For many people, psychodynamic therapy begins something like this:
“I invite you to speak as freely as you can about everything that is on your mind…”
It can take some time for the real meaning of this opener to sink in. It can be a bit jarring. You might wonder... Are they joking? It seems unnatural and embarrassing to share one's thoughts so openly. Surely they will find my thoughts irrelevant and silly. The more nonsense I share, the more foolish they’ll discover that I am!
“Honestly, why can’t they just tell me what to do?”
That is a fair question. You have sought this person’s help, they are qualified to help, surely they can provide advice and direction. But a psychodynamic therapist might respond to such a question with something (frustratingly) like:
“How could I possibly know what you should do?”
Because how could they possibly? There is an unfolding, emergent, moment by moment experience that constitutes being you. An experience that is dynamic, moving and changing in response to different people, at different times and in different ways, for reasons unique to you. Thoughts certainly form a part of the experience of being you, and while it can be useful to examine thoughts, there remains a vast and complex side of our unfolding experience that is emotional, and implicit. Known, but not so easily ‘thought.’ So, a therapist couldn’t know!
“I invite you to speak as freely as you can about everything that is on your mind…”
We can think about this invitation again. It is actually the opening gambit of something quite deliberate: A held, consistent, reliable space (a “frame”) within which one can observe the flow of one’s thinking and feeling. To find patterns. To understand.
This means, it is not merely the content of our thinking that is of interest, but the process, the emotional experience. The aim is to observe and understand being, in action.
The psychodynamic therapist works to be present, but not intrusive. They do not direct or instruct, nor do they scold. They avoid ‘taking sides’. They work to maintain a constancy that allows thought, emotion, sensation, fantasy, dreams, fears… anything that emerges, to be explored and understood.
Just as importantly, there is a space to think about what doesn’t, or cannot emerge, and why that might be so. What is it that I work so diligently to avoid thinking? Avoid feeling? Why might I have anticipated that this person was going to find me foolish?
Sometimes this kind of therapy is tough. It can be painful and confronting. It can also be enlightening and empowering. It is difficult to know how long it will take or even if it will be successful. In my own therapy experiences, it was sudden moments of awareness that really shook me… It is some of my own reactions, to myself, to others… that are perpetuating the very anxieties I am struggling with! Sobering, sure, but it’s better to know, than to keep repeating the same patterns.
“I invite you to speak as freely as you can about everything that is on your mind…”
Where will this invitation take you?
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