While depression can certainly be caused by chemical imbalance and not because of how your unconscious mind impacts/limits your experience of life, I took the approach that exploring my subconscious through therapy was the way to get out.
For me it worked very well and I think the journey is an amazing one to go on. Building from the ground up and understanding all the foundations within. I always wonder about treatments which don't have this benefit, although the results in terms of lifestyle change sound extremely positive.
One of the hardest parts of therapy is diagnosis of what to work on. Even though an issue will be "presenting" itself clearly, it can often be a bit of a decoy. For example, a lack of self-esteem is often a useful derivative of an unconscious fear of upsetting others. Low self-esteem => avoid situations/behaviours that upset others.
During therapy I found dreams, when analysed outside of the "conventional" Freudian/Jungian frameworks provided a simple and accurate method of reaching the root diagnosis (the fear of upsetting others vs. the decoy issue of low self-esteem).
I got a bit obsessed by the topic and wrote a paper on it which can be downloaded here: https://psyarxiv.com/k6trz
And was discussed on HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19143590
For me it worked very well and I think the journey is an amazing one to go on. Building from the ground up and understanding all the foundations within. I always wonder about treatments which don't have this benefit, although the results in terms of lifestyle change sound extremely positive.
One of the hardest parts of therapy is diagnosis of what to work on. Even though an issue will be "presenting" itself clearly, it can often be a bit of a decoy. For example, a lack of self-esteem is often a useful derivative of an unconscious fear of upsetting others. Low self-esteem => avoid situations/behaviours that upset others.
During therapy I found dreams, when analysed outside of the "conventional" Freudian/Jungian frameworks provided a simple and accurate method of reaching the root diagnosis (the fear of upsetting others vs. the decoy issue of low self-esteem).
I got a bit obsessed by the topic and wrote a paper on it which can be downloaded here: https://psyarxiv.com/k6trz
And was discussed on HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19143590