therapy

 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

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.

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in Depression
 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.

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in Depression
 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).

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in Depression
 by Marty L. Cooper, PhD, MFT

Energy Theft: The Toxic forms of Shame and Guilt

[Democracy is coming]

From the homicidal bitchin’

That goes down in every kitchen

To determine who will serve and who will eat.

(Leonard Cohen, “Democracy”)

Sarah, 27, who is about to finish graduate school with a PhD in engineering, hates to call her mother…and does so, dutifully, and with dread, every week. Saturday mornings come with a call that her father always picks up. “Hi Dad, how are you?” She’s not close with her father, who has never seemed that interested in her. “Well,” he says, “Retirement is better than not. Doing some golf. Things are going ok,” this being a version of what he always says before, “Oh, here’s your mother. Be well.”

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in Depression
 by Marty L. Cooper, PhD, MFT

Anger is Your Friend: The Restoration of Anger

When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!”–(John 2:15)

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

Energy and Depression

Dan Siegel, a psychiatrist and preeminent writer on neuroscience, has a great story about being at a conference with a gaggle of different hard science people, especially physicists. He realized that he didn’t really know how energy is or should be defined, so he went around asking these folks, whose bread and butter is studying energy, and their somewhat sheepish answer was, “We don’t really know,” followed up by, “Well, it’s the capacity to make stuff happen.”

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in Depression