Lawyers with Depression Podcast

Lawyers with Depression Podcast
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For anyone who struggles with depression, these weekly podcasts contain interesting and informative interviews with leading experts and authors about this critical topic.

Episodes

  1. 06/12/2024

    Leading a Mindful Life in the Law: An Interview with Lawyer and Meditation Teacher, Courtney Schulnick

    This podcast features my interview with Courtney Schulnick, Esq., a lawyer and certified mindfulness educator. She is Special Counsel at the law firm of Marshall Dennehey in Philadelphia, defending individuals and businesses in casualty matters in the local, state, and federal courts.  She holds a law degree from the Rutgers School of Law and earned her undergraduate degree at the University of Pennsylvania. The stress and anxiety she experienced led to her enrollment in the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Program at the Myrna Brind Center for Mindfulness at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadephia. Now a certified trainer, Courtney gives presentations at law firms, law schools, and other organizations. You can learn more about her and her services on her website. Courtney weaves together the practice of mindfulness into her daily life as a lawyer, wife, and mother of three young boys. All lawyers seek greater work/life balance, and mindfulness is a path toward that goal. Sincere, kind, and insightful, everyone who listens to Courtney will be encouraged to integrate mindfulness into their lives.

  2. 12/13/2023

    Perfectionism in the Legal Profession & Its Relationship to Lawyer and Law Student Mental Health: An Interview with Jordana Confino

    With a J.D. from Yale Law School, a B.A. in Psychology from Yale University, Certifications in Coaching and Applied Positive Psychology, two federal judicial clerkships, and a former Adjunct Law Professor of the Year award at Fordham, Jordana Confino understands the unique stressors and demands of the legal profession. And as a recovering perfectionist and overachiever, she is excruciatingly familiar with the limiting beliefs that prevent people from reaching their highest potential. Jordana transformed her own life by leveraging the science of positive psychology and human motivation theory, and she has seen these techniques work time and time again in the lives of her clients and students. Nothing lights Jordana up more than helping overachievers get out of their own way so they can soar higher than they’ve ever imagined possible. Jordana is a certified professional coach, speaker, and advisor. She is valued for her expertise in positive psychology and well-being and unparalleled ability to connect with and inspire everyone she meets. Seven years after graduating from Yale Law School, she founded JC Coaching & Consulting to empower lawyers and other high-achieving professionals to transform their lives and work for the better.

  3. 09/29/2021

    Addressing Mental Health and Well-Being in Law Schools: An Interview with Law Professor Shailini George

    Today’s guest is Shailini George, a law professor at Suffolk University Law School. Her scholarship is focused on law student and lawyer well-being, mindfulness, and the cognitive science of learning. She is the author of the recently released “Law Students Guide to Doing Well and Being Well,” and the co-author of “Mindful Lawyering, The Key to Creative Problem Solving.” She and fellow law professor Lisle Baker, will be teaching a new law school course at Suffolk this year, “Preparing for Professional Success.” Professor George is highly involved in the National Legal Writing Community, having served on the board of the Association of Legal Writing Directors, the Executive Committee of the AALS Section on Legal Writing, Research and Reasoning, and his co-chaired the Diversity and Scholarship Committees of the Legal Writing Institute. Professor George was recently appointed to the Institute for well-being in-laws research and scholarship committee and is a member of the AALS balance section. Professor George in the News “Are You Addicted to Your Smartphone? Here’s How to Fight It” – NBC News, Boston  “Shailini George on Law Students Doing Well and Being Well” – Geek in Review podcast Geek in Review Podcast Episode 125 (July 13, 2021). “Is Your Smartphone Making You Less Smart? Distraction Is Real” – Bloomberg Law “What Law Schools Absolutely Need to Know to Ace Law School” – Above the Law “Shailini George on Doing Well on Doing Well and Being Well in Law School” – Counsel to Counsel with Stephen Seckler, Esq.

  4. 05/29/2020

    Podcast Interview With Mary Cregan, Author of “The Scar: A Personal History of Depression and Recovery”

    Dan: I’m Dan Lukasik. Today’s guest is Mary Cregan, author of the book The Scar: A Personal History of Depression and Recovery. Mary received her PhD from Columbia University and is a lecturer in English literature at Barnard College in New York City, where she lives with her husband and son. Welcome to the show, Mary. Mary: Thank you, Dan. Dan: Mary, where does the title of the book come from? Mary: The title is the origin of the story, really. I have a scar from a suicide attempt I made in the very intense depressive episode that followed the death of my first child. That was when I was first diagnosed with major depression. The story that I tell in the book goes back to that scar which, of course, is with me always and is a kind of memory on my body of that experience. Because of the scar I try to return to that time to tell the story of my depression and the larger history of depression. Dan: Can you lead us up to the time of your first suicide attempt? In your book, you mention the passing of your daughter. Take us back to that time and what happened. Mary: I was 27 when I was pregnant for the first time and was married to my college boyfriend, who was a few years older than I was. I was working in publishing in New York City when I left college and he was working in New York as well. We had just moved up to Westchester County to a house with some bedrooms and an outdoor space, thinking that we could have a little more room for having a child. The death of my daughter was completely surprising. I had a very easy full term pregnancy. I went into labor on my due date—it seemed as though everything was going perfectly. After she was born it was clear that she was not very responsive. Her Apgar score was low and over the next say, day and a half they did a variety of tests and ended up taking her up to Mount Sinai for an echocardiogram, which showed that she had a terrible heart defect, a condition called hypoplastic left heart, which means that the heart is not developed on one side. It was the end of 1983, when this was basically a death sentence. She didn’t live for more than a few hours after we received this diagnosis. We were both really shocked. But what happened next was, we went home to this house that we had just moved into with no baby and I became very depressed. But I didn’t know what depression was, nor did anyone else around me … I did not come from a therapeutic environment. That’s the wrong way of putting it. I didn’t come from people who had had anything to do with psychiatrists or therapists. And we just didn’t know what was going on. We just thought this was a situation of grief. Dan: Can you tell us at the time, you said you came home and became depressed, what were the symptoms or what do you recall about that time that led you to believe that you were depressed? Can you describe it to us? Mary: I was trying to figure out how I could get a new job because I felt very unhappy and I needed something to focus on, to kind of lighten my energies. And I was trying to find how I could get a new job while also being on a short maternity leave from the job I was still holding. And I just kept not being able to settle on anything that felt meaningful. I suppose that what I was suffering from was a state of profound meaninglessness and not knowing how to hold on to the future. The future was completely unknown. I was trying to grasp something, but I couldn’t. And a couple of months after the death of my daughter I woke up one morning and said to my husband that it would be better if I were dead. Then it was suddenly clear that we had a serious problem. He consulted his father who put us in touch with a psychiatrist and I started seeing the psychiatrist fairly quickly. Dan: That was before the hospitalization? Mary: That was a couple of weeks before. I would say two or three weeks. Dan: And how were they trying to treat you at that time? Mary: It was therapy. I’d gone back to work and I would come home on the train and then go and see the psychiatrist in the evening. It was every evening, Monday through Friday. He put me on a tricyclic antidepressant, gradually increasing the dose. But I think it was too late. I was very, very suicidal and I was going to work and trying to focus but the medication wasn’t turning things around quickly enough. Then one day I came home from work and cut my wrists and ended up in the hospital with that suicide attempt. What I’m trying to talk about here, as grim as it sounds, is a complete loss of connection to the world. Dan: How long were you in the hospital for, by the way, Mary? Mary: I was in the hospital for three months. Let me go back. Maybe I can read a little bit, where I describe what it felt like in those days before I entered the hospital. I had tried a variety of things. I tried volunteering at the pediatric ward of a local hospital, I tried going to talk to a priest at the Catholic church in my town, nobody was there. It’s really a story of someone wandering around trying to find something to feel hopeful about or feel a connection to. This is from a description of that period: “None of my half-hearted attempts to return to life in the world had made me feel any better. Anxiety was becoming an overwhelming physical sensation. Something rising from my gut, grappling at my ribcage, making it hard to breathe. Sometimes it was an involuntary clenching of my muscles, tightening and releasing, over and over. I couldn’t sleep for more than a few hours at a time. I woke in the dark at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning and sat up with my heart pounding, my body revved up and panicked, flooded with adrenaline. Then I’d realize that nothing was going to happen. This was just the too early beginning of yet another day. I would lie down again and try to go to sleep, my mind churning with anguish, spinning its wheels through the various unlikely fixes for the unmoored condition I was in: get a new job, apply to graduate school, move back to the city, move to the country. Suicide began to press itself into this list of potential solutions. The powerful feeling of loss had turned into something else, a heavy internal collapse, a constant thrumming of dread, a suffocating inwardness, a conviction that I was permanently cut off from the world and other people, marooned in the hell of my own consciousness. Living in time had become a torment. Each day felt endless with no sense of forward motion, no anticipation of the future, no belief that I would ever feel better. Time was unbearable. Time needed to stop. One morning I announced it would be better if I were dead.” Dan: That says so much. I think it helps us understand the hopelessness or the perceived hopelessness of the situation. And then in the hospital, it was decided that you would undergo ECT treatments. Is that correct? Mary: Yes. Dan: What is ECT and how was it performed on you? Mary: When I was in the hospital they decided that after I made this very minor suicide attempt at home, they would continue with the medication trial that I was on. The assumption was that it just needed more time and now that I would be in a safe environment they would continue with that. But on my second day in the hospital, I made a suicide attempt that was very, very serious, and that was the end of the medication trial. They said, “We now have to do ECT and if you don’t agree we will get a judge’s order.” My husband (now my ex-husband) had once seen the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and was terrified at the whole notion. Just the mention of ECT was terrifying. Of course, what I had done was also terrifying. So, I said, “Of course, let’s try this.” I didn’t really have any hope of any other … I didn’t have any other ideas. I didn’t really believe in anything at that point, in anything working. I was in a state of such profound hopelessness. So, it began, and what can I say about it? It was scary, but ultimately it worked. Mary: I signed a paper giving permission, which set out that this might not work and there are various side-effects. But it was quite straightforward. You lie down on a table and you go under anesthesia. They put the electrodes on your forehead. They give a quick-acting anesthesia and give the electrical charge, which creates a seizure. This seizure is an attempt to reset your brain—that’s one way of thinking about it. Mary: I have a chapter on ECT in the book in which I talk about the early history of various convulsive therapies for mental illnesses, including schizophrenia. But ECT was found to work really well for melancholic depression, which was my diagnosis. Dan: Throughout the book you make a distinction melancholic depression and depression. What do you mean by melancholic depression? Mary: The word “melancholia” is an ancient word that comes from the Greek, a term that was given to something was noticed by Greek physicians before the birth of Christ, during the Hippocratic era. This was when the humors were still considered to be part of what doctors would use to diagnose people. So, the humor of melancholia was caused by black bile in the body. And it was described as a prolonged state of fear, anxiety, hopelessness, and the inability to sleep. So this condition has been recognized in medicine for a very long time. But melancholia is now considered a type or “specifier” of major depression, a term that only came into being in 1980 with the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatry. If you look up the word melancholia in the New York Times archive, you will almost always find it attached to the story of a suicide. When melancholia made the news, it made the news because someone with melancholia had committed suicide. I was looking it up in the New York Times and most of those stories came from the 19th century and the early 20th century. Later, ps

  5. 06/30/2017

    The Creativity Cure for Depression: An Interview with Dr. Carrie Barron

    Today’s guest is Dr. Carrie Barron, a board-certified psychiatrist/psychoanalyst on the clinical faculty of the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons who also has a private practice in New York City.  She has published in peer-reviewed journals, won several academic awards, and presented original works related to creativity and self-expression at national meetings of the American Psychoanalytic Association. Along with her husband, Alton Barron, M.D., a hand and shoulder surgeon, she co-authored the book, The Creativity Cure: How to Build Happiness with Your Own Two Hands. Dan: Why is depression such a problem in our culture? Carrie: I think the level of stress has gone up enormously because we have so much to do and we’re on twenty-four hours a day. So I think because of technology, which offers us so many great things, but gives us much to do. I think that’s part of it. I also think, especially for children, we’re in a striving, ambitious, be productive all the time mentality – for children and adults. We need to play, we need to hangout, we need to have spontaneous time. I think spontaneous thought does a lot for alleviating depression and anxiety. Dan: We have so many different words in our culture for unpleasant experiences. We might say things like, “I’m sad,” “I’m burnt-out,” “I’m stressed-out,” or “I’m depressed.”  But what is the difference in your mind, as a clinician, between sadness, say, and depression? Carrie: Sadness is a normal emotion. We don’t have to treat everything and be afraid of sadness. We don’t have to pathologize everything. There is a range. I mean, life can be very hard and it’s appropriate not only to have it, but let yourself have it. Sometimes it is actually moving towards the authentic feeling, rather than running away from it, that actually makes it go away. You first have to experience it, and then when you understand it, and you’re in it, it runs its course. Now, this is separate from a true major depression where you can’t get up in the morning. That’s another story. But sadness is a normal part of life. Dan: In your clinical practice, how often would you say depression has played a role in why people have come to see you? Carrie: I think it plays a role often. The categories that we have in the DSM-5, I think they’re useful so that clinicians can communicate with others. But nobody is fully described by a category or diagnosis. There’s a lot of overlap. When people are depressed, they’re also often anxious and also stressed, and sometimes it’s more one than the other. But depression does come up a lot for people and it’s very painful. I think not being able to get up in the morning, not feeling like doing anything, not being able to enjoy the sunny day or the view of the water, or whatever else people are getting into, it makes you feel very separate and alone when you are depressed and other people around you are not.  So it has, kind of, a trickle-down effect, too. Dan: Why did you write the book, The Creativity Cure? I found it such an interesting book, a fascinating read. You wrote it with your husband who is a surgeon. Can you tell our audience why you wrote it? Carrie: There are two things.  I talk about this now, I didn’t talk about this in the book, when I was a kid, I had some problems. I was depressed. I was anxious. We weren’t taking meds at that time. There was some chaos in my world.  I really had to find a way to survive. When I look back on it now, all those things that I recommend in my book are things I was doing, or trying to do, like using my hands. I would cook a lot. I would take long walks.  Then, later in my practice, maybe ten years ago, patients were saying, “You know, I went home and I fixed my sink and I became euphoric! I felt great!” I started to realize that meaningful hand use has a lot to do with happiness. And yet, because so much of what we do now is accomplished with a click on a device, we’re deprived of the process. And process, being deeply immersed in making, or making music, brings with it the possibility for euphoria, and satisfaction, and feeling good about living. So creativity is really about a way to have an optimal life. How you define creativity is another matter. Dan: What’s going on in the body, in particular, the brain when someone is struggling with depression? And how does creative action interact with that? Carrie: I think a lot of studies have been done, and serotonin and neurotransmitters, there’s a depleted state, and that we need to boost it up with medication or activities that do the same. Vigorous exercise can create the same biological state that antidepressants can. I want to qualify this and say that one must see their physician and make an informed decision, but certainly exercise can help a lot. Also, meaningful hand use has been shown to boost mood. Dr. Kelly Lambert wrote a book, Lifting Depression: A Neuroscientist’s Hands-On Approach to Activating Your Brain’s Healing Power, and she was the one who talked a lot about how purposeful hand use can affect brain chemistry and make people feel happier. Dan: What would be some examples of using your hands? When we think of creativity, many people might think of painting, for example. They might say to themselves, “Well, I’m not a good painter,” or “I don’t play an instrument.” But creativity isn’t really limited to that. Can you expand on that? Carrie: Sure. I am so glad you asked that. I think this is the crucial question. And I think you hit the nail on the head. A lot of people say, “I’m not creative.” Well, first of all, I think we’re all born creative. It’s a matter of finding what you can do. It can be applied to business. You can be amazing. You could be a genius at figuring out what the team needs to be. That’s very creative. You could be an amazing cook. You could have a tremendous talent for decorating. Gardening, the design of a garden. It doesn’t have to be on a professional level. It’s really a matter of figuring out what you can get into. You may find that if you put some time into mastering a skill that you find a certain pleasure and freedom with it. That could be something like painting, but it doesn’t have to be. Knitting, crafting, it could even be fixing things. All of that involves meaningful hand use. There are many definitions of creativity.  My definition of it is allowing most natural self to emerge to make a positive contribution. It’s allowing you a freedom, a spontaneity in the way that you live, a feeling of safety that allows you to do that so you’ll throw out an idea, you’ll say something funny in conversation, so that you are just yourself and it works. That’s really optimal living. Dan: You talked earlier about when you were younger and growing up having some difficult childhood experiences and learning some creative coping skills.  Myself, when I think about this, I had a very difficult childhood as well with an alcoholic, abusive father. Over time, I didn’t have what I would now think of as depression as a young adult. It developed more at midlife when I turned forty.  It seems that there’s a lot of research that suggests that when people in their childhoods have difficult experiences, either emotional abuse, or physical abuse, or deprivation, there’s some kind of linkup with adult-onset depression. Have you found you found that in your experience? Carrie: Yea, I think so. I think because in certain ways when you’re in your twenties and your thirties and you’re striving, and you’re distracted and you have a strong goal, that, in and of itself, that kind of commitment to a goal or emotion can stave off certain aspects of your memory or your inner life and it might get triggered in your forties.  Maybe when you have a little bit more time to contemplate or think back. I will say that there are certainly ways, I just like to not be falsely optimistic, but be really optimistic and really encourage people to understand that there are ways to look into your particular history, your particular form of depression, and work with it to get to a much better place at any age. Dan: In your book, you talk specifically about not only being creatively engaged, but the use of one’s hands, a physical activity, and how that somehow connects to creativity, no matter your history, or the causes of your depression. This seems to work for just about anybody with depression or unhappiness. Would you say that’s the case? Carrie: I do. I think it’s mild or moderate depression. I think if you have a very severe depression, you might need some medical intervention or an intense therapy. But what I like to say is that if you develop a creative habit, it’s very useful to fall back on it when you are depressed. You may not be able to master a new habit when you’re severely depressed, but if you’re mild to moderate, and you work on your knitting, or you work on your painting, or you go into the kitchen and you are inventive about your cooking, it really can shift mood, but not if you’re in a very crippled state. In a crippled state, you need to get to, sort of, a better place, and then use the creativity after that. Dan: You’re living in New York City, but you’re soon to be on the move. Tell us a little bit about that. Carrie: I’m very excited because I am going to be moving to Austin, Texas soon.  I’m going to be involved in, and working with the great people to try to develop a creativity/wellness program together. I’m not sure exactly, I haven’t submitted a proposal to them about human flourishing and aspects of human flourishing, but from my research, I outline 10 principles that are based on scientific research, but also on ancient philosophies that really help people with optimal living. Most of those are, actually, linked to creativity a

  6. 05/28/2017

    The Neuroscience of Depression: Creating an Upward Spiral with Dr. Alex Korb

    The following is an edited transcript of the podcast recorded interview with Dr. Alex Korb.  This transcript has not been reviewed and is not a word-by-word rendering of the entire interview. Hi, I’m Dan Lukasik from lawyerswithdepression.com. Today’s guest is Dr. Alex Korb.  Dr. Korb is a neuroscientist, writer, and coach.  He’s studied the brain for over fifteen years, attending Brown University as an undergraduate and earning his Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA. He has over a dozen peer-reviewed journal articles on depression and is also the author of the book, The Upward Spiral: Using Neuroscience to Reverse the Course of Depression One Small Change at a Time. Interesting, he’s also coached the UCLA Women’s Ultimate Freesbie team for twelve seasons and is a three-time winner for Ultimate Coach of the Year.  His expertise extends into leadership and motivation, stress and anxiety, mindfulness, physical fitness, and even standup comedy. Welcome to the show. Dr. Korb: Thank you, great to be here. Dan: Let’s begin for our audience.  You’re a neuroscientist. What is neuroscience? Dr. Korb: Neuroscience is simply the study of the brain and nervous system. It’s a branch of biology, but it also incorporates aspects of psychology, psychiatry, and neurobiology.  It’s anything that’s going on in the brain and nervous system all under the purview of neuroscience. Dan: You’ve studied depression as a neuroscientist? Dr. Korb: Yes, that’s what I wrote my dissertation on. The aspect of neuroscience that I’m most interested in is what underlies the neural basis for our moods and emotions, behaviors, and psychiatric illnesses. Some peer-reviewed articles look at schizophrenia as well as other psychiatric disorders like depression which have a lot of basis in neuroscience and we just don’t fully understand what is happening in the brain. Dan: Based on your research, can you tell us what’s going on in the brain when someone is suffering from depression? Dr. Korb: The best way to describe it is a dysfunction in frontal-limbic communication. To simplify it, there’s a problem with the way the thinking, feeling, and action circuits in the brain are communicating with each other.  Those all have different regions of the brain that are more dedicated to each aspect of thoughts, feelings, and actions. But, normally, there’s a dynamic of how these regions are supposed to communicate with each other, and there’s something with depression that’s a little bit off. Dan: Can the same be said for anxiety as far as what’s going on in the brain? Dr. Korb: Yes, anxiety and depression have a lot of overlap regarding the neuroscience and neurobiology behind them.  A lot of the same brain regions are involved. For example, the amygdala, which is often called the fear center of the brain, but is involved in a lot of emotional expressions, that’s one of the core emotion regions in the brain, and it plays a role in both depression and anxiety.  And there’s just a lot of overlap in brain regions, and neurochemistry that underlies these disorders and it’s one of the reasons why anxiety is one of the most common features of depression and they often co-occur together. Dan: When I’ve tried to explain what I was suffering from, and my symptoms and I called it “depression,” most people didn’t have any frame of reference for that. They usually thought of it as “sadness.” With respect to sadness and depression, are there different areas of the brain that pertain to sadness that are different from clinical depression? Dr. Korb: There’s a lot of overlap between sadness and depression, but a lot of the misunderstanding that people have is that we use the term depression and sadness, “I’m feeling depressed” or, “I’m feeling sad,” we use those colloquially, very interchangeably. But medically, or neuroscientifically, they’re very different. Depression and the diagnosis of depression are a lot more than simple sadness.  In fact, a lot of people who suffer from depression don’t feel sad per se. They can often feel an emptiness where emotion should be.  They have a lot of other symptoms such as hopelessness and feelings of helplessness, guilt and shame, isolation, and anxiety can be a part of it. They can have fatigue, problems falling asleep or staying asleep or even sleeping too much and, generally, the things that they used to find enjoyable they no longer find enjoyable. Everything just feels very difficult. It’s hard to explain to someone why it’s difficult because it seems like it shouldn’t be. It’s a much deeper feeling of being stuck than most people experience.  I think the average person if you can think of how you felt after the week of your greatest heartbreak, that sort of touches the edge of what it means to be depressed. It’s not the depth of how badly you feel, but that you can’t escape it. For example, I like to think of depression as a traffic jam.  When you enter a traffic jam, sometimes there’s an accident. The cars are stopped, and you sit there and wait.  And you don’t know how long the traffic jam is going to be. But for most people, it was just a little stoppage on their way. But for people with depression, it’s something that their brain just can’t quite escape. They can try and try, but their brain is stuck in the pattern of activity that just drags along, and the traffic jam just continues. Dan: That’s a great explanation of the experience of depression. Both what’s going on in the brain and psychologically. I think people want to know what are some of the causes of depression? Many people once they’ve often been diagnosed try to figure out for themselves, and people who care about them try to figure out? Dr. Korb: Depression can have a huge number of different causes. This is where the traffic jam analogy does a lot to help us understand depression. If you see a traffic jam, you can say, “Oh, what caused it?” Well, a traffic jam can come from any number of causes. There’s construction on the freeway, or there was an accident, there was heavy rain or fog, or it could just be that everyone decided to leave work at the same time, and there’s no specific “cause,” it’s just that the interaction – the dynamic interaction – of all those cars just reaches a tipping point. With depression, it’s the same way. Often, it can be precipitated by a big life event such as a divorce, or breakup, or death in the family. Or smaller life events such as a perceived emotional embarrassment or you didn’t get that promotion.  But, often it’s not “caused” by anything.  It’s just the dynamic interaction of your brain circuits with each other, combined with the sum of your current life circumstances, which causes the brain to get stuck in a certain pattern of activity and reactivity. That’s much more likely to happen for some people than others because some people’s brains are just more at risk for falling into that pattern. This can be based on the genes you got from your parents, and your early childhood experiences and the coping patterns you’ve been doing your whole life shaped the neurocircuitry and neurochemistry of your particular brain.  So, it’s not always a specifically, identifiable cause.  I think that’s one of the reasons why people, sometimes, don’t quite believe that it’s real or don’t think they should be suffering it. But, it’s very similar to that traffic analogy where it just “sort of happened” for seemingly no reason. It’s just caused by the fact that is vague, nonlinear, dynamic system. Dan: Why did you write the book, The Upward Spiral? There are plenty of scientists out there who study depression, but not many of them write a book for the general public on the topic.  What is it that led you to write this kind of book? Dr. Korb: I just realized that there was so much useful neuroscience out there that wasn’t being effectively delivered to the people who needed it most. One of the things that made me realize that is from when I was coaching Ultimate Freesbie. After a few months, one of the girls on the team revealed to me that she had been suffering from major depression and that she’d been suffering for years, and, tragically, many months later she ended up committing suicide. It was a devastating event in my life. This was back when I was still studying neuroscience, but before I had decided to go to grad school and study depression. That event led me to want to understand exactly what was going on in her brain that could lead her to do something like that. How could the brain get stuck in a disease like this? That lead me to going to grad school and doing my dissertation on depression to try and understand and share some of these things with other people. As I was doing my dissertation, I realized that, yes, it’s good to advance the science, but there was already so much good science out there that was so beneficial. I didn’t think that anyone was doing a good enough job communicating clearly exactly about what was happening in the brain in depression and about all the little life changes that you can make that have measurable effects on brain activity and brain chemistry. Dan: The second part of your book is devoted to eight specific things you can do to alleviate depression. Quickly, they exercise your brain, set goals and make decisions, give your brain a rest, develop positive habits, biofeedback, develop the ‘gratitude circuit,’ the power of others, and your brain in therapy. We don’t have enough time to focus on all eight, so why don’t we focus in on one or two. What I thought was fascinating is that you give the backdrop for what is going on in the brain when you do these things.  A few things that popped into my mind were gratitude and your brain in therapy. What about gratitude? How can i

  7. 05/15/2017

    Interview with Dr. John Greden, Director of the U. of Michigan Depression Center

    Today’s podcast interview is with Dr. John Greden, Professor of Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences in the Department of Psychiatry, Founder and Executive Director of the University of Michigan Depression Center, Founding Chair, National Network of Depression Centers. His research over the past 30 years has focused on studying biomarkers and developing treatment strategies to prevent recurrences of depression and bipolar disorders. Listen to my interview with him on Itunes or Google Play. Please note that it takes Apple and Google Play time to upload podcasts interviews. If this interview is not available, check back a little bit later.

  8. 12/18/2016

    The Ups and Downs of a Bipolar Life: An Interview with Tom Roberts

    Hi, I’m Dan Lukasik from LawyersWithDepression.com. Today’s guest is Tom Roberts. Tom is a mental health speaker and writer living in Huntington Beach, California.  He’s the author of “Escape from Myself: A Manic-Depressive’s Escape to Nowhere” Tom earned his Master’s Degree in Radio, Television, and Film from the University of Kansas. He worked for several years as a broadcast journalist for local stations and freelanced for National Public Radio’s popular newscast “All Things Considered,” “The Voice of America,” and “ABC Radio News.” Tom has been a professional actor on stage, screen, and television and currently does voice-over work in the L.A. area. He is the creator of the website Tom Speaks Out! DL: Tom, welcome to the show. TR:  Thank you very much, Dan. I appreciate the invitation. DL: I think our audiences wants to know, what is bipolar disorder and how is it different from depression? TR: Bipolar disorder is described as an affective illness. It affects your moods.  You go from deep, deep depression to manic episodes which would make you hyperactive, give you poor impulse control and a number of other things like hypersexuality. Major depression is treated quite differently than Bipolar. Depression usually responds well to antidepressants whereas bipolar you have to experiment with different medications and I always dread the worst part of bipolar disorder which is a deep, deep, deep. In fact, up to 17% of people with bipolar commit suicide. DL: What causes bipolar depression? Previously on the show, we’ve asked other guests as to the causes or risk factors for depression.  What about bipolar disorder? TR: With bipolar disorder, it is believed to be genetic. My dad, my brother, my sister; we all have it. So, first of all, it is genetic. But the cause of it doesn’t have to manifest itself.  Frequently, it goes along and the gene doesn’t wake up. So, there is what is called a “precipitating cause”. In my experience, I believe, the precipitating cause was the sudden death of my mother. I was 14. And then the depressions started and it really disabled me throughout college, throughout my 20’s, throughout my 30’s.  And it was only addressed as depression because that was the only way it presented itself at that time. You don’t go to the doctor when you’re manic and go, “Doc, I feel great! What’s wrong with me?”  So, once it’s diagnosed then the correct medication can be given, the mood stabilizers. That’s what happens. DL: You mentioned the sudden death of your mother. Can you share with our audience what happened to her? TR: I was in ninth grade. I got into a bit of trouble with some other guys. And my mom had to get me out of it. She came to talk to the county attorney and pick me up after school. And she said, “As long as I live, I’m never going to help you out of another mess like this!” Just after she said this, she slumped forward in deep pain. She managed to get down to her doctor’s office. I remember her saying to the doctor, “Please tell Tommy that I forgive him”. The last time I saw her alive is when they wheeled her out. What happened to her is that she had a burst brain aneurysm that she didn’t know she had. She had high blood pressure that she had been treated for. So, that’s what happened. She was 34 years old. She left three boys behind. DL: How common is bipolar in the United States? TR: The bipolar rate is 2.6% among the U.S. population. It’s not that common to the degree that it is so difficult to treat. 15% to 17% of the people who have it ultimately kill themselves. DL: You mentioned earlier that your brother and sister were afflicted with bipolar. It is fair to say that genetics played a role in the development of your bipolar illness? TR: Definitely. In my book, I say my experience in bipolar began when my mother was impregnated by me! It went through my family like a Kansas tornado. My dad had it, and refused because of his fear of stigma, to ever get help from a psychiatrist until two years before he died when he was 62. My brother, who was 7 years younger than I am, was diagnosed with bipolar in the army and then discharged without any treatment and he was so ashamed and so afraid of the stigma that he didn’t get help and, unfortunately, committed suicide.  My surviving sister was diagnosed when she was about 35 and continues today to try to deal with it and figure out better ways to manage it as a mother of two boys. I have a stepsister who took her life 5 years after my brother because she suffered from major depression and was addicted to prescription narcotics which she used to take out her life. In one of the chapters in my book, I write that mental illness is a family “dis-ease” and with the emphasis on “ease” because the craziness in our family mixed with untreated bipolar disorder. So, I’m so afraid of the genetics in my children and, especially, in my grandchildren. My goal is really educating them and helping them see the symptoms so they can get it treated earlier than I did. DL: Can you share with our audience your first big experience with bipolar. What was the experience like? Try to put our listeners in your shoes. TR: I had been struggling with depression since my mother passed. It was awful in college. In fact, it was kind of interesting in college because friends of mine, who were psychology majors, used to have me take the MMPI which is a very common test to determine personalities, especially abnormal psychology. They never told me why. I just wanted to help them out. After I finished college and went to graduate school, and then went eventually into broadcast journalism, I thought depression might have left me. When I wasn’t depressed, I couldn’t remember a time when I was depressed.  Then when I was depressed, I couldn’t remember a time when I was ever not depressed. I call these things my “happy times” and during my happy times, my behavior was rather poor. I drank a lot, womanized a lot, and spent a lot of money, and those types of things were never, never addressed. I went on from being a broadcast journalist to teaching broadcast journalism at a small college in Arkansas. I was miserable, in and out of major depressions, and blaming everything. I thought it was my environment, that I was in the wrong career, that I didn’t like the people and became very suspicious of other people. Finally, in 1988, I became severely depressed after spending a year on sabbatical working on my Ph.D. I admitted myself to a psychiatric hospital to be treated for the depression. The psychiatrist there treated me for depression. He did not treat me for bipolar. So, he gave me a new antidepressant. It really sent me to the moon in about three days and, suddenly, I had this wild idea: “I know what I can do to get out of this situation. I can go to Hollywood and become a film and television actor”. It’s always been what I wanted to do. I found this other woman, in the psychiatric hospital, who believed in my dream. We planned to go to Hollywood, which we did. That was the major, manic episode because I walked away from my wife, my two little kids, my college teaching career, to go pursue a fantasy. Then that bubble burst, as it always does, and I was back in a major depression. I tucked my tail between my legs and took a bus back to Arkansas to try to salvage everything. But, it was all gone. It destroyed everything I had. DL: That’s a very powerful story. When you say it “destroyed everything,” that must have been very difficult to cope with. Did it intensify your depression? What was your reaction and behavior after all that and coming to terms with it? TR: It intensified my depression for five years. I was doing menial jobs. I was a hospital emergency room janitor, just trying to get a little money, living in an unheated cabin in the country. Two years before, I was a college professor and had my own home and my family. That was quite a shock living that way. I was depressed more and more and I became more preoccupied with suicidal ideation during that period of time. I never attempted suicide, but I thought about it a lot. I was finally diagnosed with bipolar, actually came from an orthopedic physician I worked for. He gave me a job of videotaping research and producing videos for his patients. About a year into the job, I was in the operating room during surgery and talking non-stop. The doctor stopped the surgery and said, “I want to see you outside”.  We went back to the surgeon’s dressing room and sat down on a bench. He said, “Tom, you’re acting kind of crazy. And you’re scaring the staff. I think you may have bipolar disorder and I do not want you to come back to work until you’ve seen a psychiatrist.” Five days later, I was in the psychiatrist’s office talking non-stop for an hour. “Without a doubt,” he said, “Mr. Roberts you have bipolar disorder. I’m putting you on this medication that I want you to take immediately”. This was the beginning of an awareness that I had to learn to manage my illness. DL: How long ago was that experience? TR: I was diagnosed in 1993. It was a year after my brother’s suicide. Had I been diagnosed before that I could have talked to my brother about it and gotten him some help. But it was 1993 and I was under the assumption because my psychiatrist did not tell me what I needed to do to manage this illness. He told me if I just took a pill, I would be okay. That’s not true. Medication compliance is important, but I had to learn how to manage my life; my stressors, my sleep patterns, my nutrition. That took twenty years to learn and, unfortunately, I left a lot of wreckage behind. DL: Tell us some of the things that you’ve learned over the years to manage your bipolar? TR: I think, first and foremost, besides medication compliance, is a goo

  9. 11/10/2016

    The Ten Best-Ever Depression Management Techniques: An Interview with Dr. Margaret Wehrenberg

    I’m Dan Lukasik from Lawyerswithdepression.com. Today’s guest is Dr. Margaret Wehrenberg. Dr. Wehrenberg is a clinical psychologist in Naperville, Illinois. She is the author of six books on the treatment of anxiety and depression published by W.W. Norton, including, “The Ten Best-Ever Depression Management Techniques: Understanding How Your Brain Makes You Depressed and What You Can Do to Change It” and “Anxiety + Depression: Effective Treatment of the Big Two Co-Occurring Disorders.” An international trainer of mental health professionals, Dr. Wehrenberg coaches people with anxiety via the internet and phone. She’s a frequent contributor to the award-winning magazine, Psychotherapy Networker and she blogs on depression for the magazine Psychology Today. Dan: What is the difference between sadness and depression and why do people confuse the two so often? Dr. Wehrenberg: Because depression comprises sadness. Sadness is a response to a specific situation in which we usually have some kind of loss. The loss of a self-esteem, a loss of a loved one, the loss of a desired goal. Depression is really more about the energy – whether it’s mental energy or physical energy – to make an effective response. So, sadness is an appropriate and transient emotion, but depression sticks around and affects all of our daily behaviors and interactions. Dan: What causes depression? Sadness, as you say, is an appropriate response to loss.  What is depression a response to?  What are the causes of depression?  Dr. Wehrenberg: Over the course of my career, I’ve developed the idea that there are four potential causes to depression.  This comes from working with people for forty years; it comes from reading a lot of research. The first part is genetics. You are born with a brain that is going to tend toward depression because of the function of neurotransmitters in your brain. It’s a genetic predisposition towards depression. With poor self-care, poor nutrition, you may end up stimulating or starting that feeling of low energy, of low interest in the world around you. Then if you pull back from the world around you, now you start to have fewer experiences that keep you interested in the world. Another possible and probable cause is with people who are experiencing situational stress that goes on, and on, and on. That could be the stress of not being able to earn enough money, and you’ve got two jobs, and kids, and a life filled with stress. It could be the stress that comes on while caring for someone in your family circle who’s got a disability, or a chronic illness; that increases with severity over time. So, you’re stuck in stress, and you deplete yourself. And you can become depressed. The state of the depression is a lot like the state of being sick. If you had the flu, you wouldn’t feel like sitting around eating and drinking; you wouldn’t feel like playing a round of tennis. If somebody says, “Let’s watch a really interesting T.V. show” and you say, “No, I want to go to sleep instead,” that’s pulling back from the world is healing.  People have the same feeling when they’re depressed, but those feelings don’t lead toward healing because they’re persistent. Two other causes that people would certainly be aware of are trauma or coming from early childhood adversity where early in your childhood you were not treated well, you were neglected, had some other abusive situation, and those two very difficult situations can lead people to function in a depressed way. Dan: Let’s talk about the issue of stigma. As a person who’s had depression for the past 15 years, it’s something that I’ve had to deal with. Why is there so much stigma surrounding depression? Dr. Wehrenberg: Part of it is because we have this mentality in this country that you should be able to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. And we look at people who are low energy, who aren’t completing tasks, and we judge them as doing it on purpose. People who aren’t depressed are of the impression that you could just decide to do it differently. I was speaking with a 21-year old client of mine the other day who said, “I can’t make myself do the work, and I hate it that I am that lazy.” So, he judges himself as lazy, even though it’s the depression that’s robbing him of energy and mental tenacity. So, even depression sufferers judge themselves to be wrong, lazy, and bad and believe they should do better. So, I think the cultural expectation that you should be more productive. Also, people don’t see it as the medical problem it is. It’s just that it’s not a very “visible” medical problem. Dan: In the past 40 years or so that you’ve been a therapist and have treated people with depression, what have you observed about the rate of depression in our country and our understanding of it? Dr. Wehrenberg: I think the rate of depression, everybody would agree, is growing. More and more people are suffering depression. There are different reasons why when we look at this. Culturally, one of them is that American culture is a highly stressed culture.  But it’s stress not over life and death, but that’s certainly the case for many living in poverty who have to worry where their next meal is coming from, but usually, what we look at is the stress of always needing to be more, to do more, to get more status and money. That’s not a very good way to feel good about yourself because there’s a limit, a human limit of time, a limit of money, a limit of talent or ability, a limit to resources or access to achievement. Dan: Following up on what you just said earlier, you talked about some possible causes of depression including genetics and family of origin issues. Now you’re talking about American culture and its connection to depression. What is the connection? Dr. Wehrenberg: We have a culture that values productivity, money, and status, and not everybody can achieve goals of status or financial success and it gets depressing to see how valuable those seem to be in our country. We don’t value something everybody can do. Like, be a person of good character. We value how much status you’ve got, which is very different. Dr. Andrew Weil, who is a real guru of physical health and mental health, says he thinks that stress equals inflammation in your whole body and that inflammation is a trigger for depression. Dan: Why did you write the book, “The Ten Best-Ever Depression Management Techniques?” It’s a great read. I recommend all my listeners and readers at lawyerswithdepression.com to pick it up. Dr. Wehrenberg: I wrote it because I believe both consumers and therapists need ideas for what to do right now other than to investigate, in some more general way, a life history, what do you do today that will make you feel somewhat better, to start you moving out of the depression. I wanted to present as many practical ideas as I could that would help people start to lift out of depression with the help and advice of a therapist and also for the general public that could read this book and say, “Oh, there are things I can do that would make me feel better.” And they’re simple; they’re not complicated. Dan: Can you share with our listeners some of the techniques you recommend in your book? Dr. Wehrenberg: Let’s start with somebody with low energy. Almost everybody who is depressed is doing something even while they are depressed. Playing a game on their phone, watching T.V. or watching Netflix.  They are doing something. Unless, they are sleeping, of course.  But I want to use what you’re already doing to help motivate you to do something you think you should do. So, for example, I often see people with depression that aren’t doing good health care, they’re not doing good care of their environment, they are not doing dishes, they are not doing laundry, stuff like that. So if you just think about household stuff for a second, what I want my clients to do is to break down the task into its parts. If you’re going to do laundry, the first thing you have to do is pick it up off the floor. So, I don’t want you to think, “Oh, I’ve got to get all the laundry done.”  If you’re depressed, that won’t work. What I want you to do is think is, “All I have to do is pick up the dirty clothes in the family room and then I’m going to sit down for 15 minutes and do what I’m willing to do anyway – play a game on the phone, turn on Netflix. Set a timer for 15 minutes of enjoyment of your show and then when the timer goes off, you just get up and pick up the clothes off the floor of your bedroom. Little pieces, okay. What we know about depression is those small accomplishments are perceived in the brain as positive and encouraging, and you start to feel, “Oh, I can do something for myself.” You begin to have just a little rise in your overall energy. If you can do that consistently, then pretty soon, you get the task of doing the laundry over with. It may take a few days, but it’s done. Then you have a positive self-appraisal. That’s what I’m going for, for example, with a very simple way to think about raising your energy through small increments. Dan: So the small steps and small behaviors affect neurochemistry? Dr. Wehrenberg: They do, indeed. Because when you take action and it has a positive outcome, you have just changed the level of the neurochemical called dopamine, which I call the “James Brown” of the brain.  It’s the “I feel good,” when dopamine is released in your brain you feel better. We know that people who decide, “I am going to do this,” and do it, they get a rise in dopamine and change your neurochemistry. Dan: I want to discuss your second book, “Anxiety + Depression: Effective Treatment of the Two Co-Occurring Disorders.” I struggle with both anxiety and depression with depressi

  10. 06/22/2016

    Depression and Faith: An Interview with Rabbi Mark Gellman

    Today’s guest on our show is Rabbi Mark Gellman. Rabbi Gellman is the Rabbi Emeritus at Temple Beth Torah in Melville, New York where he has served since 1981.  He earned his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Northwestern University in 1981 where he also completed doctoral work in the History and Literature of Religions specializing in Buddhism and Judaism. He is the recipient of many honorary degrees. Rabbi Gellman writes a weekly column, “The Spiritual State,” for Newsweek magazine and the syndicated column,“The God Squad,” read by readers around the world. Welcome to our show Rabbi Gellman. Dan:  Rabbi, during your time that you’ve been a Rabbi, and I understand that’s been decades now, have you counseled people with depression? Rabbi Gellman: Yes, I have.  Although my general orientation, and I hope it’s the orientation of most clergy, is to refer people to professional psychiatrist or psychologists who specialize in this. It’s not something that clergy should enter, in general, because they’re not trained for it. Dan:     Once you’ve referred those people and they are treating with a psychologist, psychiatrist, or both, do the clergy have some role in comforting the people with spiritual support with this kind of condition? Rabbi Gellman: Yes, I think we serve two roles. One is what I would call “psychiatric first responders.” We’re the ones who first alert people to the fact that they are depressed and that they need some kind of professional treatment in order to get back to some level of functioning life. The second purpose which we serve as clergy, if we are doing our jobs well, and our calling well is to provide to the community a message of hope. The antidote to depression, of course, is hope. And in a communal sense, Rabbis can provide that hope. In fact, it is my view that the search for hope that is the primary motivator for people to affiliate with religious denominations and to seek personally their own way to God.  It is the search for hope, ultimately. Dan:     Many people who I speak to around the country, and myself included, I am a practicing Catholic, and so often in the throes of depression, or maybe even at the beginning, I would often ask God, “Why me?” I think that so many people, and maybe it’s true for any kind of suffering that afflicts people, ask that seminal question.  In your faith, and in your experiences, how do you respond to that? Rabbi Gellman: Well, I have a rather unconventional view of many things. And I have an unconventional view of that question. First of all, I don’t think it’s a common question. People say it is, but I don’t believe it. I’ve never heard it. Most people are not really consumed by the question of why this has happened to them. There’s two reasons for that. First, they can think of a lot of reasons it’s happened to them. So, they know the reasons it’s happened to them. Second, the question, “why me,” presumes a kind of spiritual and ethical arrogance that most people are mature enough not to have.  By that, I mean the question, “Why me?” if you sort of unpack it a little, means, “I am so righteous, I am so good, I’ve done so much for the world, and for my family, and for my community, that my virtue is so enormous, that it should protect me against all evil. Now, no one really believes that. No one believes, in their right mind, in the list of the greatest human beings that have ever lived, Gandhi and Mother Teresa, that they should be No. 3.  I honestly don’t think people ask the question, “Why me?” My approach has always been on two levels. One on a level of personal counseling to try to get people to find some resources to find some reasons to hope and I have some techniques that are very effective in that way. Second, in my teaching, to explain to people that there are two reasons why bad things happen to them.  The first is that they caused them to happen. People who have lung cancer after a lifetime of smoking really have no right to say, “Why me?” They did it to themselves. People who have neglected their physical fitness and have developed different pathologies that come from obesity or inactivity have done it to themselves.  So, much of what happens to us, that is evil, is self-produced. The second reason why bad things happen is because of what Aristotle called, “natural evil”. That is just the way the world works. A Rabbi said a phrase, “Olam K’minhago nohgge,” which means the world goes according to its own order. It means if you’re walking along the street and a brick falls from a scaffolding and you’re underneath, it’s bad luck on you. But, that’s just the way the world works. If you happen to be in a place where a tornado hits, or a hurricane hits, it’s the way the world works and this natural order of the world is not evil.  It’s just the natural working of the laws of the world. A Tsunami is not evil. If a wave crashes over an uninhabited island it’s not evil. It’s only if people are there. Well, people choose to be there.  The point is there are things we do to ourselves and there are things that happen to us because the world is the way it is. Dan: With respect to “the way the world is, would that include our bodies, our brains, and our genetics? There are now studies which show that many, many people, especially with the more severe forms of depression, have a strong genetic vulnerability to depression. Or, other people grow up in neglectful homes where they are neglected or physically abused.  Those people have high rates of adult-onset depression.  Can you follow-up on this? Rabbi Gellman: Sure, I mean, sometimes you draw some bad cards. You draw environmental bad cards, you grow up in an abusive, deprived upbringing, and, in some cases, you draw a bad genetic card. But, I would say to both those things that there are ways that people overcome those inheritances. For example, there are people who grow up in very, very difficult circumstances.  And for some reason, they are disciplined and hopeful, and they are able to move out into better circumstances for the rest of their life.   Other people surrender to the difficulties of their environment.  How do you distinguish between one and the other? Why is someone able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and someone else isn’t from the same deprived neighborhood? So, something else is at work here. As far as the genetic inheritance, it may be true, it probably, certainly is true, studies in schizophrenia certainly seem to indicate it is true, that there’s a strong genetic component to depression.  However, there’s a problem with focusing on that medical fact and the problem is that it gives people an excuse to wallow in their depression, to surrender to their depression.  Hey, look, I’ve known people who are obese, who say, “Look, I can’t lose weight because I’m genetically fat.” You know, that’s ridiculous. You may have a genetic predilection to obesity, you my have a genetic predilection to depression, but that doesn’t mean you can’t fight it.  And if you believe that this was your inheritance, it’s just another reason to surrender. And depression requires vigilance, and it requires very strong emotional dedication to becoming well again. Dan: Can you give us some insights into how the Jewish faith, the Jewish religion, views depression, and, specifically, do you give examples from the Old Testament that you believe are insightful into how people can see their depression and overcome their depression?  You minister and you preach. Can you give us a little insight on that? Rabbi Gellman: The first is a personal understanding. I think it comes out of scripture, but not directly. It’s a technique that I developed which I call, “spiritual balancing.” The history of this is that my wife and I, Betty, were living in Evanston near Northwestern University. We were remodeling an old house and the fellow that was helping us do some spakling was carrying two big containers of this spakle up the stairs and I said to him, “Why don’t you just carry one bucket up? Why carry two at once?” And he said, “Well, if I carry one it throws me off and it hurts my back.  If I carry two, it keeps me in balance and I can carry twice as much.” For some reason, it was an epiphany for me.  It was a life-changing moment, just watching this guy carry spakle up the stairs. What I realized at that moment, and developed it as a counseling technique, and have spoken to psychiatric associations about it, is this technique of spiritual balancing. So it works this way. Someone comes to me and they’re depressed, they’re in grief, they’re in a bad place.  So I say, “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to do five minutes of you telling me, in as much excruciating detail as you can, why your life is miserable. Five minutes. And then, for the next five minutes, I want you to tell me why your life is wonderful. What are the wonderful things in your life. But it has to be for the same amount of time. I do this often with people in grief.  “Give me five minutes of how sad you are, and how broken you are that you’re loved one died and how unfair it is and how awful it is, and how it’s breaking you, and then five minutes what you loved about the person.  And what was great about the person.” What I discovered quickly, using this technique, is that in the end, people felt much better, at the end of the counseling session. The reason they felt better was not that anything had changed, but that they had balanced the miserable, depressive thinking that they had, that had imbedded itself in their brain because of their trauma, with positive, endorphin producing, hopeful thoughts that were also in their brain, but they weren’t accessing them because they weren’t thinking about it.  Th

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For anyone who struggles with depression, these weekly podcasts contain interesting and informative interviews with leading experts and authors about this critical topic.

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