Therapy is a give and take between a therapist and a client. It is a relationship that is entered into. The therapist is a resource, like a parent is a resource to a child.
The idea is that depression is a relationship between the client (the Self) and the idea of his/her parents in his/her head (the Object). When the client is depressed the Object is harsh or neglecting.
Therapy works on incorporating a nice, supportive, encouraging, capable therapist into the picture of the Object in the head. So the client relates to a much nicer Object, thus is not depressed anymore.
So that’s why information about depression is only helpful to a certain extent. The final cure is a relationship that is encouraging.
Often when someone asks for information about depression, they are saying in essence that they are skittish or nervous about starting a relationship with a therapeutic authority figure, because the Object they carry around in their head is so harsh, that they are pretty sure the therapist will be equally harsh or neglecting. It is refreshing to the client when they find out the therapist is not like that at all.

I call it Pandemic Isolation Sydrome. It’s not just about staying home. It has three components:

1. Anxiety: worrying about dying. Worrying about the economy and one’s job. Worrying about people not being safe. Worrying about people not going down the grocery aisle the correct direction. Worrying about people passing me too closely on the sidewalk. Worrying about the neighbor’s dog licking me. Listening to the news and talk shows.
2. Depression: Loneliness, and then self-doubt. Everyone wearing masks in public so you can’t connect on a personal level. This affects extraverts and relationship people the most. On the MBTI the ENFs are the most affected by the masks and distancing. No hugs! No handshakes. Distance. People who need physical affection and oxytocin (the hormone that is activated by skin contact). The elderly in nursing homes can only see people with masks on and seldom get touched, and then, only with a gloved hand!
3. OCD: A pandemic raises OCD to an art form. Researching safety rituals, hand washing, washing the groceries, laying out delivery boxes and the mail for two days before opening. Coming up with a detailed routine for shopping: have a box of gloves in the car. Whenever leaving car put on gloves, when returning to car discard gloves in trash bag. As soon as you get home strip down and put clothes in washing machine, then shower.

We have created a survival strategy which is so detrimental to our health that we need another survival strategy.
Survival:

1. Choose two people that you can hug. Sorry, you will have to sacrifice some of your safety for this. If you can’t manage this, it’s not going to work. This is non-negotiable. You have to find 2 people to hug on a regular basis. 
2. Accept that we can’t control what we can’t control. Trying to control the uncontrollable is the source of most anxiety.
3. Take a walk every day without a mask. Inform anyone that asks that you have medical permission to not wear a mask for your mental health. Then smile at them.
4. Spend time on Zoom or Facetime with your friends. You need to see the expressions on their faces. 

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One of the symptoms of both anxiety and depression is often an urge to stay in bed or lay on the couch and not move. Moving stirs up emotions that we are running away from. 
And that leads to the theory: Much of depression and anxiety is caused by running away from emotions. In the case of anxiety, one panic attack at the mall can motivate a person to stay away from the mall for the rest of their life. That is the opposite of what is effective to cure anxiety. We have to encourage the anxiety to emerge slowly, bit by bit, and effectively process the anxiety. That is why your counselor will have you close your eyes and imagine being at the mall, experiencing anxiety. When you begin to sweat or shake, the therapist will ask you what you are thinking.

"I'm thinking about how I need to leave the mall immediately. I'm going to fall down in the mall, pass out, and embarrass myself. Everyone is looking at me."

Counselor: "Okay, that's good! Now we can start examining what is causing the anxiety. Let's start with how everyone is looking at you. What if the people who are looking at you want to help you?"

"No, they are laughing at me."

"But it is your fantasy. Nobody else is creating this fantasy. You can decide what you want it to be. How about trying to imagine that the people are kind and want to help you? Wouldn't you want to help someone who is having a panic attack?"

"Yes."

Another thing that is a circular cause of anxiety and depression is lack of physical activity. Our bodies were not designed to run around in automobiles and sit in chairs all day. We were designed to be active, running and walking barefoot, lifting, hunting, cultivating, etc. 

My friend, Ian Kelley, has been a personal trainer for years. He says the ideal amount of time for a person to engage in physical activity is 300 minutes per week. That can be walking, dancing, exercising, weeding in the garden, cleaning the floors or the windows, etc. Our bodies automatically get depressed and anxious when we fall below that level of physical activity. It is not appropriate to take antidepressants and anti anxiety medications just to avoid exercising. First excercise, then see if you still medications. Ian has a personal training program that you can access online (I receive no commission from mentioning his program.)  My friend, Peter Milhous is my personal trainer and he also has an online training website (also no commission for me).
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Recent research at UVM indicates that taking 90-180mg of magnesium per day is as effective as taking one of the anti-depressant or anti-anxiety medications that is currently being prescribed. Magnesium is considered to be far more healthy for our bodies than anti-anxiety and anti-depressant medications, and has mostly healthy side effects. (If trial subjects got a stomach ache they reduced their magnesium in half, and it remained just as effective.) Magnesium is a nutrient that occurs in the foods that we eat, but it is supposed that our soil has been depleted over the years, so we need supplements to keep up with the way our bodies originally functioned. 

In the documentary Super Size Me, the author interviewed an alternative school program administrator who stated that one of the main things they do for hard to control and hard to educate teens is to make sure they eat an organic lunch, heavy on leafy green vegetables and other vegetables. They found that just keeping them off of caffeine and fried salty foods made them instantly calmer, friendlier and more focused.

The most effective treatments for depression and anxiety are:
1. going for a 20 minute walk first thing in the morning without sunglasses.
2. Tai Chi for 45 minutes five days per week in a park with friends. 
3. Gratefulness twice a week. 

These activities combine meditation, exercise, sunlight, friends and sometimes music, all things that have been shown to ameliorate anxiety and depression. 

Which of these suggestions can you see yourself enjoying?

How do I deal with a severely grieving mother? We lost my brother to horrific circumstances 6 years ago. As time goes by, she has become progressively worse. She has violent outbursts towards me and my dad is her weapon of choice now. What do I do?

The violent death of a family member is devastating to all the members of the family. It takes years to get your life back to a manageable place. Trust is one of the biggest things that gets lost in a violent death of a loved one.

• Your mother is saying she doesn’t trust the world anymore. She views the world as cruel and evil now. It is weighing her down, and she is probably wishing that she was dead right now.
• She is also saying that the love she received as an infant and child is not enough to carry her through this grief. When she is grieving she doesn’t have enough warm memories of her mother or father or grandmother comforting her.

It might be helpful to you to:

• view her as a bereft hopeless child. What would you do if a neighbor child felt totally unloved and hopeless? How would you comfort that child?
• In addition, I would say to her: “I want to go out to eat with you to a special place that you choose. I want to have mother/child time with you.” What that says to her is that she has a child who is alive right now, who wants to love her.
• I would also phrase the grief for her: “You loved my brother for years. He knows that, wherever he is now. He knows you love him.” (This helps her focus on continuing to love him, instead of being devastated he is gone.) “Let’s go put flowers on his grave.” (or wherever the ashes were scattered, etc) Give her something concrete and beautiful to do that helps her focus her grief: Flowers on a grave, plant a tree in his honor, give a small scholarship to a needy boy who struggles with the same handicaps your brother struggles with, etc.

The reason doing something concrete, beautiful and constructive is so important, is because she has driven her grief into a dead end street: “I have to make sense of my son’s horrific death. I can’t. I’m stuck.” She replays the horror over and over a hundred times a day. If she had something beautiful and concrete to do that focused her grief, then she would be thinking about beautiful things all day long. Her grief energy would be building her and everyone else up, instead of taking her down into a black hole of hopelessness.
Be patient with her. View her as a hopeless child right now.

Answer: I wouldn’t tell them they are toxic. That invites a discussion that will be toxic to you. So just focus on getting them out of your life. I would just say I need a 3 month break from them. Don’t give a reason. Don’t argue. Don’t answer questions. Send it as an email. Ignore their replies to your email. Don’t answer the phone, don’t reply to texts. Nothing.

The question is very interesting, because it is clear you are entangled in their lives. And you want an argument with them. That is normal for a toxic relationship. We want to either heal our parents or get revenge on our parents, but seldom to just walk away from our parents, which is the healthiest choice.

Having a discussion about wanting a break from your parents hinders you from getting what you want.
A toxic person I had kicked out of a singing quartet I direct, wanted to rejoin. He said that if I didn’t let him rejoin our quartet, he would have to tell our next gig that we were woefully under prepared, and not to rely on his good word that we were ready to perform. I wrote a lengthy email reply, but before I sent it, I showed it to some trusted friends.
My brother asked, “What is your goal?”
“To get him out of my life, but still be reasonably amicable so if I see him at a singing club we both attend, we can be polite.”
My brother said, “This email won’t get you that. Don’t reply.”
He was right. A lengthy email invites a discussion or an argument. Was I ever going to convince him he was toxic? No! One of my mentors used to advise: “Don’t feed the fire.”

If you encounter your parents at a family event, then just listen, and ask for more info. Don’t reply, don’t argue, don’t get drawn into a discussion. Half agree with everything they say. Soothe them.

• “I can see your point.”
• “I can understand you saying that.”
• “I will think about that.”
• “I can understand your point of view.”
• “Interesting!”

This is called “fogging”. It doesn’t give them anything to argue with. There is no toe hold to climb with. They cannot escalate the argument and create drama. All they can do is keep throwing out the baited hook. You have to not take the bait.
This takes lots of practice. Practice with a friend who can imitate your parents. Your parents will say insulting things that are half true or completely untrue:

• “We raised you and now look how you repay us. You’re ungrateful.”
• “You’re just so dramatic! Nobody can deal with you!”
• “You think we are toxic? You’re the toxic one.”
• “You’re just bitter. You never forgive anyone.”
• “It’s always somebody else’s fault. Never your fault.”

Don’t take the bait. Just say, “Well, I’m aware that’s your opinion. I can understand your point of view.” And leave it at that. They will think they have won, but they haven’t. You won, because you didn’t give them a toe hold to escalate it into a nasty drama scene. You won because you get to not have contact with them at all until the next family gathering.
Another way they will bait you is to send you messages through your relatives. The messages with have assumptions behind them that accuse you of untrue or half true things that they may have convinced your relatives of. This is bigger bait, and more toxic drama, than a face to face encounter. Again, stay out of it. Say, “Well, I can understand my parents’ viewpoint. That’s the kind of accusation I expect from them. You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know. You will feel much better if you stay out of it, and ask them to just communicate with me directly. Otherwise you’re going to get swept up into a painful conflict. Or I could avoid you, too. It’s your choice.”
Focus on older people who have breathed life into you. Focus on them instead of on your parents. This takes a long time. Don’t give up.