How Positive Psychology Can Help Symptoms of Depression
It’s estimated that 280 million people worldwide experience clinical depression. Depression symptoms exist on a large spectrum and can range from feeling mildly distressing to downright debilitating. However, unresolved depression may affect several areas of functioning, including your physical health, relationships, career, and overall emotional well-being.
Mental health issues are complex, and reducing or alleviating depressive symptoms sometimes requires a trial-and-error process. That said, positive psychology interventions instill a sense of hope and empowerment for people with depression.
What Is Positive Psychology?
Positive psychology focuses on harnessing the positive parts of life, including your resilience, happiness, and capacity to thrive. Unlike other therapeutic modalities, which can emphasize pathology and deficiencies, positive psychology is oriented toward the search for contentment and meaning.
Embodying the concepts of positive psychology means focusing on thriving more than just surviving. It’s about learning how to thrive and build a good life regardless of your current circumstances.
Positive psychology largely embraces:
- achieving more positive experiences in everyday life
- enhancing well-being through inner positive character traits
- moving out of states of learned helplessness and into strength-based resilience
Main Takeaways of Positive Psychology for Depression
Positive psychological interventions focus on implementing more of what makes you happy and satisfied in your daily life. The overarching concept is that prioritizing happiness also prioritizes mental well-being.
Connecting with others: Research consistently shows that good relationships are essential for our mental and physical health. Having more positive interactions with others – and feeling connected to the world around you – may inherently promote positive mental health. While this does not eradicate depression, it can certainly break up the intensity of certain negative emotions like loneliness, shame, fear, or sadness.
Self-compassion: Self-compassion is rooted in components of mindfulness and self-kindness. Everyone struggles, and we’re all humans with innate strengths and weaknesses. Self-compassion allows you to treat yourself gently when you inevitably make mistakes. This, in turn, can lead to greater access to experiencing positive affect.
Gratitude and positive thinking: Focusing on what you appreciate can help you stay grounded in what’s going well in your life. Cultivating gratitude is different from toxic positivity, which discounts the complexity of your emotions. Instead, positive thinking means consciously choosing to focus on the good and hold onto hope that things eventually work out.
Mindfulness: Mindfulness refers to taking on a deliberate mindset of living in the present moment and striving to embrace what happens in the here and now. Mindfulness includes detaching from negative symptoms or intrusive thoughts and engaging in more neutrality and non-judgmentally.
Achieving flow: “Flow” refers to a psychological state where you feel immersed in a specific activity. This can reinforce experiencing more positive emotions. People achieve a flow state in many different ways, including playing sports, working, playing an instrument, spending time with their children, and even doing chores around the home. Flow can give you a sense of purpose and meaning, both of which coincide with greater levels of subjective well-being.
Positive Psychology and Depression: What’s the Connection?
Depression symptoms make it hard to access positive thoughts and emotions. For example, when you’re in a depressed episode, you may feel apathetic, disconnected, irritable, and fatigued. As a result, your overall well-being suffers. You may feel stuck with no way out.
The principles of positive psychotherapy are gentle, compassionate, and strengths-based. Instead of harnessing “what’s wrong with you,” it focuses more on what you’re inherently doing well. It also embraces the concept that you have inner resilience, intelligence, and an orientation toward healing.
Treating Depression With Positive Psychology Interventions
Like treating any mental illness, depression treatment is generally multifaceted, and it can include many parts. Here’s how the process works:
Initial assessment: The work therapy begins by establishing your baseline functioning. Where are you struggling the most? Have you ever felt this way before? Do you have a history of other mental health concerns? Having this information helps us determine your initial treatment plan. If you are struggling with severe depression or suicidal ideation, we will focus on achieving a sense of initial stabilization first.
Harnessing what’s working well: We want to build your capacity to achieve and sustain positive emotion. We’ll spend time focusing on what brings you joy and happiness, and we’ll equally focus on what triggers depressive symptoms or other unwanted symptoms. Instead of only paying attention to what you want to stop doing or feeling, we’ll highlight what you can add to life to feel better.
Building awareness of triggers and setbacks: Depression treatment isn’t necessarily linear. Sometimes clients feel worse before they feel better, and this can happen due to increasing your insight or experimenting with new coping skills. However, recognizing your behavioral patterns helps you recognize what you want to change.
Therapy for Depression in St. Louis, MO
Depression can feel discouraging and exhausting. Unfortunately, many people suffer for months or years before seeking professional guidance. If you’re struggling, you’re not alone. Things can get better, and therapy can help you improve your feelings about yourself and your current circumstances. It also offers a safe environment where you can show up as your authentic self.
In my work with depression, I support clients in understanding their triggers and symptoms. I integrate positive psychology interventions with interventions from attachment-based care, exposure-response prevention, DBT, CBT, somatic therapy, EMDR, and mindfulness. You deserve to have treatment customized to you and your specific needs. Please contact me today to schedule an initial consultation.