The Transformative Power of In-Depth Treatment
Where else in your life do you have the opportunity, the safety, and the freedom to practice expressing yourself fully to help you think things through, to learn about yourself, and to improve your feelings about yourself and your relationships?
Psychoanalytic psychotherapy offers you a space to say whatever comes to your mind, arrive in whatever mood you are in, and be who you are without preparation. You don’t have to organize your thoughts or make them coherent, you just observe and identify your thoughts and feelings, including your wish to censor some of them, and you experiment with saying whatever comes to your mind, trusting that something of importance (you) is being communicated. You don’t have to necessarily connect the dots from one session to the next because what comes out, including what you “remember” or “forget,” and the manner in which you relay it is important in itself and will become part of the work.
This type of in-depth therapy provides a confidential, private space, where you will be listened to respectfully, closely, and attentively by someone trained to observe and tune in to multiple levels of communication, not just the obvious content, or what is in the patient’s front of mind, but what what is being expressed nonverbally, emotionally, and what stories and hidden meanings are being repeated and conveyed. The transformative power of working intensively, as closely and frequently as possible, is that the therapeutic relationship begins to resemble people’s relationships in the outside world. The relationship that develops with your analyst becomes an in vivo laboratory where you can explore how you interact with others and how others may feel in your presence. The aim is to create an empathic environment where you can gently discover what protective mechanisms you developed over the years, which ones helped you, and which ones may now be hurting you.
A patient might come in describing their week or recounting a conversation with a friend and, as they speak, I may notice something small but meaningful such as a self-deprecating comment they said under their breath, “this is silly,” or a laugh that quickly minimizes something painful. They might wave their hand dismissing a difficult experience or pause, become silent, just as they were about to say something important, then suddenly shift in topic, obscuring a shameful thought or feeling. These small observations reveal something about how a person moves through the world, how they feel about themselves and what they have come to expect from others. They may be doing all the “right” things at work to get ahead, or avoiding conflict at home to keep the peace, and yet still feel dissatisfied, lonely, or stuck. Avoiding confrontations or risks that would ultimately improve the quality of their lives made sense at some point. It may have felt safer to self-deprecate with a competitive parent and avoid conflict because it felt dangerous to speak up as this would be met with retaliation. They may have learned that minimizing feelings helped maintain a sense of peace and consistency in a family where emotions were overwhelming or unwelcome. However, what once may have helped you survive, even thrive, can later begin to limit you. Patients may or may not come in intending to, or even capable of , talking about the patterns that pervade their lives. Oftentimes, what they discover in psychoanalytic, insight-oriented work is information about themselves that remained outside of their awareness, but as they begin to notice and understand these “blind spots,” they develop new capacities for growth and internal resilience.
This level of trust and sustained exploration requires commitment because there is a rhythm and a continuity that develops in in-depth work and facilitates a collaborative relationship for meaningful change. As you begin to understand yourself, your past and how it shapes your present, your previously unseen patterns, your automatic protections, even the parts you may not want to change, you may discover new opportunities and ways to increase your confidence in, and compassion for, yourself. This kind of work is not unlike learning a language, training for a sport, practicing an instrument, or developing any new skill or healthy practice that will change the way you live. You would not expect meaningful transformation from doing those things once a week or for a short period of time. Change requires repetition, patience, practice, and showing up, even when it is hard to so. It also requires an understanding that change is not linear, that there will be moments when you want to give up, when you don’t feel like you are making progress, and some that will require repair.
The goal of psychoanalytic psychotherapy is to help you develop the capacity to reflect on yourself, to understand your own mind, so that you can use that knowledge to consider new ways of thinking and feeling about yourself and others in order to hopefully live a fuller and richer life. There is also something profoundly therapeutic about beginning to trust another person. For many people, that trust itself is new and, as you begin to put words to feelings and experiences that previously lived only as tension, dread, irritability, or shame, you develop better coping mechanisms. Just naming, articulating and refining your experiences and what they mean to you helps to regulate emotion and reduces shame.
Many people don’t realize that the things they consciously seek such as closeness, fulfillment, financial stability, and a sense of meaning, are sometimes being inadvertently undone by their usual ways of coping and what once protected them may now be interfering with what they hope to achieve. In-depth work helps illuminate this gently and respectfully so that you can express yourself with confidence and to give you more flexibility, more choice and a new way of looking at and being in the world.