How Therapy Works

Some people move easily beyond a difficult childhood and just naturally make peace with it. Others will have to really explore what happened to them because they are haunted by the past.

Psychodynamic Therapy is a mixed bag. Sometimes you get a good therapist, and you get a lot out of it. Sometimes you get an inadequate therapist, and it is a waste of time. But I think nothing ventured—nothing gained—and if you are not getting all the answers from your support group, then giving psychodynamic therapy a try may do the trick. The individual attention and intuition of your therapist might untangle a lot of mysteries. And change always begins with the truth.

Of course, therapy can be a slow process, especially if you just sit there and talk. What makes therapy work is acting upon the insights you get from a good session. Also, because some of what you need to know has seeped down into your unconscious, and you do not remember it, you need to explore your dreams and watch out for Freudian Slips (slips of the tongue).

Furthermore, your therapist is not going to wave a magic wand and change you. You have to do all of the work. I told my therapist one day that I was unhappy with the progress we were making. “What do you mean we?” he said. “Well,” I mumbled, “isn’t this a team effort?” “No,” he said, “You are the one that has to do the work. I hold the flashlight; you chop the wood.”

I was shocked by this statement, but it was the beginning of a change in my attitude about therapy. My therapist was not going to fix me. I had to start doing things differently if I wanted to change. The following story explins how therapy helped me change.

This is how therapy is supposed to work. You uncover things. You process your feelings. Your feelings change. You treat people differently. Your relationships change. You change. Then you repeat the process all over again. As time goes by most of your painful emotions fade away for long periods of time and are less intense.