Psychotherapy
Psychodynamic psychotherapy is work undertaken together to understand what recurs, stirs feelings or constrains your life. Through our conversations, connections may become visible, established patterns can begin to shift, and greater freedom to act can emerge.
The human condition
We do not always have a clear sense of why we become inhibited or constrained. Despite attempts to act differently, the same situations can recur, and at times we act in ways that do not correspond with who we understand ourselves to be or want to be. This may concern how close we dare to come to others, the choices we make, or how much freedom we allow ourselves.
Behind these difficulties there is sometimes a learned distance from our own feelings, needs and wishes. This may take the form of worry or anxiety, low mood, stress, sleep difficulties, recurring difficulties in relationships, or emotional disconnection. We may also find it difficult to know what we feel or want, to manage without reassurance from others, or to remain when someone comes close. The visible symptom does not always tell the whole story.
Keeping feelings and needs at a distance may once have been necessary in order to cope, preserve important relationships, or be who we needed to be. Such ways of protecting ourselves can remain long after circumstances have changed and can, over time, themselves become limiting.
It is within this human condition that psychotherapy begins.
How psychotherapy works
Psychodynamic psychotherapy does not follow a predetermined manual. The work is given direction by what brings you to therapy, while its form remains open to the unexpected. You do not need to arrive with a prepared subject or tell your story in the right order. What feels pressing, keeps returning, or becomes difficult to speak about can be a beginning.
This openness does not mean that I am passive. I listen for connections between what you tell me, the feelings that arise, and how you try to manage them. I may ask questions, pause at shifts or contradictions, and draw attention to moments when the conversation moves away from something significant. Reasoning your way out of a feeling, adapting to expectations, or avoiding a subject are not regarded as faults, but as something to become curious about: What does this protect, and what does it simultaneously make harder to reach?
Therapy is not a systematic review of the past. Your history becomes significant when it helps us understand why something in the present takes the form it does. Most of the work concerns what is current in your life: feelings, thoughts, choices and relationships.
What happens between us can also form part of the work. A question, a silence, or something I say can make a recurring pattern visible as it is happening. When this is explored within a real relationship, understanding need not remain at the level of intellectual insight, but can become grounded in an emotional experience that we explore together.
The purpose is not only to understand why a pattern exists, but gradually to recognise it as it arises and gain greater freedom to act differently.
The therapeutic stance
Nothing human is alien to me.
What you tell me should not be met with moralising, correction, or a rush to make your experience less uncomfortable. Reassurance or optimism offered too soon can create distance. The work therefore asks us to remain together with what is difficult, without smoothing it over or moving on too quickly.
The relationship is equal in human terms but professionally asymmetrical. You should not have to carry me or take care of my reactions; it is my responsibility to safeguard the therapeutic frame and keep the attention directed towards you. Symptoms, defences and recurring patterns are not understood merely as faults, but also as attempts to protect something important. What limits you today may once have been the best available way of preserving a sense of balance.
Safety without exploration can easily lead to stagnation. Exploration without safety can easily lead to disorientation. Development requires both. Once trust has become strong enough to carry the work, established patterns can be loosened and what has been kept at a distance can become possible to feel, think about and bear. In time, what has been bound up can also be released and put to use: anger for setting boundaries, grief for mourning, longing for direction and fear for discernment. When the present can be encountered in a new way, the future need not simply repeat the past.