Counseling in Charleston, South Carolina.
While the words anxiety and depression can seem so diagnostic and clinical, oftentimes they are symptoms of a bigger picture in our lives. Instead of quickly diagnosing, we will carefully learn your story and the things that have brought you where you are in your life.
Everything makes sense, we just have to make sense of it!
It’s easy to focus on the anxiety itself but it’s often said that anxiety is the fire alarm, not the fire. Anxiety is trying to communicate something and to work through the anxiety we need to explore what the fire is, what it’s trying to tell us. If you have ever worked with me (Meredith) you have probably heard me describe anxiety as a “stiff arm of emotion” instead of an emotion in itself. So we can tend to move towards anxiety when we are trying to avoid feeling sad, angry, or overwhelmed. Anxiety can also be a result of a lack of boundaries. We will carefully and compassionately learn about the pieces of your life that could be leading to anxiety
Often I describe depression as the feeling of “everything being hard.” However, depression can take on a lot of forms. Whether it is related to profound isolation, loneliness, anger, grief, or a reason you can’t quite put your finger on, depression needs a space and a voice to be heard. A lot of times, depression is a loss of voice, a silencing of our deep inner world. This can lead to constant underlying feelings of anger and rage as it’s often said that “anger is hurt’s bodyguard.” In our time together we will work to understand your voice and how if not used, you can turn it inward. This sounds like negative self-talk, self-hatred, and even general negativity and pessimism. One of the hardest things about depression is how it clouds everything you see. If you are seeing things negatively, you will continue to see things negatively. We would love to help you get out of that loop.
Grief is something that is often misunderstood or minimized. We grieve a lot of things that don’t die. Any life change has a loss associated with it – even good changes. Maybe it’s a major move or a job change, relationship changes, or having a baby. All these changes ripple out in our lives and cause loss in some way. Grief is also present when we recognize the ways that past relationships affected us in difficult ways. We’ve learned to adapt, cope, and keep going, but those adaptations aren’t always healthy for the long term. Grieving how this has impacted our lives allows us to let go of cycles or patterns that no longer serve us. Giving space to grief, and emotion in general, allows us to find clarity, compassion, creativity, and connection.
