When heaviness has become home
Therapy for depression in Toronto that honors the depth of your experience while creating pathways toward aliveness
What does depression feel like in daily life?
You wake up tired, no matter how much sleep you've had. The day ahead feels like a mountain you don't have the energy to climb. Tasks that used to be simple showering, making breakfast, responding to messages now require an effort that feels monumental.
There's a heaviness that doesn't lift. Not sadness exactly, though sometimes that's there too. More like a gray fog that mutes everything. Food doesn't taste like much. Conversations feel effortful. The things that used to bring you joy music, time with friends, creative work now feel hollow or unreachable.
Maybe you're still functioning. Going to work, taking care of responsibilities, smiling when you need to. But inside, you're running on empty. You feel disconnected from yourself, from others, from any sense of meaning or purpose. You wonder if this is just how life is now.
Sometimes there's a voice that tells you you're failing, that you should be able to just "get over it." That everyone else seems to manage, so what's wrong with you? The shame of depression can be as painful as the depression itself.
You might isolate, not because you don't care about people, but because connecting feels like too much. Or you might go through the motions of socializing while feeling completely alone even in a room full of people.
If this sounds familiar, you're not broken. Depression is a signal that something needs attention and that attention, when done with care and depth, can change everything.
What depression often is
Depression isn't a character flaw or a sign of weakness. It's your system's way of saying something is out of balance emotionally, psychologically, sometimes physiologically. It's often a protective response that has become stuck.
Sometimes depression is about unprocessed grief or loss. Sometimes it's the result of living in conditions that don't support your nervous system or your soul chronic stress, isolation, work that drains you, relationships that deplete you. Sometimes it's about old wounds that were never tended to, or developmental needs that weren't met.
Depression can also be existential a response to the absence of meaning, the sense that life lacks purpose or depth. In our fast, fragmented, overstimulated world, this kind of depression is increasingly common. Your psyche might be trying to slow you down, to force you to confront questions you've been avoiding.
From a nervous system perspective, depression often involves a collapse response a kind of shutting down when fight or flight no longer seem viable. Your body is trying to protect you by withdrawing, but the withdrawal itself becomes the trap.
Understanding depression doesn't make it go away, but it does shift it from "something wrong with me" to "something my system is trying to communicate." And that shift is the beginning of change.
How we work with depression together
Through the body and nervous system
Depression lives in the body as much as the mind. We work with your nervous system helping you build capacity for activation and aliveness, gently mobilizing energy that's been stuck in collapse. This isn't about pushing through; it's about finding safe, gradual pathways back to vitality.
Somatic experiencing and polyvagal-informed practices help you notice subtle shifts in your body, track small moments of aliveness, and build the felt sense of safety that allows your system to come back online.
Understanding the patterns
Psychodynamic work helps us explore what the depression might be protecting you from, or what it's trying to tell you. We look at patterns in your relationships, your history, your inner narratives. Sometimes depression is anger turned inward, or grief that has no outlet, or a part of you that's been silenced.
We create space for all of it the parts of you that feel hopeless, the parts that are angry at yourself for being depressed, the parts that are exhausted from trying so hard.
Connecting to meaning
If your depression has existential dimensions, we explore questions of meaning, purpose, and what makes life worth living. Not with platitudes or borrowed answers, but by helping you touch what genuinely matters to you beneath the numbness.
Sometimes depression clears when we start living in alignment with our deeper values, when we give ourselves permission to want what we actually want, when we stop performing and start inhabiting our lives.
Building practices and rhythms
While I don't offer simplistic "self-care tips," we do work together to find practices that genuinely support you not as performative wellness, but as real tending. This might include ways to work with your inner critic, strategies for managing overwhelming emotions, or practices that help you reconnect with your body and the present moment.
What might gradually change
The first shifts are often subtle. You might notice one morning where you don't feel quite as heavy. A moment where something actually interests you. A conversation where you feel a little more present.
Over time, these moments accumulate. You start to have more energy, more capacity to engage with life. The fog begins to lift not all at once, but in increments. Colors might feel a little brighter. Food tastes like something again.
You develop more awareness of your patterns and more capacity to work with them. You learn to recognize when you're slipping and have tools to intervene earlier. You build compassion for yourself instead of shame.
Relationships often improve because you're more available, more able to ask for what you need, more willing to let people in. You might start doing things you used to love again, or discover new sources of meaning and connection.
The depression might not vanish completely some people are more prone to it, and that's okay. But your relationship to it changes. It becomes something you know how to be with, rather than something that obliterates you.
Most importantly, you start to feel like yourself again. Not the self you perform for others, but the one you've been longing to come home to.
Questions to sit with
If you're considering therapy for depression, these questions might help you explore what's calling you:
What would it feel like to have someone truly witness your experience without trying to fix it or rush you through it?
If your depression could speak, what might it be trying to tell you?
What would become possible in your life if you had even 20% more energy and presence?
Common questions about depression therapy
How long does therapy for depression take?
It varies. Some people notice shifts within the first few months. For others, especially if the depression has roots in old trauma or complex life circumstances, the work takes longer. I typically suggest committing to at least 3-6 months to give the process a real chance, but we reassess regularly to make sure it's serving you.
What if I'm already on medication?
Medication and therapy can work beautifully together. If you're on antidepressants, we can absolutely work together. I'm not a prescriber, but I collaborate respectfully with psychiatrists and family doctors as needed. For many people, the combination of therapy and medication offers more support than either alone.
What if I don't feel like talking?
That's completely okay. We don't have to fill every session with words. Sometimes we work in silence. Sometimes we focus on body sensations or just being present together. The goal isn't to perform therapy it's to show up as you are and work from there.
I've tried therapy before and it didn't help. Why would this be different?
Not all therapy is the same, and not all therapeutic relationships are a good fit. The approach I take integrating body-based work, depth psychology, and attention to meaning might offer something different than what you've experienced before. Or it might just be that this is the right time, or that our particular fit creates the conditions for change. The only way to know is to try.
You don't have to stay in the heaviness
If you're living with depression and you're ready to explore what might change, I'm here. We'll start with a 50-minute consultation to see if this work feels right for you.
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