What Brings People to Psychotherapy (It’s Rarely What They Think)
This may sound counterintuitive at first, but most people don’t arrive to therapy wanting to change in any profound way. They mostly come because something that once worked has stopped working.
A person who could once manage their worry through control suddenly can’t keep up. Someone who buried themselves in work now feels empty no matter how much they achieve. The strategies used to protect them; perfectionism, avoidance, humour, caretaking – begin to crack.
At first, most people want these defences restored. They want the anxiety turned down, the sleep returned, the relationship repaired. In a sense, they want their symptom to function again; to make life tolerable as it once was.
From a psychoanalytic perspective, that wish makes perfect sense. Our symptoms aren’t random malfunctions; they’re structures we’ve built to survive. However painful they become, they organise our inner world, binding anxiety and shielding us from what feels unbearable. When they stop working it’s distressing and disorienting.
Psychotherapy doesn’t take that away overnight, and it doesn’t rush to strip those protections immediately. It begins by meticulous listening, by allowing the meaning of the symptom to emerge. Over time, what seemed like a nuisance reveals its logic: how it formed, what it protects, and what it demands in return.
People are often surprised to discover how much of their suffering is tied to meaning. To old roles, loyalties, inhibitions and prohibitions they didn’t know they were still obeying. Slowly, the symptom begins to shift. It loses its absolute grip. It stops being the way a person knows how to live.
So while most people enter psychotherapy hoping to restore what’s broken, they often leave with something different.
More on Psychotherapy Book an AppointmentRecommended Reading:
- Éric Laurent: Symptom and Discourse
- Bruce Fink: A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis
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