What is psychodynamic therapy?

Psychodynamic therapy allows us to honor the complexity and be deeply curious about your human experience. The full range of your thoughts and feelings are welcomed with openness and interest. Our goal is to holistically address the root causes of your suffering so that you experience deep and lasting transformation that continues even after the therapy is over. Psychodynamic therapy acknowledges the role of the unconscious in our lives and provides a way for us to understand our minds.

There are several defining features of psychodynamic therapy. Our work will focus on your feelings and emotional life. We will support you in putting words to feelings that may be troubling, threatening, or unacknowledged. We will be curious about ways you avoid things that are threatening or frightening with the goal to reclaim parts of yourself and your experience. We will identify recurring themes and ways you willingly or unwillingly recreate specific repetitive patterns in your life. We will explore past experiences as they bring greater understanding to the present. The therapeutic relationship we build together is crucial to our work and this includes thoughts or feelings you may have about your therapist. Your fantasy life– dreams, daydreams, wishes, passions– is also essential for us to understand. 

Change occurs when greater insight into your unconscious thoughts and feelings come together with the present-moment, embodied, and relational experience of the therapy process. The efficacy of psychodynamic psychotherapy has been well documented, and I’m happy to provide recent literature on its effectiveness.