Depression Therapy in Boulder

Depression does not always announce itself. Sometimes it is a grey filter over everything, a sense that the color drained out and you cannot remember when. Sometimes it is irritability, or exhaustion that sleep does not fix, or going through the motions of a life that looks fine from the outside. Sometimes it arrives after a loss, a move, a diagnosis, a breakup, and just never leaves. And sometimes it comes at the end of years of holding everything together, which is what people in Boulder tend to call burnout.

I do not think of depression as a defect to be corrected. I think of it as a message, often an old one, and often one the person has been ignoring for good reasons. That does not make it less painful. It does mean the way through is not to fight yourself harder. Most people have already tried that.

How the work goes

The foundation is mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, which was developed specifically for depression and for keeping it from coming back. It trains you to notice the early pull of a low mood, the withdrawing, the rumination, the story that says this is just who you are, and to meet that pull with something other than surrender. The cognitive piece takes apart the beliefs depression runs on. The mindfulness piece gives you somewhere to stand while you do it.

Alongside that, we go deeper, because depression usually has something to say. That is the Gestalt and depth psychology in my training. Grief that never had room. Anger that turned inward because outward was not safe. A life built to meet someone else's expectations. A part of you that went quiet a long time ago and is tired of being quiet. Bringing those into the room, without rushing them, is often where energy starts to return.

Burnout, numbness, and the functional kind

A lot of what I see is not the depression of the textbooks. It is the flat, capable, joyless version that keeps showing up to work. It is the numbness that people describe as not feeling much of anything. It is burnout in people who care deeply and gave until there was nothing left. All of these respond to the same combination, honest attention to what is actually happening, practical tools for the daily slide, and a real reckoning with what the exhaustion is about.

Who this is for

Adults who have noticed the light going out and want it back. People whose low mood is tangled with anxiety, which is more common than not. Men who were never taught a vocabulary for this and are tired of white-knuckling it. Adults with ADHD, for whom years of feeling like they were failing at ordinary life took a toll. People in recovery who find that the sadness was there underneath the drinking. And anyone who feels that suffering less would be nice, but aliveness is what they actually miss.

A note on medication, and on safety

I am a licensed professional counselor, not a prescriber. Some of my clients combine this work with medication from a physician or psychiatrist, and I am glad to coordinate with them. Many do the work without it. If you are in immediate danger, please call or text 988 or go to the nearest emergency room. Colorado Crisis Services is available around the clock at 1-844-493-8255. For everything short of that, this is the place.

Boulder, and anywhere in Colorado

I see clients in person at my office on Spruce Street in downtown Boulder, and by secure video across the state. Sessions run 50 to 60 minutes on an income-based sliding scale, and the first conversation is a free 30 minutes to see whether we are a fit. You can read more about working together online.

Common questions

Written by Dylan Leigh, MA, LPC, a licensed professional counselor in Boulder, Colorado. Updated September 2026.