What is Depth Psychotherapy
Have you ever wondered why you seem to meet the same kind of people and repeat the same kind of situations? You try to learn from your mistakes and make good decisions and yet it seems like fate. The same types of patterns just keep recurring in your life. It’s more than fate; it’s psychology. Depth psychotherapy, also known as depth psychology or psychoanalytical therapy, deals with how the patterns from your past affect you in the present. This is not just about reviewing and dredging up the painful parts of the past, but reorienting your consciousness to them so that you have awareness and control.
Time for The Next Stage – Level Up!
Do you know that the path you’ve led with your life up until now has ended and you have the utmost necessity to change everything for the next stage in your life?
The Unconscious
This is what depth psychology is all about. Depth psychology looks at the unconscious. Your unconscious alignment is what attunes you to certain types of energies and draws you to the same situations. The key here is that it’s unconscious! It’s not something you’re doing on purpose, and hopefully, you aren’t purposely self-destructing. It’s your unconscious alignment to an archetypal pattern of energy that continues to play out in your life as the same story over and over again.
Archetypal Alignments
So how does depth psychology help with this? Depth psychology looks at the patterns in your stories and your thought processes, and your dreams to shed light on what archetypal story you are aligned with.
Working with the Unconscious in Dreams
Your dreams give you information about what you’re not able to see consciously and brings it into your consciousness in therapy so that you can start changing your conscious alignment with those psychic energies and archetypal stories. One of the things I really like about this is the dream brings up information that you’re not consciously aware of but that you’re ready to face. The dream takes into context your past history, your most likely future, what’s going on with you in the present, what’s going on in therapy, and the greater context to the rest of the world. This is why dream dictionaries don’t give you the full story.
Depth Work in Art Therapy
I work in a similar way with image making in art therapy. Just like in dreams the images you make in art therapy come from your imagination, and thus, from your unconscious. Art images tell the story of your psychic energy and your relationship both consciously and unconsciously to your archetypal story.
Beyond Just Coping with the Symptoms
This type of work goes way beyond dealing with symptoms and coping skills. Depth work fine tunes your relationship to your internal world and changes your orientation to the world around you and how you interface with the world. Working through the weird symbolism, contradictions, and paradoxes in dreams helps pinpoint complexes in the person’s life. complexes are bundles of energy that form when we learn coping and defense mechanisms growing up. Complexes can also be due to trauma and be more like scar tissue. Complexes distort the lenses through which we see the world and can lead to less-than-optimal behaviors with how we live our lives.
Long Term Healing
The work in depth therapy can be painful, intense, and sometimes confusing. However, the lasting effects that this type of work can result in can resolve both personal and multi-generational wounds. Furthermore, his sort of investment pays back in priceless dividends providing healing, insight, healthier relationships, and a more meaningful, fulfilling life.
Beyond the Medical Model
This therapy goes beyond what the medical model and insurance companies are interested in researching. Furthermore, it is not a quick fix with a 6-week defined program structure. Best of all, it goes beyond the labels of the DSM-5 and pathology. I go into more detail about this in another blog post here.
The Path of Wellness
Pathology means what ails or causes grief. Likewise, realigning with your life’s purpose can resolve the archetypal pattern to create a healthier alignment with a generative story. This is the real benefit of depth psychotherapy. This story is one you want to be living. Finally, this sort of resolution provides increased energy and freedom to live your destiny.
Feel ripe to start this journey? Already feel like you are on the way and want support on the journey ahead? I can help you recognize the unconscious patterns in your life, your story, and in your dreams. Together, we’ll create a map for your path forward. I’m happy to chat with you in an online consultation.
Maggi Colwell
Maggi is a registered art therapist at Columbus Art Therapy who assists their clients to discover more of themselves through dream interpretation, art therapy, and depth psychotherapy. They specialize in working with grief and loss as well as gender exploration. Click the button below to get connected.