Our therapists provide depression counseling in Austin, TX

When working with clients who experience depression, I rely on mindfulness practices as a primary tool to help individuals develop awareness of their thoughts and emotions. With the awareness that mindfulness brings, we can implement strategies for challenging and restructuring negative thought patterns associated with depression, promoting a more balanced perspective. In addition, the use of behavioral strategies assists clients to engage in pleasurable activities and social interactions, thereby alleviating symptoms of depression.

The following tools are often used in my work with clients:

• Mindfulness meditation or mindful activity, which involves learning to notice when the mind drifts, letting go of thinking, and returning focus to a predetermined word, phrase, image action, or sensory experience.
• Cognitive reframing is used to explore alternative perspectives.
• Cognitive challenging helps clients question their thoughts and beliefs in order to uncover patterns of thinking that are no longer helpful.
• Cognitive distraction gives clients the ability to move away from intrusive and unwanted thoughts.
• Sensation labeling is a mindfulness technique that assists with disrupting unwanted thinking by focusing on sensory input.
• Strategies for grief processing are used to observe, accept, experience, and release the chaos of emotions that accompany an experience of loss.
• Mental shield imagery develops skills in managing mirror neurons to reduce emotional reactivity to other people's emotions.
• Thinking strategies to address catastrophic thinking and increase confidence in dealing with undesired outcomes, should they arise.
• Motivation skills reduce procrastination and avoidance.
• Strategies for gaining acceptance of mistakes and letting go of shame and guilt.

I check in with clients about their progress with their goals and the improvements they are seeing in their symptoms every session. Meaningful progress is evident as the list of progress and successes gets longer and the list of challenges gets shorter.

Clients' efforts to implement the skills they are learning and the goals that they set between sessions are essential to making progress in therapy.

Clients can prepare for therapy by thinking about what they want to achieve, in addition to what it is they want to move away from.