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Most people readily seek the professional assistance of a lawyer or physician when they encounter legal or medical difficulties. Unfortunately, many of these same people don?t even consider getting professional help when experiencing psychological difficulties or emotional pain that adversely affects their abilities to fulfill day-to-day responsibilities.
Regardless of whether you?ve attended counseling or therapy in the past, you?re probably familiar with all the jokes? People telling you that yoga, Prozac, moving to the country, just about anything you can think of is better than paying to lie on a psychotherapist?s couch and talking with them about your problems on a weekly basis.
In the last quarter century, in-depth psychotherapy and psychoanalysis in particular have been declared dead many times over. Long-term psychodynamic, psychoanalytic, and other depth psychotherapies, once dominant in the mental health profession, may seem left behind by our culture?s quest for the ?quick-fix? solutions offered by drugs and brief forms of talk therapy.
Yet thousands upon thousands of Americans continue to seek out psychoanalysis and other forms of long-term depth therapy.
Many have tried other forms of talk therapy and have been dissatisfied with the results. Some have taken, or continue to take, antidepressants or other prescription medications and have found that while helpful, the medications have not helped them avoid destructive behavior patterns or form more intimate, rewarding interpersonal relationships.
In-depth psychotherapy can not only provide a much needed break from the hectic world we live in, but also help you better understand yourself and navigate life more gracefully with more conscious choice.
What We Don?t Know Can Hurt Us ? And Those We Love!
Much of the way we relate to life is determined in our early years, long before speech or memory is highly developed. Our interpretations, emotions, and behaviors evolve in the context of our relationships with early caregivers, such as our parents or parental substitutes.
If those adults are mentally and emotionally healthy, they model thought processes and behaviors that bring us mental and emotional health as we grow older.
However, if our role models carried perceptions and belief systems that resulted in their unhappiness, then this is unfortunately what we get used to.
It is important to recognize that our interpretations of the world and the thought processes and perceptions they engender were made when we were children. As adults, these interpretations are part of our unconscious beliefs about how the world works. By definition, we?re not aware of them.
These early experiences can exert a great unconscious influence on us, creating unfulfilling patterns of thought, behavior, and relationships that make change difficult unless we seek professional help.
How In-Depth Psychotherapy Can Help You
When we experience something difficult or painful in our lives, often our first response is to try to push the painful feelings and memories as far away as possible. We hope that somehow by burying those feelings or memories they will go away.
Unfortunately, pushing away difficult feelings and painful memories only provides temporary and fleeting solace. Until the underlying issues have been dealt with, painful emotions will continue to manifest as anxiety attacks, depression, destructive behaviors, or other problems that indicate covering up pain as opposed to dealing with it.
But making something conscious that is unconscious is not an easy task, especially on one?s own. And acknowledging destructive thought processes and behaviors and cycles of bad choices is difficult and takes both time and courage.
In-depth psychotherapy can not only help you recognize and understand your unconscious interpretations and beliefs about the world, but also to challenge and change the beliefs that are no longer serving your best interests and meeting your needs.
During therapy sessions, your psychotherapist will pay careful attention to your thought processes, belief systems, and common themes that arise in your feelings and behaviors, as well as how these patterns and themes may be expressed in relation to therapy itself.
An important aspect of healing and creating positive, long-lasting change is that you become increasingly aware of these patterns and explore the original experiences in your life when these ways of functioning began to develop. Through this awareness and understanding your therapist and you can work together to change the patterns that are keeping you from achieving your goals.
Psychodynamic psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, and other in-depth forms of treatment are not generally short-term techniques. It takes time to establish the deep trust and intimacy with your therapist that are necessary in order for you to open up and face the most difficult and painful parts of yourself with the honesty and courage required to help you create change lasting change.
While this in-depth approach to psychotherapy may take longer than cognitive, behavioral, and other brief forms of therapy, recent research has shown that in-depth psychotherapy is just as effective as brief therapy in the short-term and even more effective over the long-term as the benefits of in-depth treatment not only endure but increase with time.
The Best Investment You Can Make Is You
As with all types of investing, psychotherapy takes patience, practice, and perseverance. And the sooner you get started, the more time you?ll have to reap the benefits and rewards of your investment.
That having been said, like investing in general, psychotherapy is not always easy, the work doesn?t always follow a linear progression, and no one can predetermine the outcomes.
At its best, in-depth psychotherapy offers substantial personal growth and change that is far deeper than what may be achieved through prescription medications or in the 6 to 20 sessions of therapy covered by many insurance plans? Change affecting the way you think and feel about things and the way you interact with the world.
This is the kind of change that can continue to unfold even after your last psychotherapy session has ended ? the type of progress that occurs when you face new problems and find you?re able to deal with them in a more effective and satisfying way.
Like all investments, in-depth psychotherapy requires a commitment of both time and money. However, countless individuals have found the compounding returns of in-depth psychotherapy to be far greater and longer-lasting than those of any other investment they?ve made.
Money may not buy happiness, but in-depth psychotherapy can provide you the insight and self-awareness you need to achieve long-lasting growth and a true improvement in your quality of life.
Tom Eggert is a licensed family therapist in Seattle, WA, where he specializes in providing couples therapy.
Source: http://newhealthandfitness.org/2012/02/11/why-you-should-consider-in-depth-psychotherapy/
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