If you’re feeling depressed, you aren’t alone. Depression is one of the most common mental health challenges in the United States[*].

A lot of our patients come in struggling with depression. Many of them have been prescribed SSRIs or another pharmaceutical drug and are frustrated with the results. Antidepressants often come with terrible side effects, and while they can be great for some people, they don’t work particularly well for many others.

If you’re feeling depressed, we can help. At Brain Harmony, our licensed therapists take a different approach to treating depression. Our brain-focused technology and therapy techniques can help you rewire your brain for better mood and improved emotional control.

As a result, our patients are able to overcome their depression without pharmaceutical drugs or the side effects they bring.

Here’s a closer look at why we don’t believe in antidepressants, and how our brain-focused therapy works to relieve depression.

Many People Don’t Do Well with Antidepressants

First things first: antidepressants do work for some people. They truly can help relieve symptoms of depression and anxiety with few side effects.

However, the number of people who benefit from antidepressants is surprisingly low. Recent research shows that only about 20% of people who take antidepressants see a meaningful improvement in their depression as a result of the drug[*].

On top of that, antidepressants have notoriously bad side effects. Let’s take selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), which are by far the most commonly prescribed class of antidepressant. Popular SSRI prescriptions include Prozac, Celexa, Lexapro, Sarafem, and Paxil.

SSRIs can cause a variety of fairly common side effects, including[*]:

Weight gain
Fatigue
Apathy
Sexual dysfunction
Headaches
Digestive distress
Insomnia

It can also be difficult to get off antidepressants (especially SSRIs). Doing so safely takes weeks, and can come with mood swings, anxiety, intense depression, insomnia, sensory disturbances (the sensation of being shocked with electricity is common), and other withdrawal effects[*].

In a nutshell, antidepressants only actually work for about 20% of the people who take them, are massively overprescribed, have unpleasant side effects, and come with strong withdrawal symptoms. They’re a common method to address depression, but they’re not a particularly good method.

Note: if you’re currently on antidepressants and you want to get off them, do not try to do so on your own. Talk to your doctor and follow a safe, gradual tapering schedule. Stopping antidepressants suddenly can cause severe physical and psychological side effects.

Relieve Depression Long-Term with Our 5-Step Plan of Care

Over the years, we’ve helped thousands of patients with depression. We have a variety of tools and methods for improving depression, and after an initial consultation, we work with you to create a custom plan of care based on your unique situation and needs.

Our brain-focused therapy works by using exercises and technologies that rewire your brain, creating long-lasting improvement without medication. Our approach is to address problems from the ground up, starting with better neurological health and improved brain function. Once your brain is organized and working well, we move on to practical exercises that help change behavior.

Here’s how we approach depression.

Step 1: Vagal Regulation

Depression is overwhelming and stressful; it’s common to feel like your brain is negative, hostile, and actively working against you, which can be a lonely and scary experience.

Some of that comes down to your vagus nerve. Your vagus nerve controls your fight-or-flight response and influences your stress levels, anxiety, and the way you react to your environment. Depression can cause your vagus nerve to become dysregulated, and as a result, you may never quite feel relaxed or safe.

That’s why we start our plan of care with vagal regulation. We use a special 5-day therapeutic protocol to help bring your vagus nerve back to baseline, which relaxes you at a physiological level.

Once you’re truly relaxed and you feel safe, your brain will be more open to therapy and other forms of brain training. We find that when patients start with vagal regulation, they see significantly faster improvement over the course of their therapy.

Step 2: Neurological Organization

Depression is often related to neurological disorganization[*]. Different areas of your brain may have trouble communicating with one another, which can destabilize your mood and cause depressive thoughts and feelings.

Depression can also cause neurological disorganization, leading to side effects like trouble focusing, brain fog, fatigue, anxiety, and other challenges.

In Step 2, we guide you through practical exercises and use technology that helps to strengthen the most basic parts of your brain function. You learn how to literally rewire your brain, building stronger connections that improve basic brain organization.

This step helps you build a strong foundation of brain function. From there, you can move on to higher-level improvements, like regulating mood and anxiety.

Step 3: Reflex Work

Reflexes are some of the first things your brain learns after birth. During normal development, you integrate reflexes in a specific order -- but many people didn’t integrate their reflexes properly, which leads to disorganization and impaired brain communication. That can cause issues with more complex brain function, like mood regulation.

Many of our patients who come in with depression have issues with reflex integration as well. In Step 3, we work with you to integrate your reflexes and further strengthen your foundational brain function. This can have a surprisingly large impact on depression and anxiety.

Step 4: Therapeutic Activities

Once your core brain function is strong, we move on to therapeutic activities.

These are practical exercises that further strengthen any weak areas of your brain function. The activities are tailored to your brain and are designed to improve your specific causes and symptoms of depression.

Our therapists guide you through the activities and, through repetition, you gradually build better and better cognitive function.

Step 5: Self Care

As you reach the end of your protocol, we’ll help you develop a plan for self care. The plan includes strategies, tools, changes to your home environment, and other ways to help you continue to improve on your own. Our goal is to leave you confident in your progress and feeling secure about your new and improved self.

Depression is incredibly difficult to deal with on your own, but with our support and therapeutic help, you can overcome your depression long-term.

If you’re struggling with depression, we can help. Book a free consultation today to talk to one of our licensed therapists. We’ll listen to your needs and create up with a custom plan of care to help you get better.

How To Relieve Depression (Without Antidepressants)