Philosophy

In their own unique way, both Freud and Buddha found that pain is inevitable but our suffering – being the subjective element – can be ended.

Our suffering has to do with our conditioned ways of relating to the world, ourselves, and others, which is amenable to change when approached in an atmosphere of gentle patience, curiosity, attention, and respect – essential qualities of mindfulness. The therapeutic relationship fosters such an atmosphere, where mindfulness can gradually take the place of resistance and defensiveness, in its many different forms.

We will explore how and why your conditioned ways of thinking, feeling, and acting – even down to your habitual gestures and posture – tend to color and shape your experience repeatedly.

Psychodynamic psychotherapy has much to do with discovering and revising the internal map we created in childhood – our conditioned ways of relating to the world, ourselves, and others – and continue to live by unconsciously in adulthood. This map originally helped us navigate the world we grew up in, but may be crimping our perspective and limiting our freedom today. When we are more conscious of our internalized map, our understanding deepens and our view starts to change.

“Psychoanalysis is in essence a cure through love.”

—Sigmund Freud

I will try to help you become more conscious of your map, so that your understanding deepens and your view starts to change. You may come to understand how at one point in time your character, or your symptoms, were adaptive to an environment that did not meet your needs in some way. With this understanding comes a newfound respect for yourself – a new view – along with the space to discover, and the confidence to consider, and possibly try something new.

In both my personal life and as a clinician, I have found though that conceptual understanding often does not go far enough. This is because understanding alone usually does not stop our deeply conditioned, habitual ways of thinking, feeling, and acting. Despite our understanding and our best intentions, we often continue to repeat our old habits of mind and body. This is where a non-analytical, non-conceptual, mindful approach in psychotherapy can help us move beyond our conditioning: first, by slowing down enough to see what we are repeating that is old, and second, to see what may emerge that is new and more adaptive to the present moment – to possibly be repeated again in therapy, and then perhaps beyond.

I have found that understanding gained through psychodynamic psychotherapy, coupled with mindfulness of thought, emotion, and the body, facilitates the discovery of new thought, new emotion, and new action, sparking change, and making the whole therapeutic approach more playful and fun!