What does depression and toys have in common? Depression. What a funny word. De-press. De-pressed, as a word speaks to me. That is, that we are experiencing the impact of being pressed.

Does anyone remember those small rubber and plastic toys that have a suction cup on the bottom and we press the toy into a flat and hard surface to wait for it to depress and to pop up?

I wonder to myself if we are like pop-up buttons, those funky toys that when we press them they stick to the floor with suction and then over a few seconds, they depress and pop up. Automatically.

It makes me wonder if our experiences with depression are similar. After all, when we de-press and after flying up to address this pressing business, like one of those trinkets we might wind up on our side. Once in a while we wind up back upright and ready to be pressed again to naturally depress, not always. Depression and the experience of being on the side with a loss of pleasure and joy is common.

At that point where we are experiencing laying on the side, similar to a pop up toy, family and friends attempt to intervene. Which brought me to the Russian saying “rukie v brookie e vpered”, loosely translated as “hands in your jeans and shove forward”.

Yet, when we work with depression, the well-meaning and poorly placed advice of “get up and go” is the least helpful. After all, if we could put our pants in our hands and hop along, we would. We had already clearly tried it with the momentum of jumping forward similar to a suction toy and are running out of ideas and energy as to what else we are able to do. Leaping does take energy.

We want that idea of energy, happiness and pleasure to return to our lives. So, what can we do? Tea and Therapy PLLC with its Telehealth practice in North Carolina is one way we are able to engage and recognize how wonderfully depression is protecting us from the heavy weight of pressing and the energy we had earlier.

After all, Tea and Therapy was designed to be a play on words; tea being a cultural way many people connect with a beverage (irrelevant of type or flavor) which generally stimulates talking.

Tea is also a routine, a small step into a daily routine to address working with depression.

To address the helpfulness of depression, to step back and engage in those little joys and pleasures of life on the daily, and perhaps discover that through small and daily changes and structures.

However, all of this is significantly easier said than done when we are working with depression. With that, tea and therapy is looking forward to hearing your experiences and with it talking through and creating the space needed for honoring depression and reestablishing daily living that is designed and works only for you.