What are the benefits of Depth Psychotherapy?

Depth psychotherapy is a modality of therapy that is focused on uncovering the underlying forces that are hidden in your unconscious world. From a depth psychology perspective, most, if not all surface level symptoms you experience in your life emanate from a deeper root cause. Taking a “depth” approach means that we get curious about what is going on in the unconscious. Often, we start by examining the repeating patterns in your life and relationships, dreams, and sensations in the body to help us gain insight about what is happening in the depths of your being. This examination helps to facilitate change and healing over time. Taking a depth approach to psychotherapy means we take our time to explore and navigate the healing process, and I find that this patience is rewarded with more fundamental and lasting change in our lives. 

Depth psychotherapy was first developed by early pioneers of psychology including Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Jung and Freud both agreed that vast areas of ourselves are obscured from view in the forces of the unconscious. It is out of these unconscious forces that much of our day-to-day desires, dreams, and motivations emerge. Freud takes the perspective that successful psychotherapy moves hidden aspects of our being from the unconscious to the conscious mind so we can have more control over these forces instead of being at their mercy. Bessel van der Kolk, Peter Levine, and others in the trauma recovery and somatic psychology world write about how our physical bodies literally store the energies of trauma; and this unprocessed hurt will continue to affect us with difficult symptoms in our outer lives until we sort through and release this hidden pain. Neurobiologically, we can see how our brain is divided into different areas of consciousness. The lower brain stem is responsible for primitive functions like fight, flight, or freeze; the subcortical mammalian limbic brain regulates our emotions; and the outermost cerebral cortex, or thinking brain, manages our thoughts and cognitive life. In all these examples, the outermost expression of our psyche, soma, or neurobiology are symptoms of underlying, fundamental energies. Without addressing the innermost aspects of our experience, we cannot effectively change the outermost.

It is my experience and understanding that if you only focus on changing what is external, apparent, and readily accessible  you will miss a vast arena of potential change. The issues you are trying to change will erupt again and again in a frustrating repetition if you don’t address the root causes. The metaphor I like to use is this: if I am a gardener dealing with some pesky weeds that I need to remove from my garden, I can either take a pair of scissors and diligently trim the weeds’ leaves as they appear, or I can pull out a trowel and dig deep under the roots to remove them once and for all. Maybe trimming the weeds helps me achieve my goal for a few days, but it’s not a long term solution. No matter how many times I cut them back, until I dig down to the roots, the same problems will emerge time and time again.

Understanding what lies beneath is the key to making lasting change, and this shows up in people's lives in a number of ways. Anxiety is often the outer expression of inner unresolved fears or hurts. While specific tools and behavioral interventions may help reduce the symptoms, ultimately, it is necessary to look into the depths and face what you are really afraid of, or what you are holding onto from the past.  With depression, there is often underlying, repressed experience that has not been allowed to fully surface. Until the root cause of the pain is discovered and fully felt, the symptom of depression will erupt into conscious experience again and again. Where there is trauma, hidden memories or felt sensations of overwhelm and fear are trapped in the body and subconscious mind, unable to be fully felt because of their enormity. Until we can find a way to access and release this hidden energy, the symptoms of trauma will continue to have negative consequences on a person’s life. 

While behavioral interventions certainly have their place, and I do utilize them for short term relief of symptoms, I find that a purely behavioral approach without a corresponding depth exploration, can be lopsided and ineffective. Digging deep and understanding the roots of your problems may seem like a difficult undertaking, and it can bring up negative and overwhelming aspects of the psyche that we would rather not look at. But doing so slowly, in a safe and supportive therapeutic relationship, can create space for a more complete and fundamental healing. If we explore our inner worlds in a safe and productive way, it allows us to decidedly, once and for all, clear out our negative and unpleasant patterns of thought, behavior, and emotion and make way for a different relationship to ourselves, our relationships, and our lives. 

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Curious about exploring your inner world? Pacific Psychotherapy offers depth psychotherapy, depression therapy, trauma therapy and more in Santa Cruz, CA, and online anywhere in California. Reach out today to schedule a free consultation to hear more about whether we would be a good fit to work together.