Combination Treatment (Psychotherapy + Medication)

How you feel has to do with both your feelings and your reactions to the things that are happening (or have happened) in your life.

Psychotherapy can help you experience things differently by changing the way you perceive and relate to yourself, others, and your future. It can also help you connect with your emotions and provide important insights into how your past experiences (e.g., relationships, family-life, work-life, traumatic events) have influenced your current relationships, feelings, thoughts, and behaviors.

Medication, on the other hand, can help to reset relevant brain circuits to address specific symptom domains such as low mood, mood instability, low motivation, concentration problems, low energy levels, emotional sensitivity/reactivity, panic anxiety and worrying, and impulsivity.

Medication and psychotherapy can work separately or together, depending on what is going on with you.

The Mind-Body Approach

An important goal in recovery from mental suffering is an awareness of, and appreciation for, our bodies. Many mental health and medical problems result from protective defenses we put up to avoid feeling uncomfortable in the present moment. Some people ruminate about the past, worry about the future, hyperfocus on performance, or bury themselves in work to avoid those uncomfortable feelings. Others use drugs, alcohol, sex, self-harm, anger, or aggression (or a combination) to achieve the same.

If being in the present moment means feeling pain and discomfort, then it’s understandable why we avoid it. But over time the avoidance of the present moment only disconnects us even more. When we don’t have a safe place to express our feelings, our body manifests our emotions through physical symptoms like fatigue, chronic pain, or headaches to name a few. We may also retreat into our thoughts hoping to regain a sense of control. 

Spinning on the hamster wheel of worrying and thinking protects us from the intolerable bodily sensations that overwhelm us. By avoiding uncomfortable bodily sensations, we slowly lose the mind-body connection that is so essential to our sense of “self.” We become disintegrated–we lose our sense of “self.”

Most therapy modalities are talk-therapies. Finding the words to describe our feelings can be an essential part of healing, but it may not be enough to fully integrate ourselves. Therefore, part of healing requires mind-body integration practices such as yoga, meditation, martial arts, and/or breathing exercises to name a few. These practices are essential components to recovery so we can reconnect with our bodies and feel whole.