This is self-work and I'm Dr Dr Margaret Rutherford. At self-work, we'll discuss psychological and emotional issues common in today's world and

what to do about them.

I'm Dr Margaret and self-work is a podcast dedicated to you taking just a few minutes

today for your self-work.

Hello and welcome to self-work. I'm Dr. Margaret Rutherford. I'm a clinical

psychologist practicing in Fayetteville, Arkansas for a little over 20 years now.

I thought today we'd take a break from the holiday pressures and talk a little bit about depression and grief at the holidays.

I have some personal experience with this back in 2007 both my parents died the week before Christmas.

So I remember pretty distinctly how I got through that

and got through the next year and the next year after that.

So I'll be sharing that with you, but we're going to talk

about the difference between grief and depression and I'm going to give you specific

strategies to handle grief and or depression in the next coming weeks.

In fact, you can use these suggestions at any time of the year.

Then in the last segment, I'm going to read an email to you from a woman who was dealing with a lot of shame and I answered

her giving her my best suggestions on how to deal with shame. So let's talk a little bit about the difference between grief and depression. People mix

these up a little bit. Grief obviously has a context. There's been some kind of loss that you're mourning.

It can become what's called complicated grief when it entrenches itself.

Depression, on the other hand, doesn't necessarily have a context. It can come on

without warning or just begin to slowly affect you. I like to tell people that

sometimes it's like the lights are going down very, very slowly and you don't realize how hard you're

squinting to see. That can be like what depression feels like. Grieve comes on acutely after this loss.

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