Tuula Rasen

8 myths about psychoanalytic therapy* (If they taught you any this in your training, your instructors didn’t know what they were talking about. Sorry.) ❌Therapist is largely silent ❌Therapist is a stone-faced blank screen ❌Therapist doesn’t express opinions/judgments about what patient says ❌Therapist never discloses their own emotional reactions ❌Therapy is about repressed memories ❌The main focus is sex and aggression ❌Breakthroughs happen in a dramatic emotional catharsis ❌Therapies go on endlessly Yes, these are myths. Every one of them. I’m sorry if you believed whoever told you any of these things. I’m especially sorry if they were people you looked up to. *adapted from Glen Gabbard, Long-Term Psychodynamic Psychotherapy

Depth therapy doesn’t work because the psychotherapist is always available to the patient, it works because we are not. It’s in the waiting, the frustration, the rupture and repair, that the internal world begins to shift.

“Loneliness is not just the absence of people. It is the absence of purpose, the absence of meaning. When you find yourself in a world where everything seems alien and distant, where every connection is superficial, and every attempt at understanding is met with indifference, you realize that true loneliness is not being alone, but feeling alone in a world that no longer makes sense.” —Haruki Murakami

The goal of psychotherapy is to insert spaces for awareness where they have not previously existed—and so create opportunities to know ourselves more fully, connect with others more deeply, and live life more congruently Real psychotherapy is about slowing down—so we can begin to see and understand the patterns that otherwise happen quickly, automatically, without awareness or reflection Never-ending claims about new ways of “optimizing” or maximizing efficiency betray a misunderstanding of psychotherapy at the most fundamental level. We find ourselves in difficulties because we *cannot* slow down to notice and reflect 👉The rush to optimize every facet of life is the disease not the cure👈 In the spaces, in the pauses we don’t otherwise allow to occur, lie choices we didn’t previously recognize as choices. In those unrecognized spaces lies freedom—freedom from repeating the same painful, self-defeating patterns, freedom to do choose differently, freedom to become better versions of ourselves This does not and cannot happen on a production schedule Slower is faster The relevant question is not, how efficient (quick & cheap) can we make it The relevant questions are How self-aware do we wish to be? How whole do we wish to become?