Depression therapy in Seattle that helps you find your way back

What depression can look like

Depression isn't always sadness. Often it's flatness, heaviness, or a quiet sense of pointlessness that's hard to explain to people who haven't felt it. It can look highly functional from the outside and exhausting on the inside. Some of what people bring to me:

• Low mood that hangs around for weeks, or a numbness where feelings used to be
• Losing interest in things and people that once mattered to you
• Fatigue that doesn't lift, or sleeping too much or too little
• Trouble concentrating, deciding, or getting started on simple tasks
• A harsh inner critic: "I'm lazy," "I'm a burden," "what's wrong with me"
• Pulling away from friends and then feeling worse for it
• Burnout that has tipped into something heavier than being tired of work

Depression also shows up after losses and transitions: a breakup, a move, a diagnosis, the end of a chapter. Sometimes it's the body's way of saying something needs to change, and sometimes it's a pattern with deep roots. Either way, it responds to good therapy.

How I work with depression

I don't treat depression as a character flaw to be argued with or a mood to be forced back up. We get curious about it. Drawing on Internal Family Systems (IFS), we look at the parts of you that have gone quiet or shut things down, and we get to understand what they're protecting you from. When those parts feel understood, they tend to loosen their grip, and energy and interest come back on their own rather than by force of will.

Alongside that, I bring in somatic and body-based tools for the physical heaviness, DBT-informed skills for the days when getting through is the goal, attachment-based work for depression that's tangled up in relationships, and, when low mood is connected to painful past experiences, EMDR to process what's underneath. I'm trauma-informed throughout, because depression and old hurts are often the same story told two ways.

If medication is part of your picture, or might be, I'm glad to coordinate with your prescriber or help you find one. Therapy and medication often work better together than either does alone.

What to expect

We start with a free 15-minute consultation so you can ask questions and see whether I feel like a good fit. If so, our first session is a relaxed intake where we talk about what's been happening and what you'd like to be different, even if "different" is hard to picture right now.

Sessions are 50 minutes, usually weekly, and held online via secure, HIPAA-compliant video, which many people find easier on the days when leaving the house feels like a lot. Progress with depression is rarely a straight line, but most people notice, over the first several weeks, small returns: a bit more energy, a moment of interest, a kinder inner voice.