Psychodynamic Psychotherapy and How It’s Different Than CBT

Psychodynamic therapy places a strong emphasis on understanding the unconscious aspects of your mind and how they influence your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. It involves exploring past experiences, early relationships, and current relationships to determine how these relationships have had an impact on your current struggles. Often, early relationship dynamics in particular offer a window of understanding into how you first learned to manage stress and emotions. Psychodynamics explores emotions (eg. anger, sadness, fear, etc) in depth, including how well you tolerate them, how your brain tries to protect you from them, and how this automatic protection can sometimes have large impacts on your relationships and ultimately your mood. This deeper exploration can lead to profound insights, what we like to call “aha” moments.

Psychodynamic therapy aims to identify recurring patterns and themes in your life. By uncovering these patterns and understanding their origins, you can gain insight into why you might be repeating certain behaviors or experiencing repetitive relationship difficulties. This understanding can help you make lasting changes and break free from the cycle.

The therapeutic relationship is a central component of psychodynamic therapy. The therapist provides a supportive, empathetic, and non-judgmental environment, allowing for the deep exploration we’ve spoken about. This relationship serves as a safe space to examine and work through conflicts with your therapist. Psychodynamics is particularly unique in that it allows for use of the “transference,” defined as the repetition of past experiences in the present, to better understand you. Using transference involves using the therapeutic relationship, particularly the exchanges that occur between the you and the therapist to extrapolate patterns that may also occur in your day-to-day life. Bringing insight into these transference interactions also furthers your understanding of yourself and ultimately leads to growth.

If you’re interested in what kind of clinical data there is in the medical literature to support the use of psychodynamic psychotherapy, take a look at our article “Psychodynamic Psychotherapy – What The Medical Literature Says,” where we discuss the extensive evidence in support of its use. It’s important to note that CBT also has its own strengths, such as its practical focus on changing thoughts and behaviors and its effectiveness for specific conditions like anxiety disorders. The choice between psychodynamic therapy and CBT depends on your individual needs, preferences, and therapeutic goals. It can be helpful to discuss these options with a mental health professional to determine which approach aligns best with your unique situation.