What is Depression?
Depression isn’t just sadness—it’s a kind of absence. A flatness. A sense of being disconnected not only from others, but from yourself.
It can feel like something heavy has settled over everything—like a dark cloud that never quite lifts. The things that once brought meaning or energy now feel distant or dull. Even small tasks can feel monumental. Your body feels heavy—like lead. Motivation doesn’t just feel low; it feels unreachable.
And often, a quiet question begins to rise: “What’s the point?” Not always from despair. Sometimes from emptiness. There’s no felt sense of meaning. No point that feels real enough to move toward.
The pull to withdraw grows stronger. You stop replying to texts. Cancel plans. Work feels impossible. Conversations feel like too much. And then shame begins to seep in—“Why can’t I just try harder?”—fueling the cycle. The less you do, the worse you feel, and the harder it becomes to begin again.
This isn’t laziness. It’s not weakness. It’s what happens when life stops feeling like something you can reach for—and the weight of that becomes too much to carry.
How Emotion-Focused Therapy Understands Depression
Many approaches to treating depression start at the surface: they encourage people to change how they think or act. There can be value in this. Sometimes, engaging in meaningful activity can gently spark a sense of momentum. Movement can help bring life back into the body, even before the mind catches up.
But too often, these strategies can feel out of reach. When the body feels like lead, when motivation is absent, and meaning is nowhere in sight—being told to just try can land as quiet invalidation. It skips over the deeper question: Why is it so hard to begin at all?
In Emotion-Focused Therapy, we understand depression not as a flaw or a failure, but as a secondary emotional response—a shutdown, a collapse, or a numbness that protects us from something more vulnerable underneath.
Often, that deeper emotion is shame:
- A quiet, painful sense that “I am a failure.”
- That there’s something fundamentally wrong with me.
- That I’m not enough.
This kind of shame can grow from early experiences—being criticized, overlooked, compared, or misunderstood. And it can be stirred up by present-day dynamics, like a relationship that leaves you feeling unseen or a job that reactivates old patterns. The emotional system learns to shut down, to go quiet, to turn inward—not because it’s weak, but usually because it’s trying to protect you.
Another common emotional root of depression is unprocessed sadness and grief—but not always the grief we expect. Sometimes it’s grief for the life we imagined we’d have by now.
Grief for the world we hoped we’d be living in.
Grief for the love, safety, or belonging we never fully received.
Grief says, “I have lost something.”
Not necessarily a person, but a possibility. A hope. A part of yourself.
And when shame or grief under the surface is too painful to feel—or was never allowed to exist in the first place—it can give way to hopelessness and despair.
Hopelessness is not the same as grief.
Grief acknowledges meaning. Grief allows us to connect with the pain of what we’ve lost.
Hopelessness says, “It will never be different.”
Despair, like numbness or collapse, is the emotional system’s way of protecting you when the pain underneath feels too much to bear. It doesn’t mean you’ve given up—it means something in you has gone quiet, trying to survive what once felt unbearable.
Depression, then, is not the beginning of the story. It’s what the body and mind do when the deeper truths—of loss, of shame, of longing—haven’t yet found space to be felt.
EFT helps us gently turn toward these deeper feelings—the shame, or the sadness—so that what was once too painful to touch can begin to move, shift, and heal.
Shame and the Inner Critic: A Path to Healing
Shifting shame involves getting to know its roots—deeply.
For many, shame shows up sharply in present-day situations. But its weight often comes from somewhere much older.
Moments of criticism—like making a mistake at work or receiving negative feedback—can trigger more than just discomfort or embarrassment. They can open a floodgate of self-criticism, emptiness, and despair. In depression, these moments don’t just feel disappointing; they feel crushing. Not because of what happened now, but because they echo something from then.
Maybe you were made to feel small, inadequate, or burdensome growing up. Maybe you learned early that your worth depended on being perfect, pleasing, or invisible. Present-day shame is often a thread connected to those earlier wounds.
In Emotion-Focused Therapy, we don’t try to silence or argue with the shame—we get curious about it. Often, it’s carried by a harsh inner voice or inner critic, shaped by painful messages you internalized over time. Together, we begin to understand this voice—not to validate it, but to listen for what it’s protecting, or who it’s repeating.
And then we begin to return—gently and with care—to the places where the shame began. There, we start to feel what couldn’t be felt then:
- Compassion for the child who was never protected
- Sadness for what was lost
- Healthy anger toward those who caused harm
These emotions begin to loosen the shame. The critic softens. The pain that once felt defining starts to shift.
And as that shift happens, something else follows:
The depression begins to lift.
Not all at once. Not as a single breakthrough.
But gradually—like fog clearing, or weight being released—there is more room to breathe. More energy to move. A growing sense that life doesn’t have to feel this heavy, this dim, this far away.
And over time, a different truth begins to take root—not one that is forced through logic, but one that arises from deep emotional change:
I didn’t deserve what happened to me. It was wrong. But I am not wrong.
Making Space for Grief
Part of Emotion-Focused Therapy for depression can often also involve making space for grief—a healthy emotion that can sit quietly beside shame, or may be at the very center of depression on its own.
Take, for example, the experience of losing a job. Shame and self-criticism might come up quickly: “I should have tried harder.” “I’m a failure.” But the grief might live right beside that shame.
Grief for the structure that anchored your days.
Grief for the sense of purpose you’d built.
Grief for connection, identity, stability.
Grief for the version of the future you thought you were building.
And job loss is just one example. Grief can emerge in so many forms—the quiet loss of a friendship, the ache of unmet milestones, the sorrow for a world that feels far from the one you hoped to live in.
These are real losses. And in depression, they often go unspoken—not because they don’t matter, but because they do. The sadness can feel too big to face. Or maybe no one ever showed you it was okay to feel it.
In Emotion-Focused Therapy, we don’t try to fix grief—we stay with it. We slow down, name it in all its nuance, and help you stay close to what mattered. We gently support you in accessing, naming, and feeling this sadness in a way that feels manageable—never forced, always guided by your pace.
Grief is not a symptom to eliminate.
It’s a truth to honor.
When sadness is finally allowed, depression begins to shift.
As with shame, not all at once—but steadily.
The heaviness starts to ease.
The fog begins to thin.
And slowly, life becomes something you can feel again.
In its wake, there is often space for acceptance and for a quiet kind of healing.
A Different Kind of Help
Depression can leave life feeling distant—like you’re moving through the days without really being in them. It can be hard to imagine things shifting, especially when nothing on the surface seems to help.
At eFit Institute, our Emotion-Focused therapists are here to walk alongside you. We don’t offer quick fixes or surface-level strategies. We help you turn toward the deeper emotions—shame, sadness, grief—and make space for the parts of you that have been carrying so much for so long.
If you’re looking for a psychologist and want to explore how Emotion-Focused Therapy can help, you can reach out anytime to learn more.