My name is Hong Jeong and I’m a therapist in Los Angeles. This is my first virtual therapy session with you on how to deal with depression and overcome depression. The main purpose of this video is to give you an experience of how therapy works, in hopes of taking care of your mental health and promoting self-healing process. In this video, we are having a session as if we’re exchanging ideas. So I will ask you questions and give you time to think about your answers along with your feelings and thoughts. You can write down your answers on a piece of paper or say out loud if appropriate. Feel free to pause the video if necessary.
You deserve to get better. Let’s begin!
Question #1: What brought you here? Can you tell me about your goals in therapy?
Question #2: How would you feel if you were able to achieve your goals? *If your goals seem unrealistic, please revise your goals in an actionable and measurable way. (E.g. "I want to reduce arguing with my brother from 5x/week to 1x/week").
Question #3: Can you tell me about your strengths and abilities? In others words, What are good things about you and your skills?
Question #4: How can you use your strengths and abilities to achieve your goals? Can you tell me about specific and actionable steps?
It is important to be aware of your symptoms. PHQ (Patient Health Questionnaire)-9 is an inventory for depression. Let’s take a moment to fill out this form.
-Please click this link: http://www.cqaimh.org/pdf/tool_phq9.pdf I’d highly encourage you to fill out PHQ-9 on a weekly basis, in order to keep track of depressive symptoms. In this way, you will be able to compare your weekly score and to get a grasp on what particular symptoms you want to manage.
Question #6: Can you tell me about your presenting issues? What does depression manifest itself in your life?
Dealing with depression is difficult. In terms of overcoming depression, it is imperative to have tools. In our session, one of the most effective tools I’d like to present to you is self-monitoring. In order to fix a problem, it is crucial to analyze and monitor the problem. Depression feels like sadness or lack of motivation. Depression can be a very subjective feeling. Therefore, it is hard to describe how depression feels. The following is steps to monitor the signs of depression.
-I’d encourage you to journal or write down these steps as a reminder.
Step #1: How depressed do you feel on a scale of 0 to 10 (0 being emotionally stable and 10 being the most depressed)?
Step #2: What happens to your body when feeling depressed? *Our physical sensations can be a good indicator of our emotions. Body scan is a great tool to observe your physical sensations.
Step #3:What happens to your overall quality of thoughts when feeling depressed?
*3 components of the overall quality of thoughts include the pace of thinking process (slow, neutral, or fast), the order of thoughts (organized or disorganized thought patterns), and the timeline of thoughts (past, present, and/or future).
Step #4: How much progress did you make on a scale of 0 to 10 (0 being no progress and 10 being the most progress)?
I usually ask these four questions to myself 4 times a day after breakfast, lunch, dinner and before bedtime. Our emotions can fluctuate over time. It is important to set some time aside to check in with yourself and improve your mood. In our next session, we will review your progress and talk about behavioral techniques. Take care of yourself and do your healing every day.
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