Why Experiential Psychotherapy is More Effective Than Talk Therapy to Overcome Trauma

I have discussed the use of experiential psychotherapy for overcoming psychological trauma in prior articles.  In this article, I'm focusing on comparing talk therapy alone to experiential therapy and discussing why experiential therapy tends to be more effective than talk therapy alone for overcoming psychological trauma (see my article: Experiential Psychotherapy Helps to Achieve Emotional Breakthroughs).

Why Experiential Psychotherapy is More Effective Than Talk Therapy to Overcome Trauma 

My Background as a Trauma-Informed Psychotherapist

As I have stated before in prior articles and in my biographical information for this blog, my original training from almost 20 years ago was in psychoanalysis.  Back then, after completing graduate school, I was a psychoanalytic candidate in training and I used psychodynamic psychotherapy and psychoanalysis with clients from the institute's center, including clients with psychological trauma.

While I loved my training and still like applying contemporary Relational psychoanalytic concepts, especially Winnicottian concepts, over the years I discovered that psychoanalysis by itself was not as effective in helping traumatized clients to overcome their problems as compared to experiential psychotherapy or the combination of contemporary psychoanalysis and experiential therapy (see my article: Contemporary Psychoanalysis and EMDR Therapy: A Powerful Combination to Overcome Trauma).

In those early years of my training to be a psychoanalyst, it was frustrating to see that clients in developed insight into their problems, which was an important step, but it often didn't change their problems.

My experience in those early days was that many clients "felt better" and that psychoanalysis was useful, especially back then when clients came multiple times per week.  But I wasn't satisfied that most clients, who experienced trauma, made significant experiential shifts.

After my psychoanalytic training, the mental health field was changing rapidly, and I decided to find out what other types of psychotherapy were being used effectively for PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder) and trauma.  That's when I heard about EMDR therapy, which stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (see my articles: How EMDR Therapy Works: EMDR and the Brain and What is Adjunctive EMDR Therapy?).

Since being trained in EMDR in 2004, I have used it regularly and found it to be an effective therapy for helping clients to overcome trauma, including PTSD.  I was fascinated to see that clients were overcoming their traumatic symptoms faster than most clients in talk therapy alone, and the results lasted over time.

In subsequent years, I obtained training in other forms of experiential therapy, including clinical hypnosis, Somatic Experiencing, Ego States therapy and Coherence therapy, which has been invaluable in helping traumatized clients to overcome their problems.

Using these experiential therapies over the years has been pivotal in becoming a trauma-informed psychotherapist who has been able to help many clients who have a traumatic history.

At this point, after using these experiential therapies consistently for several years, I consider myself to be an integrationist who often combines these therapies when it is most effective to do so based on the needs of each client.

Why Experiential Psychotherapy is More Effective Than Talk Therapy to Overcome Trauma

There are many reasons why experiential psychotherapy is more effective than talk therapy alone to overcome psychological trauma:

• Whereas talk therapy alone tends to help clients to develop intellectual insight into their problems, experiential therapy, by definition, uses the mind-body connection so that clients experience their emotions on a physical as well as an emotional basis which allows access to the unconscious mind (see my article: Experiential Psychotherapy Offers a Window Into the Unconscious Mind).

• With talk therapy alone, many clients remain "in their heads." If they have been in talk therapy before, they know the psychological lingo and can explain their problems well, but they might be cut off from their emotional and physical experiences.  Since experiential therapy focuses on clients' embodied experiences, there is a more integrative experience that combines intellectual insights with embodied experience.

• Whereas clients in talk therapy alone can gloss over their emotions by intellectualizing, experiential psychotherapy helps clients to slow down to get deeper into their embodied experience.  Slowing down to experience the felt sense of their emotions allows clients to make deep psychological connections that they often don't make with talk therapy alone.

• Whereas certain forms of talk therapy can pathologize clients' problems, experiential psychotherapy is nonjudgmental and compassionate.  Rather than making judgments about the clients' problems, experiential psychotherapy tends to have a strengths-based perspective.  It also helps clients to become aware of their internal experiences in more body-mind integrated way (see my article: A Strengths-Based Perspective in Psychotherapy).

• Experiential psychotherapy focuses on healing clients as opposed to talk therapy alone which, as previously mentioned, tends to focus on helping  clients to develop intellectual insight.

• Experiential psychotherapy provides clients with skills and tools that they can use on their own without the psychotherapist.  As previously mentioned, it doesn't rely solely on insight as talk therapy alone tends to do.

• Experiential psychotherapy helps clients to go beyond their "story" about themselves.  This is especially important for clients who have had a lot of therapy before and who have developed a particular narrative about themselves which they tell each therapist that they work with.  Rather than keeping clients stuck in an old "story," experiential psychotherapy helps clients to experience their shifting sense of self on a profound level.

• Experiential psychotherapy tends to facilitate transformational and breakthrough moments for clients in therapy in a more timely manner than talk therapy alone.

Conclusion

Talk therapy like psychodynamic psychotherapy, including psychoanalysis, and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) are effective types of therapy for many clients.  However, for clients who want to overcome traumatic experiences, including PTSD, experiential psychotherapy used on its own or in combination with talk therapy is more effective.

In my next article, I'll give a clinical example of how experiential psychotherapy is more effective than talk therapy alone in helping clients to overcome trauma (see my article: Why Experiential Psychotherapy is More Effective to Overcome Trauma Than Talk Therapy Alone - A Clinical Vignette).

Getting Help in Therapy

If you have been struggling on your own with emotional problems, you could benefit from working with a licensed mental health professional with the experience and skills you need to overcome your problems (see my article: The Benefits of Psychotherapy).

The first step in getting help in therapy is calling a psychotherapist for a consultation.  During the consultation, you can ask the therapist about her background, training, skills and how she works with your particular type of problem (see my article: How to Choose a Psychotherapist).

Effective psychotherapy helps to free you from your history of problems so you can lead a more meaningful and fulfilling life.

About Me

I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist who uses integrative psychotherapy in a contemporary, dynamic, interactive and collaborative way (see my article: The Therapeutic Benefits of Integrative Psychotherapy).

I work with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 or email me.

Common Myths About Psychotherapy: Therapy is "All Talk and No Action"

As I've mentioned in prior articles, there are many common myths about psychotherapy.

See my articles: 

Common Myths About Psychotherapy: Therapy Takes a Long Time

 Common Myths About Psychotherapy: Going to Therapy Means You're Weak)

In addition to the myths that I mentioned in my prior articles, there's also a myth that therapy is all about talking and not taking action.

Common Myths About Psychotherapy:  Therapy is "All Talk and No Action"

I believe this myth survives because of old stereotypes of psychotherapy where a client comes to therapy for many years and nothing changes.

The type of contemporary psychotherapy that I practice focuses on helping clients to achieve transformation, which includes taking action to change.

There can be many obstacles to transformation, so clients often have to work through those obstacles, including early emotional trauma, including their own ambivalence about change, before they can make changes in their lives (see my article: Starting Psychotherapy: It's Not Unusual to Feel Anxious and Ambivalent).

Let's take a look at a fictionalized scenario that addresses these issues:

Rick
Rick came to therapy because he felt stuck in almost every area of his life.

He was in a marriage where he had been unhappy for many years, and he was also in a career that he had come to dislike intensely.

Rick was in therapy before when his anxiety about these issues was especially acute, but he never remained long enough to make changes (see my article: When Clients Leave Therapy Prematurely).

After he turned 45, Rick's fear of remaining stuck became worse than ever.  He was afraid he would complain for the rest of his life about his unhappiness, but he wouldn't make any changes.

When he started therapy again, Rick wasn't very hopeful that it would help him, but he knew that his friends and colleagues were getting tired of hearing him complain, and he and his wife were barely speaking to each other, so he couldn't count on her for emotional support.

Common Myths About Psychotherapy: Therapy is "All Talk and No Action"

Having low expectations of therapy, Rick said he wanted a place to "vent" and to "let off steam" so that his anxiety and dissatisfaction wouldn't overwhelm him.

His therapist addressed these issues in the first session when she asked him what he wanted to accomplish in therapy.

When she heard that he had little expectation of changing, she explained that she worked with clients to help them overcome the obstacles to change and she hoped to be able to help Rick with whatever challenges were getting in his way.

During one of their early sessions, his therapist asked Rick to do a sentence completion exercise in their session through free association, which means to say whatever comes to mind.

Free association is a psychoanalytic technique and using free association in this way is a technique used in Coherence Therapy (see my articles: Discovering the Unconscious Emotions at the Root of Your Problems and Experiential Therapy Helps to Achieve Emotional Breakthroughs).

The therapist gave Rick the following sentence stem for Rick to complete:

"If I could make the necessary changes to be happy in a relationship and in a career, then ________."

Initially, like most people, Rick's first few answers for filling in the blank were somewhat superficial ("...my life would be easier," "...I would feel better about myself," and so on.

But by the time he did it for the tenth time, he was shocked to hear himself say, "...then I would be afraid that something terrible would happen."

It took a few minutes before Rick could reflect on his words because he was so surprised.  But once he could think about it, he said this felt true to him--although he never realized he felt this way before.

As he and his therapist explored this issue, Rick realized that one of his unconscious core beliefs was that if he allowed himself to be happy, fate would intervene to spoil it for him and something terrible would happen (see my article: Are Your Core Beliefs Keeping You Stuck?)

He didn't have any idea what that "something terrible" would be, but it was a strong feeling that he felt in his chest and in his stomach (see my article: Are You Afraid to Allow Yourself to Be Happy?).

As his therapist listened to his family history, she and Rick discovered the roots to this underlying belief.

Rick talked about how unhappy his parents were, especially his father, who had many unresolved early traumatic experiences.

From the time that Rick was a young child, his father told him that Rick had to remain ever vigilant for the "fickle finger of fate," especially if things were going well and he was happy.

His father had many early losses, including the loss of both parents in a car accident, when he was a small boy.

From his father's perspective, the accident (and other family tragedies) occurred because things were going too well in the family, and fate came along to teach them a lesson.

His father saw each loss and downturn as the direct result of "fate" when things were going well, so that, from his perspective, no one could ever let down their guard, especially when they were feeling happy.

Common Myths About Psychotherapy: Therapy is "All Talk and No Action"

His father told Rick from an early age, "If you learn to expect terrible things when you're happy, you'll be prepared and you won't be taken off guard."

Rick's father's belief were so detrimental to Rick that he feared being happy, which was the obstacle in his way to making changes (see my article: Freeing Yourself From Family Beliefs and Expectations That Are Harmful to You).

It was Rick's unconscious belief that as long as he was in an unhappy marriage and in a career that he hated, "fate" wouldn't be tempted to devastate him.

After he said these words out loud, Rick realized how unrealistic it sounded but, deep down, he also knew that he had come to believe this at an early age.

After his therapist helped Rick to discover this unconscious belief, it made sense to both of them why he remained stuck.  Given his belief, why would he want to "tempt fate" to bring him pain?

As he continued to work in therapy, Rick explored the many times when he was happy in the past and when he wasn't "punished by fate" for it, so he started to understand the fallacy in his unconscious belief.

Over time, his therapist encouraged Rick to begin to explore other career options that might interest him.  Initially, he set up informational interviews, and then he talked about his experiences in therapy.

After one of these interviews, Rick got a call from someone, who met with him for an informational interview, telling Rick about an opening in the company.  This manager had been so impressed with Rick's background that he asked Rick to apply for the job.

When Rick told his therapist about it, he was excited about the possibility.  As she listened to him speak, his therapist asked him to check in with himself to see if he was feeling his old fear that if he allowed himself to be happy that "something terrible would happen" to end my happiness.

Rick reflected on this for a moment, and he was surprised that he didn't feel this old feeling.

As Rick took each step in the process towards changing his career, he would check in with himself to see if his old core belief was getting in his way, and each time he was surprised that it wasn't.

As it turned out, Rick didn't get that job, but he now felt free to explore other options and take the necessary steps to make changes.

The other problem, his marriage, was more complicated because Rick wasn't sure how he felt about his wife.

After talking it over with his wife, they went for marriage counseling and, after a few sessions, they mutually agreed that the relationship had been over for several years and that neither of them were happy.

Soon after that, they spoke to their marriage counselor about how they could end their marriage in a way that was amicable and respectful.

Rick got his own apartment nearby and they began the divorce process.

Even though Rick knew that he wasn't happy in his marriage and the divorce was for best for both of them, he still felt sad about the ending of this long relationship, and he dealt with his grief about it in his own individual therapy.

A year later, Rick wondered if he should start dating, but he had not been on a date in many years, and he felt uncomfortable.

As they explored this issue, Rick checked in with himself again to see if his old core belief was lurking in the background and tripping him up.  But he had no sense of this.

After they had talked about dating for a few sessions, Rick's therapist encouraged him to start taking steps, no matter how small, to start dating.

Rick would have preferred to continue talking about dating rather than taking any action, but his therapist told him that he could do both.  He could start taking steps to date and they could continue to talk about each step.

In this way, step by step, Rick began dating and he developed increasing confidence in the dating process, even though he had not met anyone that he really liked yet.

In a therapy session where he and his therapist looked back at where Rick started and where he was at that point, Rick expressed a sense of empowerment that he was able to take steps to overcome the obstacles that were preventing him from making changes in his life.

Conclusion
Old stereotypes contribute to the common myth that therapy is "all talk and no action."

Contemporary psychotherapy is a combination of self discovery which leads to taking meaningful action to change.

In the fictionalized scenario above, there is a particular longstanding core belief from early childhood that got in the way of the client making changes.

There are many other types of obstacles, conscious and unconscious, that get in the way of people making changes.

Once these obstacles are discovered, they can be worked with in therapy so that clients can free themselves of their effect.

It's important for the therapist to encourage clients to take action, no matter how small, and not to just talk about the problem.

This requires a clinician who has the clinical skills to know when to push the limits and when to hold off and, of course, this will be different with every client.

Getting Help in Therapy
If you have been avoiding therapy because you believe in the old myth that therapy is just about talking and not taking action, you're doing yourself a disservice.

Rather than telling yourself that you've tried to change in the past, but you can't do it, recognize that there are obstacles that you haven't discovered yet but that you can discover with the right therapist.

You might be surprised, as the client in the scenario above, to discover that there are unconscious beliefs that are holding you back.

Very often, once these unconscious beliefs have been exposed to the light of day, they don't hold up.

If you've been feeling stuck, you could benefit from working with a skilled psychotherapist who can help you to bring about the changes that you want.

About Me
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist who works with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Allowing Yourself to Feel Your Feelings So You Can Heal

As a psychotherapist, many clients tell me that, before they came to therapy, they tried to suppress painful feelings because they were afraid that they would be overwhelmed.  But, as most people discover, when you try to suppress painful feelings, these feelings actually intensify.  So, in order to heal emotionally, you need to allow yourself to feel your feelings, and if you find this too difficult to do on your own, you can work with a psychotherapist who is trained to help clients through this healing process.

Allowing Yourself to Feel Your Feelings So You Can Heal

Feeling Your Feelings Can Free Up More Energy Within You
Aside from intensifying the emotional pain, suppressing your feelings also takes a lot of energy.

Many people who have worked through painful feelings in therapy realize just how much energy it took to suppress these feelings because they're suddenly aware of how much more energy they have since they stopped suppressing their painful feelings.

For many people, it opens up a new world.  They talk about feeling "more alive" and energetic as well as being open to new experiences.

Allowing Yourself to Feel Your Feelings in Therapy in a Safe and Supportive Environment
It's understandable that anyone might want to avoid feeling emotional pain, especially if he's trying to do it on his own.

If the feelings are related to an emotional trauma, experiencing painful feelings on your own can bring up memories of being alone when the trauma occurred, especially if they occurred when you were a child.

Early childhood emotional trauma is compounded when a child goes through it without emotional support from a compassionate adult.

But, for a variety of reasons, the adults in the child's environment might not be emotionally available to soothe the child.  They might be depressed or overwhelmed themselves.  So, the child goes through it alone and this adds to the child's trauma.

As a result, it's especially important for people who went through early childhood trauma to be in therapy in a supportive environment with a therapist who is skilled in helping clients to work through trauma in a gentle way.

I emphasize the word "gentle" because working on trauma in therapy needs to be done in a way where the work feels manageable and the client feels emotionally safe.

For people who have had complex trauma, "safe" might be a relative term, and it could take a while before they feel safe enough with a therapist before they can process the trauma in therapy.

Developing Internal Coping Skills in Therapy to Process the Trauma
Even though many clients who come to therapy want to "get rid of the bad feelings as quickly as possible," this is usually counterproductive because it's often too overwhelming to plunge into the deepest part of the trauma immediately.

After the initial stage of therapy where the client reveals the presenting problem and his history, the trauma therapist needs to assess the client's internal coping skills to assess his capacity to handle doing the work.

If it seems like the client will be easily overwhelmed, the therapist needs to help the client to develop the internal coping skills to do the work.  This preparation stage is a very important stage of therapy that is often overlooked by inexperienced therapists who might yield to a client's demands to start working directly on the trauma immediately.

Preparing the client to develop internal coping skills to process the trauma is called "resourcing" (see my article about resourcing).

Developing Internal Coping Skills in Therapy

In addition to having a compassionate, skilled therapist, developing internal resources gives the client the tools necessary to deal with whatever comes up during the therapy session or between sessions.

After clients have developed the internal resources to process emotional trauma, most clients say that processing the trauma in therapy feels like a manageable process, and many of them wish they had not waited to get help.

In addition to helping clients to prepare for trauma work, a skilled therapist knows how to track what's going on emotionally with the client in session and also teaches the client how to track their own feelings.

How does the therapist help the client to track their own feelings?  Well, there are many ways.  One of the most important ways is to help the client to recognize what's going on in the client's body (see my article: The Mind-Body Connection: The Body Offers a Window Into the Mind).

The body holds both conscious and unconscious emotions, so if the client is able to identify those emotions based on what she feels in her body, she will develop a greater capacity to access and identify feelings.

The Mind-Body Connection: The Body Holds Conscious and Unconscious Emotions

For many clients who have been traumatized, learning to access and identify feelings in the body is something that has to be learned with the help of the therapist because they might be emotionally numb at first.

Emotional numbing is a defense mechanism that might have been very helpful if a child was  overwhelmed with emotion and there was no one to help her.  But emotional numbing as an adult isn't helpful--it gets in the way of knowing what you feel.  It also gets in the way of having relationships with other people.

Not only that--when you numb yourself, you don't just numb the painful feelings, you numb all your feelings, including the happy ones.  After a while, you just feel emotionally "flat."

Experiential Therapy in Trauma Work
Over the years, I've discovered that regular talk therapy isn't always effective for all clients who come to therapy to work on traumatic experiences.

One of the problems with regular talk therapy for many clients, especially clients who have been in talk therapy before, is that they learn how to talk about the trauma so that it remains an intellectual experience for them and not a healing experience.

Rather than feeling their feelings, they've learned to intellectualize about it.  They can describe it and explain it and even have intellectual insight about their problem, but they still feel the same--nothing changes.

It's as if their heads are separated experientially from their bodies, which makes it difficult to access their emotions.

There are different types of experiential therapy that, in my professional opinion, are better for processing emotional trauma than talk therapy, and these include:  EMDR, Somatic Experiencing, Coherence Therapy and clinical hypnosis (see my article: Experiential Therapy Helps to Achieve Emotional Breakthroughs).

Choosing a Psychotherapist
One of the best predictors of a good outcome in therapy is a good therapeutic rapport between the client and the therapist.

When you first meet a psychotherapist for a consultation, it's important to be able to distinguish your general feeling of anxiety about coming for therapy from whether or not you feel comfortable with the therapist (see my article: How to Choose a Psychotherapist).

If you've had a significant history of emotional trauma, especially early childhood trauma, you might find it difficult to trust anyone.

This is understandable and an experienced, compassionate therapist will understand that it might take a while for you to develop enough trust to begin processing the trauma.  With the help of your therapist, you might need to spend more time building a rapport and doing preparation for processing the trauma.

Getting Help in Therapy
Although allowing yourself to feel painful feelings can seem like a daunting and scary process, avoiding feeling your emotions only make things worse.

The only way to heal emotionally is by going through the process.

Ensuring the best possible experience in therapy involves choosing an experienced and skilled psychotherapist with whom you feel a rapport.

If trying to deal with your problems on your own hasn't worked for you, you could benefit from working with a licensed mental health professional who can help you to heal and live a more fulfilling life.

About Me
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist who works with individual adults and couples.

One of my specialties is helping clients to overcome trauma.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Psychotherapy Blog: Resentment as a Defense Against Feeling Deep Sadness

People who hold onto resentment for many years often don't realize that holding onto their resentment is a defense against feeling the deep sadness that is underneath the resentment (see my article: Letting Go of Resentment).

Longstanding resentment can become like a hard shell that seals over sadness that would feel too overwhelming to experience.

Resentment as a Defense Against Feeling Deep Sadness

This is often the unconscious function of holding onto resentment--it keeps people from feeling the depth of their sadness.  Often, people who experience longstanding resentment don't even realize that they're carrying around this sadness because it's so well hidden by the resentment.

Even though, on an unconscious level, people with longstanding resentment would rather feel the resentment than the sadness, carrying around the resentment takes it's toll physically and emotionally (see my article: Holding Onto Anger and Resentment is Like Drinking Poison and Expecting the Other Person to Die).

Let's take a look at a fictionalized scenario, which is based on many different cases, to see how resentment is used as a defense mechanism to ward off deep sadness, and how this problem can be overcome in therapy:

Ed
Ed came to therapy because he sensed that the ongoing problem that he had with male authority figures at work was related to his unresolved childhood problems with his father (see my article: How Unresolved Childhood Trauma Affects Adult Relationships).

Although Ed was much sought after in his field, he had problems with male authority figures at work which caused problems for him in his career.

Resentment as a Defense Against Feeling Deep Sadness

He would usually start out well on a job until he and his manager disagreed about a business decision, especially if he felt that his manager wasn't hearing him.  Then, Ed would feel such rage and resentment that he barely could contain it.

Since he was very good at what he did, most managers would overlook Ed's resentment.  But Ed knew that he was having an increasingly difficult time containing it.  He also realized it was only a matter of time before he exploded and placed his job in jeopardy.

Resentment as a Defense Against Feeling Deep Sadness

When Ed started therapy, he approached it like a pragmatic business problem.  He wanted to define the problem and find the solution.

Since he had never been in therapy before, I provided Ed with psychoeducation about psychotherapy and how it was different from finding a solution to a work problem (see my article: The Benefits of Psychotherapy).

It was very helpful that Ed already had some insight into his resentment and that he knew it was related to his problems with his father when he was growing up.  Rather than blaming each manager that he had ever worked for, Ed realized that it was his problem and not theirs.

As we talked about his resentment towards his father, who was authoritarian and lacked empathy for Ed as a child, I asked Ed what kept him holding onto his resentment after more than 25 years.

At first, Ed wasn't sure why he still felt resentment.  He admitted that he had a very different relationship with his father now, who had become a lot more emotionally available for Ed over the years and who was not the same father that he was when Ed was growing up.  In fact, Ed said, they had a good relationship now.

I recognized that Ed had never processed the childhood trauma, and he was stuck emotionally in that earlier time (see my article:  Reacting to the Present Based on Your Traumatic Past).

I also sensed that Ed had an unconscious reason for holding onto the resentment and that until we got to these unconscious feelings, he would have a hard time letting go of the resentment.  And, as a result, he would continue to have problems with male authority figures at work.

We began by using EMDR Therapy to process the childhood trauma (see my articles: EMDR Therapy and the Brain and How EMDR Therapy Works).

Over time, Ed was able to reduce the emotional effects of the trauma significantly.  But, at a certain point, the EMDR therapy stalled and, as an EMDR therapist, I recognized that we were dealing with a "block" in therapy that needed to be addressed before we could go on.

I also recognized that, although Ed was able to feel anger and resentment during the EMDR processing, the one feeling that he wasn't in touch with was sadness.

This was significant because anyone who experienced what Ed experienced with his father when Ed was a child would have felt sad.  But Ed wasn't in touch with this feeling at all.

Based on my experience as a therapist, I knew that if I asked Ed directly about the sadness or any other underlying feelings, he would deny it because he wasn't in touch with it at all.

So, I used a technique from Coherence Therapy, which is also used in psychoanalysis, to have Ed free associate about letting go of the resentment.

I gave Ed a part of a sentence and then asked him to free associate to the rest and to keep going for a while.

The stem of the sentence was:  "If I let go of my resentment, _____________________________."

At first, Ed seemed self conscious, but as he continued to free associate to sentence, he went from surface to depth as his unconscious feelings eventually came to the surface.

Initially, he responded by saying things like, "If I let of of my resentment, I would be happier," "If I let go of my resentment, I would get along better with my boss," and so on.

After about five minutes of free association, without even realizing it, Ed said, "If I let go of my resentment, I'll be overwhelmed by sadness."

Discovering that Resentment is a Defense Against Feeling Deep Sadness

At that point, he stopped and looked at me with surprise.  Although he didn't say anything at first, the look on his face said, "Did I really say that?"

Then a few seconds later, Ed began to sob.

After a few minutes when he was able to talk again, he said that this was the first time that he was aware that underneath the resentment was deep sadness.

Although he was surprised and a little confused, he said he also felt a lighter just being able to acknowledge the sadness and cry.  He also began to feel an internal emotional shift.

This was a real emotional breakthrough for Ed.

After that, we were able to continue to work on Ed's resentment and sadness for his unmet emotional needs as a child using EMDR.

Working Through Resentment and Sadness to Lead a More Fulfilling Life

Eventually, he was able to work through his resentment and sadness, and he was no longer affected by his childhood trauma (see my article:  Experiential Therapy, Like EMDR Therapy, Helps Achieve Emotional Breakthroughs).

Conclusion
It's not unusual for people to hold onto anger and resentment as a way to ward off feeling deep sadness.

The problem is that they aren't aware that they're doing this because the sadness is unconscious.

What often occurs is that, as children, they allow themselves to feel the anger and resentment because those feelings aren't as scary as sadness.

It can also feel more "powerful" to children and adults to feel anger as opposed to feeling sadness, which can leave a people feeling emotionally vulnerable.  This is especially true for children that don't have an adult around to help soothe them and process their emotions.

So, the sadness goes "underground," so to speak, and remains unconscious even when they become adults.

They don't realize that their anger and resentment have become like a protective shield that keeps them from feeling the sadness.

They also don't realize that, as opposed to when they were children, they now have a greater emotional capacity to deal with difficult emotions as adults, especially if they are in therapy with a therapist who has experience working on these types of unconscious issues.

Getting Help in Therapy
Holding onto resentment is often an unconscious defense against feeling sadness or other uncomfortable feelings.

People are often surprised to discover what a relief it is to let go of longstanding resentment and how much better they feel.  They often talk about having more energy and a greater sense of well-being.

If you've had a problem overcoming your resentment on your own, it's possible that your resentment is an unconscious defense against feeling emotionally vulnerable, and you could benefit from working with a licensed mental health professional who has experience helping clients with this problem.

About Me
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist who works with individual adults and couples.

I have helped many clients to discover and overcome unconscious emotional blocks that hindering them from having a more fulfilling life.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

A Psychotherapist's Beliefs About Psychotherapy Affect How the Therapist Works With You

Psychotherapists' beliefs about psychotherapy can have a significant effect on the way they practice therapy. The impact of their beliefs can include the therapists' views about clients, diagnoses, the types of therapy that they practice, and length of treatment, among other things.

A Psychotherapist's Beliefs Affects How the Therapist Works With You

What Shapes Psychotherapists' Views About Therapy?
Psychotherapists' beliefs are often shaped by their psychotherapy training, their own personal experiences in therapy as well as their professional relationships with supervisors, mentors, colleagues and institutes in their early career.

For instance, psychotherapists, who were trained years ago in traditional classical psychoanalysis and who have not had any other training in contemporary psychotherapy, often believe that psychotherapy takes a long, long time for everyone (see my article: Common Myths About Psychotherapy: Therapy Takes a Long Time).

While it's true that some clients might need a longer time in therapy than others, if this is a therapist's belief for all clients, how she practices therapy and the length of time that most of her clients spend in therapy with her, will conform to this belief, especially if long-term therapy is the only type of therapy that she practices.

Another example is that if a therapist tends to pathologize clients' ambivalence or difficulties in therapy, she will probably see the client as "resistant" or as a "help rejecting client" rather than seeing ambivalence as a normal part of therapy or taking a more nuanced view of the client and the therapeutic relationship, including that the problem might be related to something the therapist is doing or not doing (see my article: Starting Therapy: It's Not Unusual to Feel Anxious and Ambivalent and Reconceptualizing the So-Called "Help Rejecting Client").

If the therapist only focuses on looking for psychological disorders to the exclusion of seeing the clients' strengths, the therapy will tend to be pathologizing.  She will probably see mostly clients'  problems rather than clients'  strengths, resilience and capacity for change.

A Psychotherapist's Beliefs About Psychotherapy Affects How the Therapist Works With You

Working Deep in Therapy in an Experiential Way vs Working Only to Relieve Symptoms
Being able to work deep in psychotherapy is a valuable skill for therapists.

Most therapists who stopped their training in graduate school and never learned depth-oriented therapy tend to work in a way that only touches the surface.  They usually look for ways to relieve symptoms rather than looking beyond for what is transformative for the client.  This is a disservice to clients.

But working deep no longer means that the client must spend many years in therapy.  There are newer types of experiential therapy that can significantly reduce the time in therapy for many clients without sacrificing the depth.

    See my articles: 

Experiential Psychotherapy, Like EMDR, Helps Achieve Emotional Breakthroughs 

The Unconscious Mind and Experiential Therapy: The "Symptom" Contains the Solution).

Some forms of therapy, like certain forms of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Solution Focused Therapy (SFT), as practiced traditionally by many therapists, sacrifice depth for brevity.

These types of treatment might help to alleviate certain symptoms, but they don't get to the underlying unconscious issues that are at the root of the problem--so that clients who complete CBT and SFT often return when their problems surface again in another way because the root cause was left untreated.

CBT and SFT therapists often ignore the unconscious as well as any transference or countertransference issues because this isn't part of the way they do treatment.  This can lead to many enactments by both the therapist and the client that aren't addressed.

Aside from EMDR, Somatic Experiencing, clinical hypnosis, and Coherence Therapy are also experiential forms of therapy where the therapist works deep and therapy is often shorter than traditional talk therapy.

A Psychotherapist's Beliefs About Psychotherapy Affects How the Therapist Works With You

These experiential forms of therapy are often mind-body oriented types of therapy, which means that the therapist recognizes the mind-body connection as well as that unconscious thoughts and feelings are stored in the body.

So, if a therapist asks clients to focus on where they feel emotions in their body, clients can learn to more easily access the unconscious in a faster way as compared to regular talk therapy (see my article: The Mind-Body Connection: The Body Offers a Window Into the Unconscious Mind).

Getting Help in Therapy
Many clients who seek help in therapy don't know that there are different types of therapy and different approaches to therapy.

If you're seeking help in therapy, it's important to ask any therapist that you have a consultation with how he or she works in therapy and then, after a consultation, decide if that approach is a good fit for you (for tips on how to choose a therapist, see my article:  How to Choose a Psychotherapist).

Look for a therapist who has skills in many different treatment modalities so that if one modality doesn't work for you, the therapist will have a repertoire of modalities to call upon.

Ask questions about a therapist's training, experience, years in practice and treatment philosophy.

Last but not least, trust your gut when you're trying to decide if a particular therapist is right for you.

About Me
I am a licensed New York City psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist who works with individual adults and couples.

I am trained in psychoanalysis as well as other contemporary experiential approaches like clinical hypnosis, ego states therapy, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing.

Rather than trying to mold the client to fit a particular type of therapy, I work in a collaborative way to develop a treatment plan that suits each client's needs.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 or email me.

The Unconscious Mind and Experiential Therapy: The "Symptom" Contains the Solution

Unconscious emotions and beliefs often contain meaningful emotional truths.  Experiential therapy provides an opportunity to access these unconscious emotions and beliefs, which often leads to a transformative shift and an emotional breakthrough for the client (see my articles:  How Your Unconscious Beliefs Affect Your Sense of Reality and Experiential Therapy, Like EMDR, Helps to Achieve Emotional Breakthroughs).

The Unconscious Mind and Experiential Therapy: The "Symptom" Contains the Solution

Accessing the Unconscious Through Experiential Therapy:  The "Symptom Contains the Solution:"
People who start psychotherapy with a desire to change an unwanted behavior are often unaware that unconscious emotions have important meanings for them in terms of the very behavior that they say they want to change (see my article:  Mind-Body Psychotherapy: The Body Offers a Window Into the Unconscious Mind).

There is a saying in clinical hypnosis, which encapsulates this idea:  "The symptom contains the solution."

Bruce Ecker, LMFT addresses "symptoms" as containing solutions within the framework of another experiential therapy that he and Laurel Hulley, Ph.D. developed, Coherence Therapy and in his two books, Depth Oriented Brief Therapy: How to Be Brief When You Were Trained to Be Deep and Vice Versa and Unlocking the Emotional Brain: Eliminating Symptoms at Their Roots Using Memory Reconsolidation.

The Unconscious Mind and Experiential Therapy:  The "Symptom" Contains the Solution

In his books about Coherence Therapy, which I see as a meta-explanation for many different types of experiential therapy (EMDR, Somatic Experiencing, clinical hypnosis, and other forms of experiential therapy), he describes how the client's presenting problem (referred to as the "symptom") often contains the solution to the issue.

Vignettes From Experiential Therapy Where the "Symptom" Contains the Solution
For instance, he gave an example of how a client came to therapy to overcome procrastination which kept him from completing his graduate studies.  Ecker calls the presenting problem the "anti- symptom," the problem that the client wants to change.

Knowing that the presenting problem also has an unconscious "pro-symptom" component, the therapist asked the client to imagine how things would be if he didn't procrastinate about doing the work.

There are many different ways to help clients in therapy to access the unconscious, and these techniques are only limited by the therapist's imagination and ingenuity.

Ecker uses one of those techniques in his work with this client,"symptom deprivation."

Through the use of "symptom deprivation," the therapist asked the client to imagine himself without this problem, and the client realized that procrastinating kept him from realizing an even more challenging issue for the client, which was that he was procrastinating because he really wasn't interested in his graduate studies and he was only in the graduate program to please his father.

The Unconscious Mind and Experiential Therapy:  The "Symptom" Contains the Solution

Prior to attending therapy and using his imagination to sense himself without the problem, this client had no conscious awareness of this important underlying emotional truth.

By tapping into his imagination and experiencing himself without the problem, he was able to access the unconscious reasons for his procrastination and, more importantly, recognize that his symptom of procrastination was actually keeping him for making a major life change that he didn't want.

What initially appeared as a "problem" turned out to be a solution to a worse problem, namely, completing a degree and entering into a field that the client didn't want.

Notice that in this case the therapist didn't try to use cognitive-behavioral techniques (or other similar techniques that only remain on the surface) to try to change the symptom so that the client would stop procrastinating.  The therapist also didn't try to give advice or tools to stop procrastinating, which would have been ineffective in light of the powerful underlying issues.

Instead, the therapist correctly assumed in a non-pathologizing manner that there was an unconscious emotional truth that was significant for the client and that accessing this unconscious truth in an experiential way (as opposed to just thinking or talking about it) would help the client feel and understand a very meaningful emotional truth.

Another example that Ecker gives is of a woman who comes to therapy because she's developed agoraphobia after she starts to imagine that her former therapist, who moved out of state, is still in the neighborhood and watches the client when she goes outside.

This symptom became so problematic to the client that she dreaded going outside because, even though she knew, in reality, that the therapist wasn't around, she felt like the therapist was in the area and watching her.

By the time she came to therapy, she thought she was delusional because she knew one thing (the therapist moved out of state) but she felt another (the therapist was still around watching her).

By helping the client to access the unconscious meaning of her symptom, the therapist helped the client to experience, once again through the "symptom deprivation" technique, what it would be like not to feel that the therapist was around and watching her when the client went outside.

Once again, the therapist isn't trying to persuade the client that she is just thinking about the therapist. The purpose of the "symptom deprivation" technique isn't to try to make the client stop feeling that the therapist is around.  Instead, the purpose is to access, experience and understand the unconscious meaning of imagining that the therapist was watching her.

When the client imagined that she no longer felt the therapist watching her when she went out, the client experienced the unconscious meaning of the presenting problem, which was that she missed the therapist and she was lonely.

The client also realized that she had an underlying core belief that she was unlovable, which stemmed from her early childhood.

In this case, she chose not to work on this underlying issue of feeling unlovable, which the therapist honored.   But another client might decide to work on this underlying issue, and experiential therapy can be very effective with this type of underlying problem.

Also, once she understood on a deep level that imagining her former therapist outside served a meaningful purpose for her, she relaxed about it and no longer pathologized this issue.  Instead, she felt that she had a choice, depending upon how she felt on any given day, to either imagine the therapist around or not.

Having a choice was empowering for her.

Transformative Shifts Through Experiential Therapy
Ecker stresses (and I totally agree) that these unconscious meanings often don't come to the surface for the client if s/he doesn't experience the meaning of the symptom (the symptom is also known as the presenting problem).

In other words, talking about it only in an intellectual way often doesn't get to the unconscious meaning.  It keeps the therapeutic work flat and on the surface.

In both cases, these clients would have missed important information about what was actually positive and meaningful about what each of them originally considered to be problems.

By experiencing the unconscious emotional truth, the client has an opportunity for a transformative shift, which often leads to emotional breakthroughs.

Experiential Therapy Can Provide Access to the Client's Unconscious Emotional Truth
As I mentioned earlier, experiential therapy includes any therapy that allows the client to have an experience of the problem and the solution.

Experiencing can include emotional and, possibly, physical experiencing.

How the client experiences the unconscious is different for each client.

Some clients have an intuitive "sense."  Other clients experience the unconscious on a somatic (physical) level.  Others experience it on an emotional level.  Some clients experience a combination of intuitive, emotional and physical.

There's no one right way to experience the unconscious emotional truth.

EMDR therapy, clinical hypnosis, Somatic Experiencing and ego states therapy (parts work), among others, are all experiential mind-body oriented therapies that provide an opportunity for clients to access the unconscious beliefs and emotions that are not readily apparent in talk therapy alone.

Rather than dealing with the problem in a very limited, surface kind of way, these experiential therapies can help to transform a client's experience of him or herself as well as what, until then, was experienced as his or her reality.

The Unconscious Mind and Experiential Therapy:  The "Symptom" Contains the Solution

In the first example, where the client wanted to stop procrastinating and he considered this to be a "problem" that he needed to change, his perception of his personal reality was transformed when he experienced the underlying emotional truth that he really didn't want to continue to pursue a graduate degree in a subject that he wasn't interested in.

In the second example, the client recognized that what she considered her "problem" was actually meaningful and helping her to feel less lonely.  Her perception of her personal realty shifted and she stopped judging herself and feeling like she was delusional.  Not only did she stop feeling agoraphobic, but she was able to use and have a sense of control over whether she wanted to imagine her former therapist around or not.

The important emotional meaning in both of these cases would have been missed if the clients didn't have an opportunity to experience their unconscious reality.

In both cases, the client experienced emotional breakthroughs.

Experiential Therapies:  Clinical Hypnosis, Somatic Experiencing and EMDR
Experiential therapies usually allow clients access to a dual awareness, which is the here-in-now reality as well as the unconscious reality.

With regard to hypnosis (also known as hypnotherapy) when the client is in the hypnotic state, clients can often make an experiential shift that can lead to an emotional breakthrough (see my article:  What is Clinical Hypnosis?)

Similarly, Somatic Experiencing provides the client in therapy with a somatic awareness of unconscious thoughts and emotions which are stored in the body (see my article:  Somatic Experiencing: Overcoming the Freeze Response Related to Trauma).

I often combine clinical hypnosis, Somatic Experiencing and Ego States therapy to help clients to access the unconscious and achieve emotional breakthroughs (see my article:  Ego States Therapy)

EMDR (Eye Movement, Desensitization and Reprocessing), which is another form of experiential therapy, also helps the client to experience the unconscious beliefs that s/he has about him or herself.  One of the questions that the EMDR therapist asks is "What negative belief do you have about yourself?" related to the presenting problem.

As the client continues to process the presenting problem with EMDR, s/he comes to have access to his or her unconscious beliefs (see my articles:  What is EMDR?, How Does EMDR Work: Part 1: EMDR and the Brain, and How EMDR Works - Part 2: Overcoming Trauma).

Rather than focusing on "fixing" the presenting problem, all experiential types of therapy provide an opportunity for transformation on a deep level.

Getting Help in Therapy
In my experience as a psychotherapist, an experiential type of therapy, which provides the client with access to the mind-body connection as well as unconscious meaningful truths to the client's problems, is the most effective therapy to help clients who want to experience transformation.

The Unconscious Mind and Experiential Therapy: Getting Help in Therapy

If you've been struggling on your own to try to overcome your problems, you owe it to yourself to seek professional help from a licensed mental health professional.

About Me

I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist who works with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website:  Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.