How DOES psychoanalysis wake you up?
Psychoanalysis is mysterious. In the last post I talked about how wonderful it was to be listened to in such an accepting way in psychoanalysis. And it is. I remember how much I enjoyed being listened to so intently beginning with my first analysis. But I decided to explain in a little more detail what else is going on in that room, as your analyst is listening to you. Ideally, (and please keep in mind that psychoanalysts, like everybody else, are human, and prone to error so that this is never done perfectly) your analyst is listening with certain ideas in mind. They are looking for unconscious fears you might have, regarding autonomy, repressed aggression or even deep seated fears of abandonment. They are working to create a secure and safe attachment with you, and therefore listening to you and trying to sense how comfortable you are with them. They are helping you learn to feel more comfortable with, or in other words, regulate, your emotions, by quiet listening, or sometimes by teaching you ways to calm down through sensing, swallowing, breathing and tapping, depending on how integrative your analyst is. (I teach people regulation exercises during the session but that is just me).
What else?? They will encourage free association where you can speak in a spontaneous unfiltered way. They will help you pay attention to your defenses against feeling, including how you might intellectualize, avoid certain topics, talk incessantly to control the content of the session, or do other things to interrupt the way you feel and perceive reality in the present based on your past defenses. And they will ask you about these things, gently, affirm them, attune to them, and try to bring these behaviors to your attention. They will ask you about your relationship with them, in other words they will notice the transference. They will listen to how they feel around you, sometimes sharing this with you, otherwise called using the countertransference. They will ask about and analyze your dreams, because dreams are representations of unconscious desires and conflicts that can tell us alot about what we TRULY feel and think, deep down, that might feel too threatening to know in the present.
They might also do EMDR with you, which is rare for a psychoanalyst, but which makes sense, because EMDR and psychoanalysis are both interested in past memory networks and unconscious material. Whether through talking alone or talking with EMDR, they will be helping you process warded off affect, or feelings, repressed emotions, psychic wounds, that your anxiety has been helping you avoid. Anxiety is a great distraction. It keeps you stable and stuck, so it is useful but also unnecessary if you have the means to find a good analyst or some other way to get past it into your deeper more complex feelings. Finally, they will be helping you modify your internalized object relations, or in other words helping you heal your early life emotional wounds, often including helping you correct a belief you might have that you are unlovable. If you have trouble with relationships, especially intimate relationships, you might have internalized object relationships that are writing a script to keep you alone. That can be changed.
This is not an exhaustive list of what psychoanaysis can do, but it's a start. Personality is so complex, and in one therapy session so much more happens underneath that is not obvious on the surface. But I hope I have given you a sense of how your psychoanalyst is working behind the scenes to help you feel comfortable enough to let go of old patterns of perception and feeling that no longer serve you, and to help you create a new reality that includes more of the real you, more of your own authentic feelings, more of your good memories, not just the rotten ones, so you can feel free to create and to begin again to make a healthier happier more meaningful existence with less anxiety and more joy!
One more thing. People often think 1-psychoanalysis is too expensive, 2-psychoanalysis takes too long, 3-psychoanalysis keeps you stuck in the past forever.
Let's take this one issue at a time.
1-Psychoanalysis is very affordable, if you are willing to look into seeing an analyst in training at one of the many excellent psychoanalytic training institutes in the major cities. With virtual therapy now possible, all you need is someone licensed in the state where you live, and there are many analysts licensed all over the place who could see you virtually. If you 'google' psychoanalytic institutes, I promise you a psychoanalytic candidate in training who is receiving excellent supervision at their institute and is often already an experienced therapist in some other specialty will be jumping at the chance to work with you! I teach psychoanalystic candidates at MANHATTAN INSTITUTE FOR PSYCHOANALYSIS and they are the sharpest most caring people i know.
2-Next, psychoanalysis can last as long as you want it to. You can experience tremendous change in a short amount of time. You do not have to stay in it any longer than you want to. If your analyst tries to hold onto you and makes you feel trapped, leave them immediately and find another analyst who is willing to let you go and wish you well no matter how long or short your time with them was.
3-Finally, you do not have to live in the past. Psychoanalysis on the contrary is the specialty that truly tries to FREE you from your past rather than only treat present day symptoms. Some therapies teach you techniques only, without helping you really get to know yourself, so you can understand your underlying symptoms. But your underlying symptoms are where the gold is. They tell you who you are, what you want, and where you came from. So even knowing a tiny bit about that can enrich and expand you consciousness in ways you might never have imagined.
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