Depression therapy in Boulder, CO

Depression doesn't always look like crying in a dark room. A lot of the time it looks like flat. Getting through the day on fumes, sleeping too much or not enough, losing interest in the things that used to feel good, snapping at people you love, or just feeling like you're watching your life from behind glass. Sometimes you can point to a reason. Sometimes you really can't, and that can be the most confusing part.

If you're feeling this way, you're far from alone. In a given year, around 1 in 12 U.S. adults has a major depressive episode, and among teens the number is even higher, close to 1 in 5 (National Institute of Mental Health). It shows up a lot in exactly the years everyone insists are supposed to be the best of your life.

I want to be clear about something, because depression is very good at lying to you about it. This is not a willpower problem, and it's not a character flaw. You can't just decide your way out of it any more than you could decide your way out of the flu. Depression changes how your brain handles motivation and reward, which is exactly why "just push through" advice tends to make people feel worse. You're not failing at being a person. You're dealing with something real, and it responds to treatment.

How CBT for depression actually works

My main approach is cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT. The short version is that your thoughts, your mood, and what you do all feed each other, and depression gets a loop going: you feel low, so you do less, so you get fewer good moments, so you feel lower. CBT helps us interrupt that loop from a couple of directions at once.

One direction is behavioral. When you're depressed, the usual advice is backwards, because you're told to wait until you feel like doing things, and depression makes sure you never feel like it. So we start small and start first, adding back little bits of activity and connection before the motivation shows up (it tends to follow the action, not the other way around). The other direction is the thoughts. Depression narrates your life in a really harsh, absolute voice, and we'll practice noticing that voice and testing it against what's actually true. None of this is about slapping a happy face on a hard situation. It's about giving you real traction when everything feels stuck.

What our first steps look like

We start with a free 15-minute consult, just a low-key conversation about what's been going on. If it feels like a fit, the next step is usually a longer evaluation session, partly because depression and anxiety overlap so much that it's worth getting clear on what we're actually working with. From there we meet weekly or every other week, in person in Boulder or online, and if getting out the door feels like too much some weeks, video is completely fine.

Who I work with

I see a lot of teens whose depression looks like irritability, exhaustion, or dropping the things they used to care about. I work with college students and young adults who feel flat or hopeless in the middle of years that were supposed to feel exciting. And I talk with parents who can tell something's off with their kid and want to help without making it worse.