Overcoming Depression and the Impossibility of Perfection
You Feel Stuck and Overwhelmed
It’s tough to find energy or get anything done when your first thought after waking up in the morning is, “I can’t believe I’m still dealing with this. It’s never going to get any better.” When you can rack up the evidence that you’re letting yourself down, or letting other people down and can’t see reason to believe that could change, hopelessness is a natural response.
You Can’t Seem to Shake a Sense of Regret
Regret is such an exquisitely painful experience - it pinpoints something we believe ought to have been under our control and how we screwed it up. It’s one thing to notice our lack of control, but another level of intensity to believe we had a chance to make a difference, but we didn’t. Or we did make a difference but in the wrong direction.
You’re Sure You’ll Never Live Up to Your High Standards
The popular understanding of perfectionism is usually connected to anxiety and achievement. However, having incredibly high standards can lead us to feel frozen and unable to work toward those achievements. You have a crystal clear image in your mind of what your results will look like, and an equally clear conviction that you won’t be able to live up to that.
Counseling Can Help Your Depression (and Perfectionism)
The experiences above are painful even to read. Most of my clients feel alone in having them, yet they’re so incredibly common! I’ve been depressed myself, and one of the many gifts of my job is that I will never think that’s unique or even rare again. Another gift is that if I should ever deal with that again, I will know how to help myself.
I can show you how to do the same thing.
My goal is not just to show you how to understand yourself on a deep level, or how to feel differently about the things bothering you right now, but to teach you how to repeat that process whenever you need it for the rest of your life.
What would it mean to you to know how to respond when your emotions feel out of control? To feel hopeful and content?
You’ve Probably Heard That Depression Lies
It’s true! Our depressed minds are incredibly convincing, but they’re always off base. Thankfully, it’s not a matter of trying to convince ourselves of something else, but to discover, even prove to ourselves, that our original way of looking at things no longer makes sense.
Steps to Recovery
Set the Baseline
One of the first things we’ll do together is to get some detail and specificity about your experience. This phase is the ‘T’ in TEAM-CBT and it stands for ‘testing.’ Testing is a baby steps way to learn to describe your depression, to start to understand it in a more nuanced way, to connect your sensory experience with the words and intensities that best line up with your day-to-day. This will also give us a way to track our progress and notice if we’re getting stuck.
Understanding and Compassion
The ‘E’ in TEAM means Empathy. While empathy isn’t enough on its own to create deep change, it is absolutely essential as part of the therapy relationship.
The Costs and Benefits of Change
It’s also important to know that you have control over the process. You’re in the driver’s seat. The ‘A’ in TEAM stands for ‘assessment,’ and it’s about weighing the pros and cons of change. Doesn’t your depression, for example, show that you’re honest about what you can realistically accomplish? And doesn’t that keep you from expecting the impossible Would you want to Spotless Mind that out of yourself and rush, foolhardy, into every ambitious plan that crosses your path?
Creating Change
The most powerful methods we use in TEAM are experiential. That is, they involve bringing the emotion into the present moment and learning something new. You’ll challenge your initial interpretations and discover new, realistic and helpful thoughts that will help you uncover a wiser, more contented version of yourself.
Curious and Want to Learn More?
If you want to find out more about how therapy with Bit by Bit Counseling could help you, follow these simple steps:
Choose a time to meet with Cheryl and find out what therapy would look like for you specifically.
Think about your goals. If you could make a wish and get exactly what you wanted from therapy, what would change about your life?
Start working with Cheryl to learn the steps that will help you change the patterns that are holding you back now and develop skills you can use for the rest of your life.
Other Counseling Services at Bit by Bit Counseling
Many of my clients know that things in their lives aren’t as they’d like them to be, but they don’t always know exactly how that lines up with diagnoses. To find out more about Anxiety and Perfectionism or how TEAM-CBT can help with relationships, click below:
Cheryl Delaney, MS, LPC
Cheryl Delaney is a Georgia-based therapist who specializes in helping people overcome perfectionism through online counseling. She’s been a bit of a goofball as long as she can remember. Her approach balances professionalism with warmth, making sessions feel effective and encouraging. When she's not in therapist mode, Cheryl's likely spending time with her husband, three kids, and two cats or absorbed in a podcast while doing the dishes.