When people seek therapy, they often want immediate solutions. At the beginning, therapy explores these immediate solutions so that people can find some sort of relief. In fact, a lot of people start feeling better after the first session when they start to acknowledge the issue, talk about it and feel hopeful. At some point however, the presenting issue settles down and you need to address it on a deeper level.

Deeper work is exploring the past and noticing how it affects the present. It begins with a thorough discussion that allows the therapist to get a sense of the parents, parenting techniques and any events that may have influenced the client. This gives me a sense of the parent as a person, how they respond to their child (the client) and how my client responds in return. While the client is describing remembered events, it’s important that I keep an eye out for any emotions that may be trying to break through and surface during recollection. That is the essence of deeper work. Eliciting a memory to “discharge” an energy that is still visible today.

One thing that’s important to remember is that our mind is always accessing the past, trying to relate it in some way to the present. When we see something happening in the present that caused us past emotional stress, we tend to respond to it in the same way we once did even if it’s not as threatening.

The emotional experience of a child is much greater than an adult, which can cause our present reactions to intensify and seem “childish”. When a person feels the emotion, I ask them what their experience of it entails, not only in their body but in their thoughts. This is where I can see if that emotion has been repressed with secondary emotions such as guilt, shame or avoidance.

Would you like to talk? Get in touch today.