Depression and anxiety feel lousy. They make their victims feel robbed. Robbed of happiness, of the joy of living. These disorders are like nasty burglars who break into homes and steal, not only the jewelery, but the little girls' dolls and the little boys' transformers. As in a robbery, depression and anxiety leave their victims feeling empty.

My name is Cathy Goldstein Mullin. I am psychiatric therapist with fourteen years in the field. I have a private practice in Wenham, Massachusetts and am affiliated with a well-known teaching hospital. I work with kids, adolescents and adults, age twenty to eighty-five who have depression, anxiety, trauma, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Bipolar Disorder and more. Some of my clients cut. Some have attempted suicide. All of my clients have come in struggling. Many have gotten so much better that they now lead rich, fulfilled lives. Do their demons come back to haunt them? Yes, at times. But the demons don't possess the power they once had. And my clients now have the skills to kick these demons to the curb.

Taming, sometimes beating, these disorders is not magic. It is hard work, knowing what techniques work and practicing these techniques over and over.

The techniques that help with these disorders are cognitive behavioral ones. Cognitive techniques address how we think, showing us how self-defeating, nasty thoughts hijack and hold the brain hostage. Cognitive techniques then teach us how challenging these thoughts can make them disappear. Behavioral techniques look at those behaviors that we do over and over even though they make us unhappy. By helping us change these behaviors, behavioral techniques allow us to see that as we change what we do, we change how we see ourselves.

YOU, TOO, CAN BE HAPPY!

I am so convinced that cognitive behavioral therapies work that I wrote a book incorporating them. The book is called If I Could Just Snap Out of It, Don't You Think I Would, a fun-to-read, filled-with-stories, nine-month calendar-based plan for beating depression. The book will soon be published and will be available on this site. So there you have it. I want to teach you how to overcome depression and anxiety. But before I can do that, you need to know what these disorders look like, what their subtypes are and how they affect different people differently. So while some of this website will teach you about these disorders, the rest will be an attack plan. Get on your battle shoes. One note. This website is just being built. Hopefully, it will be finished by he end of the summer. Feel free to follow along as pages are added or be sure to come back by the end of the summer to the see the website in full working order.

Also, please consider joining the Facebook group Beating Depression and Anxiety -- a supportive community for people to share thoughts and bond with others regarding their struggles with depression and anxiety. To join the group, go to: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=142644382415881&ref=ts