frequently asked questions
What is psychoanalytic psychotherapy?
Psychoanalytic psychotherapy focuses on the importance of speaking your mind freely (free association), without needing to filter yourself, with minimal direction from someone outside of you, and free from judgment. Free Association allows you to focus less on conscious thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and learn more about your hidden thoughts and feelings.
Psychoanalytic work is most effective when the frequency is 2-4 sessions per week. Like any other relationship, connecting more regularly powerfully impacts your learning experience in therapy. Working together more often changes the intensity of the work, but it also changes the intensity of the outcomes for you.
How does this kind of therapy work?
Building a relationship that includes a sense of safety and trust between you and the therapist is the fundamental task of therapy. Often, building this relationship and trust may be the work.
People usually find that as they “Free Associate” about what’s on their mind, happening in their lives, and what they’re consciously feeling, they begin to recognize self-defeating patterns, outdated ideas, or painful feelings from the past that impact them in the present. Therapy is intended to uncover these old patterns, feelings, and patterns and help put these injuries in the past. In place of the painful, we can create new patterns for coping with life’s current challenges, relationships, and feelings.
How long does therapy take?
The duration of therapy is hard to predict and a complicated question to answer. Two important factors are what you want to get out of the experience - your motivation - and the support system you have available in your life. True change and unraveling of past pains and ideas doesn’t happen over night, nor does it come on a set timeline.
How do you know when you're ready to end?
When you have accomplished the goals you initially set.
Psychoanalytic psychotherapy focuses on the importance of speaking your mind freely (free association), without needing to filter yourself, with minimal direction from someone outside of you, and free from judgment. Free Association allows you to focus less on conscious thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and learn more about your hidden thoughts and feelings.
Psychoanalytic work is most effective when the frequency is 2-4 sessions per week. Like any other relationship, connecting more regularly powerfully impacts your learning experience in therapy. Working together more often changes the intensity of the work, but it also changes the intensity of the outcomes for you.
How does this kind of therapy work?
Building a relationship that includes a sense of safety and trust between you and the therapist is the fundamental task of therapy. Often, building this relationship and trust may be the work.
People usually find that as they “Free Associate” about what’s on their mind, happening in their lives, and what they’re consciously feeling, they begin to recognize self-defeating patterns, outdated ideas, or painful feelings from the past that impact them in the present. Therapy is intended to uncover these old patterns, feelings, and patterns and help put these injuries in the past. In place of the painful, we can create new patterns for coping with life’s current challenges, relationships, and feelings.
How long does therapy take?
The duration of therapy is hard to predict and a complicated question to answer. Two important factors are what you want to get out of the experience - your motivation - and the support system you have available in your life. True change and unraveling of past pains and ideas doesn’t happen over night, nor does it come on a set timeline.
How do you know when you're ready to end?
When you have accomplished the goals you initially set.