Psychotherapy is now recognized as one of the main tools for treating depression. Why is this? When it comes to this, we have to talk about depression first. Most people seem to think that depression is often caused by stimuli, so people usually think that the stimuli are the cause of depression, and people tend to think that depression will go away once the stimuli have passed. But the truth is that depression does not go away when the stimulus dissipates, but sometimes it gets worse. With the exception of a few particularly dramatic setbacks, depression does not occur as a result of a stimulus, but has many underlying causes before the stimulus is experienced. There are genetic bases, environmental bases such as family and society, and, more importantly, personality bases that have developed over time since childhood. More and more scientific studies have found that growing up as a child has a great impact on people’s mental health when they grow up, especially depression and anxiety disorders, which are emotional disorders. In fact, if you think about it, you can imagine that everyone has their own temperament, personality, habits of mind and the way of dealing with people, the same unpleasant thing some people do not care, some people will be too angry to stand, which is closely related to each person’s personality characteristics, and these temperament, personality, habits of mind, the way of dealing with how it is formed? Obviously, this is gradually developed from childhood under the influence of parents, family, school, friends and a variety of life things, large and small. These temperament, personality, thinking habits and ways of doing things can be good or bad, good ways and habits can help people quickly adapt to various environments, bad ways and habits make people easily frustrated or lead to more stress, these unhealthy habits and ways in varying degrees to create the foundation of depressed personality. These unhealthy habits create the basis for depression to varying degrees. In doctors, these underlying factors that make people easily depressed are often called “depression susceptibility qualities”, of which personality basis is the most important. People often hope to “get rid of the root of depression”, and the “root” here is basically what we call these “susceptibility qualities”. Therefore, if we want to cure depression completely, we have to find ways to reduce or change these “roots”. How can we reduce these bases? Can medications work? Empirically, drugs can mobilize people’s moods to change for the better, but they can’t change people’s temperament, personality, habits of mind and the way they deal with people, in other words, taking drugs can make our moods better, can fight depression, but can’t change the personality basis of depression, which is why there are many depressed friends who get better just by taking drugs but are prone to relapse when they encounter stress. To reduce the “susceptibility qualities” also have to be dismantled from the formation of these “susceptibility qualities”. As mentioned earlier, these habits and ways of thinking of people are gradually developed from childhood through various experiences and influences, then to change these qualities need to provide and create some new life experiences that are different from the previous ones so that people are constantly influenced and reshaped, psychotherapy is one of the feasible methods to have some such reshaping effect. Of course, it is difficult to change what has been formed, but “difficult to change” is not the same as “impossible to change”. The “nature” can still be “moved”. We can think back to ourselves, ten years ago you and now you are different? Were you the same five years ago as you are now? The answer is self-evidently yes, so what has changed us? Some friends say it’s fate, so what is fate? We choose to get up in the morning for a morning run instead of lazing in bed, we choose to spend the weekend with friends instead of staying alone in the study, we choose to face our friends who have a problem instead of avoiding them in silence, in fact, every moment of what we do “now” constitutes our past. In fact, what we do in the “now” in each moment constitutes our past, our fate is our “now” choice, fate may seem inscrutable, but in this moment now, we can choose and decide, it is these constant choices change our mood, change our experience and memory, our personality has changed as a result. So someone who consistently adjusts what he does to work in a certain fixed direction, after years he has a predictable and visible development and change in that direction, while many people ignore this and live their lives as they go, “following their feelings”, and after years they look back and find themselves becoming “all different”. So who has changed us? It’s us, it’s the choices we make and the actions we take every moment of every day. Most psychotherapies focus on this point, starting with the choices and actions of each moment in the present to shape a new life and a new experience, constantly working toward health, and thus achieving a “change” in “nature”. It is for this reason that the effects of psychotherapy are not immediately apparent, but often require long-term counseling before changes can be seen, or even after the therapy is completed. In fact, modern science has provided a wealth of evidence to support our above statement. Modern technology has made people realize that the human brain is actually a super giant network composed of tens of billions of nerve cells, our memory, thinking, feeling, emotions and other mental activities are based on the results of the operation of this network, what we think every day, every word we say, every memory is a reflection of the activities of some parts of this network, this network is not fixed, it will This network is not fixed, but changes dynamically with the stimulation of the environment, the various activities that occur continuously and the feedback stimulation of the environment brought by these activities, so the network links in some parts of the brain will be very strong and the links between nerve cells in some parts will be very weak, and the strength of these network links will change with the environment and time. People’s thinking and activities themselves have an impact on this super network of the brain, and active and conscious mental regulation can achieve the “reshaping” of the human brain. I don’t know if you have seen the blacksmith store iron scene, a red iron bar in the furnace under the hammer can be relatively easy to beat into a variety of shapes, once the iron bar cooled down hardened, very difficult to be bent, of course, if there is enough external force, the iron bar can still be bent, then want to change the shape of how to do? Reheat and keep pounding again to shape. Let’s think of psychotherapy as a reshaping (of course, psychotherapy here is a broad concept, not only refers to talk therapy with the help of psychologists, but also includes our own self-psychological regulation through the study and understanding of psychology). Psychotherapy allows us to refocus on the “qualities” of our personality, habits, attitudes, and ways of being, and gives us the opportunity to reconnect with these issues and try to change or build new beneficial ways of being, to pound and try new experiences with the help of our doctors and ourselves, and we begin to try new directional choices every day. We begin to live in a healthier and more mature way, and over time, as these choices and ways become our habits, and then our consistent attitudes, and finally a natural part of us, these “roots of disease” are truly “removed The “roots” of the disease are truly “removed”. Let’s look at an example that often occurs with depression. A depressed friend will often selectively focus negatively on what he encountered, he did not get a perfect score on 3 questions on the exam, he felt that he did not do well on these questions, that he was not good enough, that he would fail in college, that he would be useless for the rest of his life, so he was in a terrible mood. Obviously there is a problem with this friend’s way of thinking, he selectively ignored his other questions have been done correctly, only to see their own bad, this way naturally make his mood becomes unhappy, and this thinking is not only in his depression, in fact, in his ordinary life is such a way, so that he did not get sick before always spend a lot of time studying to require themselves to do the best, academic performance He did not feel confident and often felt stressed and unhappy because of this. In this case, the psychiatrist will guide him to recognize this way of thinking and try to establish a new way of thinking, so that he can think and evaluate himself more objectively. Of course, the reality of psychotherapy is often less than perfect due to many constraints. Because of time and economics, many psychotherapies can only be done a limited number of times and cannot be followed all year round. If you do the math, once a week for an hour, the time the doctor spends with the counselor during therapy is only 1/112th of the total time of the counselor’s waking life, and the rest of the time the counselor is still experiencing various life events and being influenced by other people and things. Therefore, if the counselor does not make any attempts and efforts during the time away from the therapist, the effect of psychotherapy will not be much, and the counselors who are effective in therapy are often those who still spend time trying to adjust themselves after leaving the therapist, because they have been “beaten” for a longer time, so those bad habits and ways are eliminated much faster. From this point of view, psychotherapy should not only be the job of the psychiatrist, but should be something that the depressed person needs to uphold and treat themselves over time. Psychotherapy in the clinic is like an open door, through which the depressed person is exposed to the sunlight and sees the world and himself more clearly, and feels the colors of the world more truly, not only from afar, but the depressed person had better take this door away and bring it into his life, walk into this door, walk into the sunlight, and let the depression melt into the colorful world of sunlight!