Depression Counselling Sunshine Coast
“Sometimes the heaviest silence is the one we wear inside. This "silence" refers to the internal weight of unspoken grief, unexpressed anger, and stress that we internalize instead of processing and releasing.”
“Sometimes the hardest part is feeling alone inside the sadness — it’s okay to give yourself grace.”
Depression can make the world feel distant, energy low, and motivation hard to find. Beyond Blue notes that depression “affects how you feel about yourself” and can make daily life more difficult. You don’t need to navigate this alone.
I offer gentle, trauma-informed depression counselling in Noosa, across the Sunshine Coast, and online. Together, we create a safe space to explore your feelings, honour your experience, and gently rebuild connection and ease, by processing the unexpressed pain and stress that accumulates in the body, contributing to illness and psychological suffering safely.
Understanding Depression
Depression is not a personal failing. It can show itself in many ways: deep fatigue, a flat emotional landscape, a growing sense of detachment or a quiet withdrawal from life. Everyone experiences depression differently.
Some common ways it may feel:
Disconnected or emotionally distant
Low energy or motivation
Restless or unsteady sleep
Difficulty concentrating
A dull or persistent sadness
In therapy, we don’t push for transformation. Instead, we create a kind, accepting space for whatever is here — softness, heaviness, numbness. Drawing from teachings by Pema Chödrön and Tara Brach, we’ll explore how to meet your experience with gentle awareness and kindness, rather than resistance.
Depression can feel heavy, persistent, or distant. While everyone experiences low moods at times, for some these feelings last weeks, months, or even longer, sometimes without an obvious cause. Beyond Blue notes that depression is more than just a low mood — it is a serious condition that can affect both mind and body.
Counselling offers a gentle, safe space to simply be with what you’re feeling, without pressure or expectation. It helps you notice and understand your emotions, explore patterns in thought and behaviour, and begin to cultivate small, sustainable ways of caring for yourself. Even small moments of ease — noticing a breath, a thought, or a gentle shift in perspective — are meaningful steps.
As Dr Julie Smith reminds us, painful emotions are not meant to be avoided — they can offer important information about what’s happening inside us. Therapy helps create a gentle space to notice these feelings without judgement, so they can be understood rather than suppressed.
You can also take the K10 Anxiety and Depression Test
How Therapy Can Help
Depression
It can be so difficult ot find motivation or any sense of hope when struggling with depression, yet therapy can become a place to go just even for some relief, and through connection, processing Often the heaviest burdens are those we carry silently within — unspoken grief, unmet needs, or past experiences that haven’t been fully expressed. In depression, this internal weight can affect both body and mind. Therapy offers a safe, compassionate space to gently bring these silences into awareness, explore and release them at your own pace, and learn to treat yourself with kindness rather than continuing to suppress your needs.
Healing isn’t about forcing change. It’s about offering your system patience, warmth, and small, manageable steps:
Understanding Depression
Depression isn’t a weakness. It can appear as emotional numbness, fatigue, loss of interest, or a sense of detachment. Beyond Blue reminds us that “everyone experiences depression differently.”
Common signs include:
Feeling disconnected or flat
Low motivation or energy
Changes in sleep or appetite
Difficulty concentrating
Overwhelm or hopelessness
Therapy provides a compassionate space to be seen and understood without pressure. Pema Chödrön and Tara Brach teach that meeting ourselves with kindness, rather than self-criticism, is the first step toward gentle healing.
How Therapy Can Help
Basic
Healing isn’t about forcing change. It’s about offering your system patience, warmth, and small, manageable steps:
Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT): Cultivates self-kindness and inner warmth.
Intermediate
Somatic & Polyvagal Work: Helps the body find safety and connection again. Helping you understand and care for yourself, ifs connection, how do I feel what do I need? This is compassion focused th
She emphasizes that mental health is no different from physical health:
“If you take anyone and you start messing around with their core defences — things such as sleep, routine, social connection, nutrition — they become vulnerable.” The Guardian
On how we deal with painful emotions:
“When we feel painful emotion, the most natural human response is to pull away… we block out discomfort, avoid it, or push it away rather than feeling what it's about.” Daily Express+2The Guardian+2
She also talks about what these emotions can tell us:
“Notice the feeling … don’t judge yourself for having it … see it as potential information.”
On self‑talk and self‑criticism:
“A lot of us hold on to self‑criticism because we think it’s the source of our drive. But you can achieve from a place of contentment … you can be enough and also recognise you could be more.” Daily Express
Advanced
Rebuilding Motivation: Small, gentle steps to notice what brings even a little ease or comfort.
As Pema Chödrön reminds us, “You are the sky. Everything else — it’s just the weather.” Therapy helps us sit with the storm of depression while recognising it doesn’t define us. It creates a space to feel seen and supported, to notice that we’re not alone in our experience. Connection in therapy — even quietly being witnessed — can remind us that everyone goes through seasons of heaviness, and that seeking help is a natural, human step toward care and belonging. We all need support. Asking for help is the bravest thing, anyone can do.
If you’d like, you can also take the K10 Anxiety and Depression TestAdd your pricing strategy. Be sure to include important details like value, length of service, and why it’s unique. Depression can feel heavy, persistent, or distant. While everyone experiences low moods at times, for some these feelings last weeks, months, or even longer, sometimes without an obvious cause. Beyond Blue notes that depression is more than just a low mood — it is a serious condition that can affect both mind and body.
Counselling offers a gentle, safe space to simply be with what you’re feeling, without pressure or expectation. It helps you notice and understand your emotions, explore patterns in thought and behaviour, and begin to cultivate small, sustainable ways of caring for yourself. Even small moments of ease — noticing a breath, a thought, or a gentle shift in perspective — are meaningful steps.
“As Dr Julie Smith reminds us, painful emotions are not meant to be avoided — they can offer important information about what’s going on inside us. Therapy helps create a gentle space to notice feelings without judgement, so they can be understood rather than suppressed.”