Mood disorders, paced honestly and worked alongside a prescriber when needed.

If depression has been the shape of your life for years rather than weeks, the label might not be depression. It might be persistent depressive disorder, sometimes called dysthymia. If you have spells of feeling great that turn out to be a problem of their own kind, the label might be bipolar or cyclothymic. The label matters because the work and the medication picture are different.

Mood-disorder therapy with me usually runs alongside a prescriber. I am an LPC, not a psychiatrist, so the medication piece happens elsewhere, but the therapy piece is most of where the day-to-day living happens.

How we work on it

Person-centered work holds the room. Cognitive behavioral skills come in for the daily mood-regulation work. Dialectical behavioral skills come in for the bigger swings. We track patterns across weeks, not days, so we can tell what is the disorder and what is just a hard Tuesday.

A mood disorder is a weather system, not a personality. The work is partly tracking the weather and partly building a house that holds up in it.

Medication

I do not prescribe. For mood-disorder work that is medication-relevant, I will help you find a psychiatrist or work with your primary care doctor. The therapy work continues alongside, week by week.

What this is not

Weekly outpatient therapy is not the right level of care when crisis is acute. If you have a plan or intent to act on suicidal thoughts, 988 (phone, text, or chat at 988lifeline.org) and emergency departments are staffed for exactly this. Therapy resumes alongside or after, once the acute risk has passed.

What to do next

If a mood disorder is what brought you here, the next step is to schedule the consultation or intake session.

Schedule a free 15 minutes consult →