Good question: how is it that we psychotherapists can engage day in and day out our patients’ suffering-which is to say, the stream of human suffering-and not become burnt out husks?

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in Therapy