Psychodynamic Therapy

The past does not stay in the past. It shows up as a flinch you cannot explain, a certainty that you will be too much for people, a reflex to take care of everyone before anyone asks. These are not character flaws. They are adaptations — things a younger you figured out in order to get through the rooms you grew up in.

The trouble is that adaptations outlive their usefulness. What protected you at nine can exhaust you at forty. Psychodynamic work traces the pattern back to where it began, which is often the first time it becomes possible to choose something different.

Because so many of these patterns were formed in relationship, they tend to appear most clearly in relationship — including, usefully, the one between you and your therapist. The way you apologize to me, or expect me to be annoyed, or hold back the thing that matters most, is information. We get to look at it together, in real time, with curiosity instead of judgment.

Insight alone is not the goal — plenty of people can narrate their childhoods beautifully and change nothing. The aim is the kind of understanding that reaches the body, so that the old reflex loosens and a new response becomes available. That takes time, and it is worth it.

I offer psychodynamic therapy online to adults throughout California, with sessions of 50 to 60 minutes. A free 15-minute consultation is a low-pressure way to ask questions and get a feel for the work.