The very nature of depression often thwarts efforts to treat it. After all, it’s difficult to change when you have no energy, no sense of hope, and no capacity to concentrate. How can we challenge these chronic states? Trauma expert Janina Fisher breaks down nine interventions from Sensorimotor Psychotherapy—all easily worked into video sessions—that she uses with her own depressed clients.
“Given the way our lives have been turned upside down by the pandemic—causing isolation, joblessness, fear, anxiety—a lot of our clients will exhibit signs of depression,” Janina writes. “Even we therapists may feel the weight of our own challenges as well as the pain of our clients.”
Janina Fisher
Janina Fisher, Ph.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist and a former instructor, Harvard Medical School. An international expert on the treatment of trauma, she is an Executive Board member of the Trauma Research Foundation and a Patron of the John Bowlby Centre. Dr. Fisher is the author of Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors: Overcoming Self-Alienation (2017), Transforming the Living Legacy of Trauma: a Workbook for Survivors and Therapists (2021), The Living Legacy Instructional Flip Chart (2022), and Embracing Our Fragmented Selves: a Workbook for Trauma Survivors and Therapists, as well as numerous peer-reviewed journal articles. Her treatment model, Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment (TIST), is now being taught around the world. More information can be found on her website: www.janinafisher.com.
