Depression Therapy
When everything still gets done, and none of it reaches you.
Depression does not always look like staying in bed. Often it looks like showing up, answering the messages, and feeling almost nothing while doing it.
Therapy is a place to say that out loud without managing anyone else's reaction to it.
Meet your therapist
Hi, I'm Robert.
I work with people who are still functioning — going to work, showing up for others — and feel flat underneath it.
I'm Robert Russell, AMFT — an Associate Marriage and Family Therapist in Murfreesboro and the founder of Kind Therapy. My training is relational: distress usually lives in the patterns between people, not inside one person who is broken.
Sessions are conversations, paced by you. No script to follow, no version of yourself to perform. We start with what is actually happening, and go from there.
Robert Russell, AMFT — pre-licensed Marriage & Family Therapist, practicing under the supervision of Dr. Sara Hopkins, LMFT (TN license #928).
In person in Murfreesboro and online across Tennessee · Endorsed by 13 fellow clinicians on Psychology Today
01 — Recognition
What people often describe
People rarely arrive saying the word depression. They arrive describing a life that has gone quiet.
- Flatness — not sadness exactly, more an absence of interest or color.
- Exhaustion that sleep does not fix, and sleep that is either too much or too little.
- A harsh internal voice that treats rest as laziness.
- Withdrawal from people, then loneliness, then more withdrawal.
- Difficulty starting things that used to be automatic.
- A sense that this is simply who you are now.
It is a starting point for conversation, not a diagnosis.
02 — Perspective
Not a character problem
Depression is frequently read as a failure of will, which makes the self-criticism worse and the isolation deeper. It is more usefully understood as a state a person has arrived at — through loss, prolonged strain, unmet need, or years of carrying things alone.
Understanding how you arrived somewhere tends to open more doors than deciding you should not be there.
03 — What it costs
Where it shows up
The cost usually lands first on the parts of life that ask for presence.
- Relationships: less initiating, less warmth, more distance that partners read as rejection.
- Parenting: being physically present while somewhere else.
- Work: still delivering, at a much higher internal price.
- Yourself: a shrinking list of things that feel worth doing.
04 — The work
What therapy actually looks like
Sessions move at the pace you have available, not the pace of a program.
- Name what has actually been carried, including losses that were never treated as losses.
- Soften the internal criticism enough that small movement becomes possible.
- Rebuild connection and activity gradually rather than through a push.
- Look at the relationships and demands the low mood is responding to.
05 — Why Robert
Who you would be working with
Robert Russell is an Associate Marriage & Family Therapist (AMFT) in Murfreesboro, pre-licensed and practicing under the supervision of Dr. Sara Hopkins, LMFT (TN license #928). He completed graduate training in marriage and family therapy at Trevecca Nazarene University after more than fifteen years in pastoral counseling and helping work.
His training is relational. Distress is usually understood as living in the patterns between people rather than inside one person who is broken. Sessions are conversations — paced by you, without a script you are expected to follow.
06 — Approach
How the work is done
The work draws on a few frameworks, matched to what you want out of it rather than applied by formula.
Attachment-based therapy
Looks at what closeness, dependence and safety have meant for you, and how those early lessons still shape the present.
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)
Maps the cycle between you and the people closest to you so the conflict stops being about who is right.
Parts-informed work
Separates the protective parts — the critic, the fixer, the one who goes quiet — from the person underneath them.
Practical relational understanding
Language and responses you can actually use in the moment, not only insight about why something happens.
07 — Logistics
Fees, length and location
- $150 per 50-minute session
- In person in Murfreesboro at River Tree Center, 212 Heritage Park Drive
- Online across Tennessee
- Free 15-minute consultation before you commit to anything
08 — Common questions
Questions people ask first
- What if I am functioning normally?
- Many people who come in are. Functioning and feeling well are different things, and the gap between them is worth talking about.
- Do I need medication?
- That is a conversation with a physician or psychiatric provider. Some people combine medication with therapy; some do not. Both are legitimate paths.
- What if I cannot explain why I feel this way?
- That is common and not a barrier. Part of the work is finding language for something that has not had any.
- Can my partner come?
- Sometimes that helps, especially when the distance at home has become part of the picture. It can be discussed once we have a sense of what you want.
- What if I am having thoughts of harming myself?
- Please call or text 988 or dial 911. That is an emergency line, and it is the right first step. Ongoing therapy can follow once you are safe.
09 — Read more
Related Kind Therapy guides
These guides go deeper into the experiences above.
- DepressionWhat depression does to energy, interest and self-perception.
- Grief and LossLoss that has not been named often looks like low mood.
- Shame and Self-EsteemThe critical voice that keeps low mood in place.
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10 — Next step
Start with a short conversation
A free 15-minute call is a chance to describe what is going on and ask whether therapy seems worth trying. No commitment, no intake paperwork, no pressure.
Kind Therapy · Murfreesboro, Tennessee and online across Tennessee. If you are experiencing a mental health emergency, call or text 988, or dial 911.