1. Talk Your Way to Self Awareness
Psychodynamic psychotherapy, a form of talk therapy, is based on principles of psychoanalysis. One of these principles represents the idea that early childhood experiences and relationships influence adult choices, behaviors and feelings. Another is that people are often unaware of these influences and operate according to motives that are unconscious or beyond a person's awareness and understanding. Therapy leads to self-awareness and an understanding of unconscious motives and unhelpful patterns of thinking and interacting. Understanding these helps the client move beyond them and make choices that lead to a happier life.
2. Psychodynamic or Psychoanalytic
This style of psychotherapy differs from psychoanalysis in several ways. First, the client and the therapist sit face-to-face, whereas in psychoanalysis the client lies on a couch with the therapist sitting behind the client's head. The face-to-face position leads to more interaction between the therapist and client and makes the therapeutic relationship more central to therapy. Second, sessions are often just once a week, while psychoanalytic clients usually have four sessions a week. Psychodynamic therapy is not as intensive or as costly as psychoanalysis. There is slightly more emphasis on the client's current life circumstances and slightly less on reconstructing early childhood experiences.
3. Break Old Habits to Feel Happier
People seek psychodynamic psychotherapy mostly because they want to feel happier. Perhaps they have become aware of long-term dissatisfaction with their professional lives, their relationship choices and patterns in other areas of life. Therapy helps them understand the sources of unhappiness so that they can make the changes necessary to establish more satisfactory situations for themselves.
4. Adjust to New Circumstances
Psychodynamic psychotherapy can help people with current life crises (such as grief and loss issues) or major life transitions that require adjustment (such as divorce, relocation or the birth of a child). Sometimes it is an immediate crisis or current circumstance that brings a person to therapy for the first time. The client might choose to end therapy once the current issues are resolved, or he may remain in therapy for a time to work on the underlying issues. Psychodynamic psychotherapy can be short-term, for several sessions or long-term lasting several years.
5. Improve Your Mood
Psychodynamic treatment can also help with clinical diagnoses, such as anxiety and depression. Sometimes these disorders have a strong physiological underpinning that requires medication. However, life circumstances can aggravate both anxiety and depression and talk therapy works in concert with medication for many people.
