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“In the choice to let go of your known way of being, the whole world is revealed to your new eyes.”
– Danna Faulds
What is psychodynamic psychotherapy?
Psychodynamic psychotherapy focuses on connecting with the unconscious, which contains the parts of ourselves that are out of our awareness and yet significantly influence our thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and relationships.
Our unconscious stores (just to name a few):
- emotions and experiences that were too painful or threatening, and therefore had to be ignored or denied rather than accepted into awareness
- emotions and experiences that were ignored by those in our environment, and therefore never named for us
- the defenses we have developed to help us cope with painful emotions and experiences
- unconscious conflicts
- wishes and desires that we experience as unacceptable or not compatible with our image of ourselves
Unfortunately, unprocessed emotions can create emotional symptoms such as anxiety, depression, and anger. Unprocessed emotions can also show up as physical symptoms such as pain, headaches, and fatigue (also known as somatization). This occurs when the body is forced to contend with the stress of painful emotions that have not been cognitively processed.
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Consequences of Unconscious Dynamics
Unconscious conflicts, wishes, and desires can drive us to engage in compulsive (and often self-sabotaging) behaviors or unsatisfying compromises that aim to satisfy the forbidden wishes at least in part, while at the same time we expend a lot of energy fighting against these urges and berating ourselves for giving into them. For example, you may pursue a career that will win you approval from those around you but that you don’t find personally satisfying. Unconsciously you might even resent that you are rejecting your own desires to please those around you. Here you have a conflict (often unconscious) between winning approval and pursuing your own desire. You might find yourself procrastinating or subtly sabotaging your chances at your career, not realizing that this is motivated by an unconscious desire to fail or a lack of enthusiasm for the endeavor.
Lastly, our unconscious contains the defense mechanisms (strategies) we have developed to keep these painful and threatening experiences out of awareness. Examples of defense mechanisms include denial of reality, projection (attributing personal unacceptable thoughts or feelings to others), idealization/devaluation, and rationalization, just to name a few.
Defense mechanisms originally came into being because they were necessary to help us cope with environments and situations that were inadequate, frightening, or too painful. Over time, however, these strategies may have turned into rigid ways of relating to the world that prevent us from being able to respond flexibly to life events and interfere with our capacity to have fulfilling, intimate relationships.
How does psychodynamic psychotherapy work?
Psychodynamic psychotherapy is a talk therapy in which we explore some of the ways that unconscious processes are revealed in your life, including thoughts, emotional reactions, bodily symptoms, anxieties, dreams, relationship patterns, and the feelings that arise within the psychotherapeutic relationship. These are all clues that we can trace back to the initial experiences that were too painful or threatening to be mentally processed and allowed into awareness.
We may explore early childhood experiences and relationships with caregivers, as these form the foundation of later psychological functioning and contribute to the development of core beliefs and patterns of behavior.
We will explore any physical symptoms that may have psychological components, tracing them back to the emotional distress that could not have been processed cognitively at the time of onset. We look at the symbolic language of dreams by analyzing their content, related emotions, and your free associations to different parts of the dream, as dreams often communicate our unconscious anxieties, wishes and desires.
In addition, some of the feelings, expectations, and unresolved conflicts from past early relationships will show up within the therapeutic relationship, where they can be experienced in real time, worked through, and better understood.
You may have heard some version of the quote from Harville Hendrix:
“We are born in relationship, we are wounded in relationship, and we can be healed in relationship”.
The psychotherapeutic relationship provides the space for unconscious processes that influence the way we feel, perceive the world, engage in relationships, seek to meet our needs, and make meaning of our lives to be known, deeply felt and emotionally processed, leading to growth and healing.
about me
Marina Rozenberg, MD.
Clinical psychiatrist and therapist
I’ve been a practicing internal medicine physician since 2004. In the process of going through my own healing journey, I realized that I wanted to learn to use the tools that were most valuable to me in order to help others in their pursuit of more meaningful and genuine lives. To that end, I completed a 4-year postgraduate training program in Bioenergetic Analysis, and additional postgraduate programs in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. I am currently enrolled as a psychoanalytic candidate at the Object Relations Institute in NYC.
Benefits of psychodynamic psychotherapy:
Our goal will be to help you gain insight into emotional conflicts, the origins of psychological symptoms or distress, and the less adaptive defense mechanisms that you employ to help you cope with difficult emotions and conflict. In the context of a supportive environment these can be understood, processed, and eventually integrated, freeing up energy for added joy and creativity.
Psychodynamic psychotherapy helps promote:
- greater self-understanding
- enhanced connection to your emotional life
- a softening of rigid modes of thinking and reacting
- enhanced creativity
- enhanced ability to communicate your needs and desires
- increased self-compassion
- deeper and more satisfying intimate relationships
To get started with psychodynamic psychotherapy, please submit this form or call me to schedule a free 20-minute phone consultation.
conditions
I work with adults of all ages who are seeking help for the following conditions
Trauma
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Personality Disorders
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Loss or Grief
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Chronic Pain or Illness
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Questions to ask the doctor
- been trying to manage on your own, reading self-help books and learning all you can about why you feel this way, or maybe you’ve
- tried other forms of therapies that work with your rational mind or recommend behavioral techniques…
- feeling distressed
- finding yourself engaging in behaviors that are self-sabotaging or harmful
- repeating relationship patterns that leave you feeling hurt or dissatisfied, or are
- unable to feel a meaningful connection with yourself or others
Bioenergetic Analysis may be right for you if:
- you have had verbal-only therapy and felt there was something deeper that remained locked away and inaccessible
- if your emotional stress is expressed mainly through somatic symptoms
- if you feel quite disconnected from your body and would like to enhance the mind-body connection
- if the idea of working with the body resonates with you
The answer will vary based on your goals for therapy and the degree of distress you are experiencing related to your symptoms. This is something we will discuss as you start treatment, and session frequency may change over the course of treatment.
In general, greater session frequency allows for deeper process because:
– less time is spent catching up on what happened between sessions, leaving more time available to engage with internal experience
– there is less time between sessions for defenses to kick in, so that material that came up in a previous session is more available for continued working through
– there is an intensification of the psychotherapeutic relationship, allowing for greater opportunity to explore issues with intimacy, relationship dynamics, and relational patterns of defense
I typically recommend a minimum of once-weekly sessions so that the process can take hold and allow for sufficient depth to allow for meaningful change.
For those that would like to work more intensively, or during periods of crisis or emotional instability, a greater session frequency is recommended.
Each session is 45 minutes. Some people benefit from longer sessions, in which case the fee would be pro-rated.
The length of therapy varies from individual to individual, depending on your goals for therapy and your needs for healing related to past traumas or early childhood/adolescent experiences characterized by abuse, neglect, or traumatic experiences in the family such as illness, death, or divorce. Sometimes deeper issues are uncovered during therapy for what was initially a more straight-forward concern (for example, difficulty managing a stressful work environment), which may prolong the course of therapy. For this reason, it can be difficult to estimate how long treatment will last at the outset of therapy.
Instead, we are guided by improvements in wellbeing that suggest that therapy can be brought to a close. These can include:
- improvement in the symptoms that brought you to therapy, such as anxiety, depression, or uncontrolled anger
- enhanced awareness of personal needs and desires
- enhanced ability to communicate your needs to loved ones and navigate conflict
- enhanced ability to process stressful life events yourself or with the help of your support system
- improved capacity for emotional regulation
- development of healthy coping strategies that replace the need for substances or compulsive behaviors
- enhanced sense of meaning, purpose, and satisfaction with life choices and relationships
As therapy progresses and the issues for which you started therapy improve, we will discuss bringing therapy to a close (also known as termination).
Please contact me to set up a free 20-minute phone consultation! If the fit feels right, we will set up the initial visit and go from there.
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Work time
Tuesday: 1PM-8PM
Wednesday: 10AM-8PM
Thursday: 9AM-8PM
Friday: 10AM-4PM
Weekend: Closed
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Marina Rozenberg, MD
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