Listening to Depression: How Understanding Your Pain Can Heal Your Life

A New Way of Thinking About Depression

What does it really mean to be depressed? You know depression as a collection of symptoms—fatigue, listlessness, feelings of worthlessness—and the source of more than a little pain. But depression is also a signal that something in your life is wrong and needs to be healed. Too often, though, we try to cut off or numb our feelings of depression instead of listening carefully to what they are telling us about our lives. Listening to Depression offers insightful ways to reframe depression as a gift that can help you transform your life for the better.

Each chapter discusses a different aspect of depression as a positive opportunity for growth or change. Depression can be the start of a reorientation in life, a step in the search for meaning, or a chance for letting go of hurtful aspects of the self. It can also be a chance to deal with grief and loss and learn to expand your potential. The book concludes with a section of advice about when it is important to defend against depression and how best to go about it when the need arises.

Lara Honos-Webb, Ph.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist in private practice in Walnut Creek, CA. She is author of The Gift of ADHD and more than twenty-five scholarly articles. Her work has been featured in Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, and Publisher's Weekly, as well as newspapers across the country and national radio and television programs. She specializes in the treatment of ADHD, depression, and the psychology of pregnancy and motherhood and speaks regularly on her areas of expertise. Honos-Webb completed a two-year postdoctoral research fellowship at University of California, San Francisco, and has been an assistant professor teaching graduate students. She offers telephone therapy to residents anywhere in California.