More than Managing Symptoms
People typically come to therapy because something in their lives has become difficult to manage. They may be feeling anxious or depressed, struggling in a relationship, experiencing a loss, or finding themselves caught in patterns that seem to repeat despite their best efforts to change them.
There are many different forms of therapy, and each offers a different way of understanding and responding to emotional distress. Some approaches focus primarily on the difficulties someone is experiencing in the present, offering advice and practical strategies to help manage particular symptoms or change patterns of thinking and behaviour.
Looking beneath the symptoms
Psychodynamic therapy takes a somewhat different approach. While relief from distress is of course important, psychodynamic work allows us to be curious about what might lie beneath the symptoms.
The way we relate to ourselves and to other people is shaped by many things, including our earliest relationships and experiences. Over time, we develop ways of managing difficult feelings, protecting ourselves from pain, disappointment or hurt, and making sense of the people around us. These ways of coping may once have been necessary or helpful, but they can sometimes become patterns that significantly limit us later in life.
We may, for example, repeatedly find ourselves in relationships in which we feel overlooked, become intensely anxious when someone seems distant, struggle to express anger, or feel responsible for other people's happiness without fully understanding why.
Psychodynamic therapy offers a place to become curious about these patterns, with the hope that understanding what lies beneath the symptoms may open up the possibility of more enduring change.
The relationship in the room
An important part of this work is the relationship between therapist and patient. The ways we relate to others outside therapy can sometimes emerge within the therapeutic relationship too. Feelings of wanting to please, the fear of criticism, an expectation of rejection, withdrawing, becoming angry or finding it difficult to depend on another person can all become meaningful parts of the work.
This doesn’t mean we spend our time endlessly searching the past for explanations but it does involve thinking about how the past may still be alive in the present in ways we are not always aware of.
Understanding ourselves more deeply
Psychodynamic therapy is therefore less about being given advice or direction, and more about developing a fuller understanding of yourself. It is a collaborative process, in which therapist and patient gradually begin to notice connections that may previously have been difficult to see.
Sometimes the question that brings someone to therapy is: How can I feel better?
Psychodynamic therapy makes room for another question too: Why might I be feeling this - and what might it be telling me?
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I offer psychodynamic psychotherapy to adults from my practices in Cobham, Surrey and London Victoria. If you are considering therapy and would like to explore whether working together might be helpful, you are welcome to get in touch.