Depression Counselling in Vancouver
How Depression Often Shows Up
When you feel depressed, often your entire view of the world shifts. You may experience feeling empty, uninspired or numb, with a heaviness that even the sunniest of days, your favourite people or the activities you usually enjoy can’t help shake.
The causes of depression are as varied as the people who experience it. While depression can be brought on by trauma, loss, anxiety, overwhelm or other difficult life circumstances, other times, there doesn't seem to be an obvious reason for feeling this way.
Know you want support but not sure where to start?
Come take your shoes off, curl up with some tea and let’s make a plan. You’re not broken, you’re just wonderfully human, which can be complicated (and sometimes frustrating) to navigate.
Our Find a Counsellor form can guide you in connecting with a counsellor who is the right fit for you.
When Depression Changes the Way Every Day Feels
Depression has the tendency to affect far more than your mood. It can change how you experience yourself, your relationships and the world around you in any given moment.
At times, it might feel like you are just going through the motions while feeling totally disconnected from your life. The question, “What do you do for fun?”, can leave you fumbling for an answer, as the things that once brought enjoyment can feel flat or uninteresting. Just getting through the day can take more effort than it used to, and even simple responsibilities can begin to feel overwhelming or unimportant.
For some, depression is closely connected to sadness or grief. But for many others, it feels more like emptiness, exhaustion, irritability or a sense of being completely shut down. Depression can also exist alongside anxiety. After a long period of feeling overwhelmed, anxious or emotionally flooded, you may eventually find yourself feeling depleted and disconnected instead.
Depression can sometimes leave you feeling far away from yourself, without quite knowing how it happened. You keep going, push things aside and do what needs to be done, until you realize you aren't feeling very much like yourself at all. You may know that you want to feel differently, but not know how to get there. You can logically know that this isn’t forever, but still feel afraid that this is just who you are now, and still feel stuck.
Whatever you’ve been experiencing lately, counselling for depression can offer a place to slow things down and begin to come out of the fog and back to your life, one small step at a time
Why Does Depression Happen?
While we know it would be really helpful if there was one simple answer, unfortunately there isn’t just one reason people become depressed.
However, our counsellors recognize that when life becomes too much, we can also lose touch with parts of ourselves. Feelings get pushed aside because there isn't room for them. We keep functioning when we're exhausted. We stop noticing what we need. Little by little, shutting down can become a way of getting through the day. There are tons of reasons this can happen and they aren’t all obvious.
In time, this way of responding can leave you feeling numb, depleted or far away from yourself. Similarly to many challenges, this can begin when we are young. However, this way of being also develops as adults, as we respond to the reality of living in this beautiful, yet very challenging world. Experiences of connection and disconnection, family, work, culture, identity and the pressures we live under can all shape what we're carrying.
Understanding what has contributed to depression can be an important part of counselling. This understanding can urge us to recognize that what we are carrying is important and vital to feel.
Through this process, we can offer ourselves the opportunity to feel and ask for what hasn't yet had space on our way to reconnecting with ourselves and the parts of life that matter most.
Meet Our Counsellors Who Work with Depression
Finding the right counsellor matters.
The following members of our team have availability for new clients and bring different personalities, experiences and therapeutic approaches to their work with depression.
Whether you’re already looking for a depression counsellor or therapist or aren’t sure yet what you need, we offer free 15-minute consultations so you can connect and ask questions first.
Depression Doesn’t Always Look Like Depression
The experience of depression isn’t always obvious, but that doesn’t mean it’s not important, impactful or deeply isolating and heavy.
-
You can keep working, showing up for people and taking care of your responsibilities while feeling something completely different inside.
You may be doing everything you're supposed to do and still feel like you’re in a bubble or fog: exhausted, disconnected or like you're barely getting through the day.
This can be particularly easy to miss in men, where signs of depression may show up more through irritability, withdrawal, overworking, substance use or feeling constantly exhausted than through obvious sadness. -
Depression doesn't always look like sadness. Especially in some men, depression may show up more through withdrawal, overworking, difficulty connecting, changes in sleep or appetite, substance use, irritability or feeling constantly exhausted or shut down. Many men have picked up on the pressure and standards that continuing to function despite being in pain or exhausted is normal or the easiest way, even if while feeling increasingly disconnected on the inside.
-
Depression isn't always sadness or full of emotion. Often it feels more numb, isolated, heavy, hopeless, alone or apathetic.
If a part of your experience is feeling distant from yourself, other people or the things you normally care about, this is something that a lot of others experience. We can offer support for this confusing experience of watching your life happen rather than really being in it. -
There may be a clear reason for how you're feeling. A loss, relationship, trauma, major transition or difficult period in your life may have changed something in you. Often this makes it harder; we often give ourselves a certain amount of time to be upset, to heal or to move on, but the reality is that that doesn’t usually cut it. Understanding why you’re stuck doesn't necessarily mean you've been able to move through it or move on.
-
Sometimes depression arrives without an obvious explanation. Your life may look fine from the outside, while internally you feel empty, exhausted or disconnected. Not knowing why doesn't make the experience any less significant but it does often leave us feeling broken, or like there ie something wrong with us.
-
Anxiety and depression often overlap. You may have spent a long time worrying, overthinking, anticipating problems or trying to hold everything together, only to eventually feel depleted or shut down. This cycle can be particularly exhausting.
-
You may already understand a great deal about yourself. You may have read books, listened to podcasts, gone to counselling before or spent years trying to figure out why you feel the way you do.
Sometimes what is needed isn't more insight. It is having a place where you can slow down enough to notice what is happening in you and have a different experience of it.
Your Relationship with Yourself & Your Life
While depression can affect your energy, and how you experience the world, when you’ve been here for a while, it can start to chip away at how you relate to the world and how you feel about yourself as well. It can look like:
Feeling physically weak and exhausted
Missing work, important events or other responsibilities
Feeling disconnected from others or socially isolated, often alongside anxiety or a fear of burdening others
Experiencing shame, embarrassment or frustration that you can't “get over it”
Believing you are worthless or not good enough
Self-harm or thoughts of suicide
You may recognize some of these experiences immediately, while others may not fit your experience at all. These feelings don’t have one particular shape for everyone.
Depression Can Take Different Forms
Depression can be connected to many different experiences and can take different forms over time.
-
Depression can develop during pregnancy or following birth. Postpartum depression can affect mood, energy, connection and your experience of yourself and your relationship with your baby, family, partner and life overall. Support and awareness of the impact of this phase of life is deeply lacking in our culture, which makes us much more likely to feel shame, hopelessness and isolation as well.
-
Depression, burnout and neurodivergent exhaustion can overlap in ways that aren't always easy to untangle. Sometimes the question isn't simply “What is wrong with me?” but what has been asked of you, what you've been carrying and what your mind and body have been trying to manage.
-
Depression can be connected with trauma, grief and experiences of loss. Feelings underneath depression that haven't had space to be felt or processed can show up as depression becoming our way of surviving something that felt too much to hold.
-
It’s totally normal for mood and energy shift with the seasons, especially when we live in a culture that doesn’t change or adapt with the seasons as much as others, and some feel the effect of this deeply. Seasonal depression, including seasonal affective disorder (SAD), can be particularly difficult during Vancouver's darker, lower-light months.
Depressive experiences can also develop in response to something happening in your life, such as a relationship ending, loss, isolation, work stress or a major transition. Sometimes the circumstances change, and your body and emotions takes a while to fully catch up. -
While not all depression needs to carry a label, major depressive disorder can involve persistent changes in mood, energy, motivation, sleep, concentration and enjoyment. It comes in episodes of feeling extreme lows from time to time, or can feel like a significant shift from how they used to experience themselves.
Persistent depressive disorder, also known as dysthymia, involves a longer-term experience of depression. It can be easy to overlook when low mood, low energy or disconnection have been present for so long that they begin to feel like part of who you are.
Different Ways Our Counsellors Work With Depression
As you likely know, there isn't one magic approach to depression treatment that works for everyone! Your counsellor will collaborate with you and draw from an integrated approach that considers your experiences and who you are.
Emotion-Focused Therapy: Emotion-Focused Therapy can support people with depression by helping them become more connected to emotions that may be difficult to access, understand or express
Parts Work: Parts Work offers a way of understanding the different parts of yourself that can emerge when you're struggling or shut down, creating the experience of depression anxiety and other difficult experiences. For example, one part of you may feel hopeless or exhausted while another keeps pushing you to function.
Somatic Therapy: Depression isn't only something that happens in your thoughts. It can affect your energy, movement, body and ability to feel present or connected. Somatic approaches bring attention to these experiences and to what your body may be communicating.
Attachment-Focused Therapy:Our relationships shape how we experience ourselves and the world around us. Attachment-focused counselling can help explore experiences of connection, disconnection, loss and belonging, including patterns that may continue to affect your relationships today.
EMDR:EMDR can be helpful when depression is connected with trauma, distressing experiences or long term experiences of disconnecting that continue to affect you in the present.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy: CBT can support depression by bringing curiosity to persistent thoughts and behaviours that have become part of your experience of depression. Counselling for depression is most helpful when CBT is integrated with a broader understanding of your history, emotions, relationships and nervous system so that we aren’t just pushing past our nervous system or parts of ourselves, but learning to work with them.
DBT and Mindfulness-Based Approaches: DBT and mindfulness can provide practical ways of working with difficult emotions, overwhelm and patterns that can make depression harder to navigate. These approaches can be incorporated into broader therapeutic work according to what is useful for you.
You make sense, and you’re not alone.
Come find a place to start, even when you can't quite explain why you've lost your spark.
All of our counsellors offer a free 15-minute consultation. This offers you the chance to connect and ask questions about how they work, and get a sense of who you might feel comfortable with. It also helps us understand what you're looking for, so we can help you find a counsellor or therapist who feels like a great fit for where you are.
If you’re looking for a therapist for depression in Vancouver, our counsellors offer both in-person sessions at our Kitsilano clinic (1682 West 7th Ave, Suite 300, Vancouver BC) and online for clients anywhere in British Columbia & beyond.
Frequently Asked Questions About Depression Counselling
-
Absolutely. Depression and burnout can both involve exhaustion, low motivation, numbness and feeling disconnected from things that normally matter to you. There can also be overlap with neurodivergent exhaustion and burnout. Exploring what you've been carrying and what has been happening in your life can help make sense of the difference.
-
Anxiety and depression frequently overlap. You may experience ongoing worry and overwhelm alongside low mood, exhaustion or numbness, or find that one seems to feed into the other. You’re more than welcome to reach out to our team to better understand what counselling for anxiety and depression might look like.
-
Sadness is a natural emotional response to difficult experiences. Of course, some experiences of grief and traumatic grief can overwhelm our normal capacity. Sometimes depression can include sadness, or a lot of emotion, and sometimes there aren’t many feelings at all.
Depression typically involves a broader shift in your energy, motivation, connection, mood and ability to experience enjoyment. The distinction isn't always immediately clear, particularly when you've been feeling low or shut down for a long time.
RCC, She/Her
Esther supports clients with self-worth, relationships, attachment, childhood experiences, neurodivergence, family dynamics and burnout, creating space for clients to better understand themselves and the patterns shaping their lives. Esther also has a background as teacher and school counsellor and loves supporting teens, other educators, caregivers and those with BIPOC experiences or who have lived outside of Canada
Main Approaches:Somatic · Mindfulness · Attachment-Focused · IFS · Narrative · DBT · Emotion-Focused · AEDP