What is Psychodynamic Psychotherapy?
Psychodynamic Psychotherapy addresses the psychological roots of the client’s emotional suffering to reduce symptoms and improve their quality of life. We often have unconscious beliefs and feelings that contribute to our current functioning. In this approach, the therapist may help uncover the client’s emotions, thoughts, and recurring patterns stemming from early life experiences. These early adaptations or coping mechanisms often become behaviour patterns, habits, or reactions that get in the way of optimal functioning in present-day life. They can affect our relationships with others and ourselves. By identifying and understanding these responses, we bring them to awareness and are then able to change our experiences.
When is Psychodynamic Therapy Used?
This type of therapy can be effective for a variety of mental health symptoms, such as:- Depression
- Anxiety
- Panic attacks
- Trauma and PTSD
- Personality disorders
- Stress-related physical ailments
- Physical symptoms that lack a reason
- Persistent feelings of isolation/ loneliness
- Prolonged sadness
Psychodynamic Therapy at Bloor West Therapy
At Bloor West Therapy, we often integrate psychodynamic therapy with other approaches, as best suited for the client. The benefits of psychodynamic therapy can include:- Understanding and changing self-defeating patterns
- Improving relationships with others and yourself
- Increasing confidence and self-compassion
- Better understanding and tolerating of difficult emotions
Frequently Asked Questions
How can Psychodynamic Psychotherapy help depression?
Although there can be a multitude of contributors to depression, in many people it arises due to unresolved past experiences. A psychodynamic approach helps you determine and understand past experiences and how they continue to impact mood and behaviour. Through this process, you develop better awareness, anchoring your current responses to past experiences, and forge a better way forward.
How does Psychodynamic Psychotherapy help anxiety?
It can help anchor and understand where your anxiety and fears are coming from, which allows you to put them in perspective and break free from them. Often anxiety and fear are related to protection, which may have been needed and served a function in the past but are no longer helpful. Gaining insight into why you developed certain fears can be a catalyst for moving past your anxieties.
How long does Psychodynamic Psychotherapy take to work?
As mentioned above, at Bloor West Therapy we usually incorporate psychodynamic therapy with other approaches, based on the individual needs of the client. Usually, the frequency of sessions when psychodynamic therapy is incorporated is once a week. The length of treatment varies a great deal depending on the client. There is no set time frame, although long-standing and deeper patterns can take longer to shift, it depends on several variables and sometimes brief psychodynamic therapy is sufficient.
"Knowledge is power. At Bloor West Therapy, we do a lot of educating about thoughts and feelings, and the connection between mind and body, to help understand how to manage it all. You can take the knowledge with you and use it for the rest of your life."
Bloor West Therapy
