The Role of the Psychotherapist: A Psychodynamic and Existential Perpsective

The Role of the Psychotherapist: A Psychodynamic and Existential Perspective

More Than Advice: Understanding the Therapeutic Relationship

Many people begin therapy expecting solutions, techniques, or answers to life's difficulties. While psychotherapy can provide practical tools, the role of the psychotherapist extends far beyond offering advice. The therapist serves as a companion in exploration, helping individuals understand themselves more deeply, confront emotional suffering, and develop a more authentic relationship with their lives.

Both psychodynamic and existential psychotherapy view human distress as meaningful rather than simply symptomatic. Although these approaches differ in emphasis, they share a commitment to understanding the whole person and the unique story that shapes their experience.

The Psychodynamic View: Uncovering the Unconscious

Psychodynamic therapy is rooted in the idea that much of human behaviour is influenced by unconscious processes. Early relationships, unresolved conflicts, and emotional experiences can continue to shape our thoughts, feelings, and behaviours long after we have forgotten them consciously.

From a psychodynamic perspective, the psychotherapist's role is to help bring these hidden patterns into awareness. Through careful listening, reflection, and exploration of the therapeutic relationship itself, the therapist helps clients recognise recurring themes in their lives.

For example, a person who repeatedly experiences rejection in relationships may discover that unconscious expectations formed in childhood influence how they perceive and respond to others. By understanding these patterns, clients gain greater freedom to make different choices.

The psychotherapist is not an expert who dictates solutions. Instead, they create a safe and reflective space where unconscious material can emerge and be understood. The therapeutic relationship becomes a living laboratory in which past experiences are reenacted, explored, and transformed.

Transference and Countertransference: The Relationship as a Therapeutic Tool

A distinctive feature of psychodynamic psychotherapy is the use of transference and countertransference. These processes provide valuable insight into the client's internal world and relational patterns.

Transference refers to the unconscious tendency to experience the therapist through the lens of significant past relationships. Feelings, expectations, and assumptions originally associated with parents, caregivers, or other important figures may be transferred onto the therapist. A client may perceive the therapist as critical, rejecting, idealised, or unavailable, reflecting earlier relational experiences rather than the reality of the therapeutic encounter.

Rather than viewing transference as a problem, psychodynamic therapists understand it as a valuable source of information. As these patterns emerge within therapy, they can be explored and understood in real time. Clients begin to recognise how past experiences continue to influence their current relationships and emotional responses.

Countertransference refers to the therapist's emotional reactions to the client. Contemporary psychodynamic theory recognises that the therapist's feelings, thoughts, and emotional responses can provide important clues about the client's unconscious communications and interpersonal dynamics.

The psychotherapist's role is to observe and reflect upon these reactions carefully rather than act upon them. Through supervision, personal therapy, and ongoing self-reflection, therapists learn to use countertransference thoughtfully and ethically. When understood appropriately, it can deepen the therapist's understanding of the client's experience and strengthen the therapeutic process.

In this way, the therapeutic relationship itself becomes a source of insight and change. Rather than merely discussing problems, therapist and client work together within a relationship where unconscious patterns can be observed, understood, and gradually transformed.

The Existential View: Confronting Life's Fundamental Questions

Existential therapy focuses less on unconscious conflict and more on the fundamental realities of human existence. These include freedom, responsibility, isolation, meaning, and mortality.

Existential thinkers suggest that psychological distress often arises when individuals struggle with these unavoidable aspects of life. Anxiety, for example, is not always a symptom to be eliminated but may be a natural response to uncertainty, choice, and the awareness of our finite existence.

Within this framework, the psychotherapist's role is to help clients engage honestly with life's deepest questions:

• Who am I?
• What gives my life meaning?
• How do I live authentically?
• How do I cope with uncertainty and loss?
• What kind of life do I choose to create?

Rather than offering definitive answers, the therapist encourages exploration and self-discovery. The therapeutic process becomes a dialogue that helps individuals clarify their values, embrace responsibility for their choices, and develop greater authenticity.

The Therapeutic Relationship as a Meeting Between Two People

Both psychodynamic and existential therapies place great importance on the therapeutic relationship.

Psychodynamic therapists view the relationship as a window into unconscious relational patterns. Existential therapists view it as a genuine encounter between two human beings.

While psychodynamic therapy emphasises transference and countertransference as pathways to understanding unconscious processes, existential therapy highlights the authenticity of the therapeutic encounter itself. The therapist is not a detached expert but an engaged participant who brings presence, curiosity, and genuine human responsiveness to the relationship.

In both approaches, healing often occurs not simply through insight but through the experience of being deeply understood and accepted. The therapist offers empathy, attentiveness, and psychological safety while maintaining professional boundaries that support trust and growth.

The therapy room becomes a unique space where clients can explore aspects of themselves that may feel difficult, painful, or hidden in everyday life.

Holding Complexity Rather Than Providing Certainty

Modern culture often seeks quick answers and immediate solutions. Psychotherapy offers something different. Rather than simplifying complex human experiences, it creates room for uncertainty, reflection, and growth.

A psychotherapist helps clients tolerate ambiguity, explore conflicting emotions, and understand the deeper meanings behind their struggles. This process may not always be comfortable, but it can lead to profound personal transformation.

From a psychodynamic perspective, this transformation emerges through increased self-awareness, insight into unconscious processes, and the integration of previously hidden aspects of experience. From an existential perspective, it arises through greater authenticity, freedom, responsibility, and engagement with life's realities.

Conclusion

The role of the psychotherapist is not to direct a person's life but to accompany them in understanding it. Whether working from a psychodynamic or existential framework, therapists help individuals explore their inner worlds, confront difficult truths, and discover new possibilities for living.

By attending to unconscious processes, including transference and countertransference, psychodynamic therapists help clients understand how their past continues to shape the present. Existential therapists help clients face the fundamental challenges of being human and create meaning in the face of uncertainty.

Psychotherapy is ultimately a journey toward greater self-understanding and authenticity. In a world that often encourages avoidance and distraction, the therapeutic relationship offers a rare opportunity to pause, reflect, and engage more fully with oneself, with others, and with life itself.

Why Do We Keep Repeating the Same Patterns? A Psychodynamic and Existential Perspective.

Why Do We Keep Repeating the Same Patterns? A Psychodynamic and Existential Perspective

Have you ever found yourself asking:

"Why do I always end up in the same kind of relationship?"

"Why do I keep putting everyone else's needs before my own?"

"Why do I react so strongly to certain situations, even when I know better?"

Many of us move through life repeating familiar patterns of behaviour without fully understanding where they come from. We may recognise them intellectually, yet feel unable to change them. Psychodynamic and existential psychotherapy offer a powerful explanation for why this happens and, importantly, how change becomes possible.

The Origins of Our Patterns

From the moment we are born, we begin learning about ourselves and the world through our relationships with others. Long before we have words, our experiences with parents, caregivers, siblings, and significant people shape how we understand safety, love, acceptance, and belonging.

As children, we are remarkably adaptable. We develop ways of behaving that help us survive emotionally within our particular environment.

For example:

• A child who experiences criticism may become highly self-critical and perfectionistic.

• A child who feels responsible for a parent's emotional wellbeing may learn to ignore their own needs.

• A child who experiences unpredictability may become hypervigilant and anxious.

• A child who feels unseen may learn to withdraw and rely only on themselves.

At the time, these adaptations make sense. They are creative solutions developed by a young mind trying to navigate its world.

The Psychodynamic View: Defences That Once Protected Us

Psychodynamic theory suggests that many of our adult behaviours originated as unconscious defences.

Sigmund Freud proposed that the mind develops ways of protecting us from overwhelming feelings. Later theorists such as Anna Freud, Melanie Klein, and Donald Winnicott expanded our understanding of how these protective strategies emerge within early relationships.

The problem is not that these defences exist. The problem is that they often remain active long after the original danger has passed.

A child who learned that expressing anger led to rejection may become an adult who never expresses disagreement.

A child who learned that love had to be earned through achievement may become an adult who constantly strives, yet never feels good enough.

The unconscious mind continues to operate according to old emotional rules, even when our adult circumstances are very different.

In many ways, the adult is still responding to yesterday's emotional reality.

The Existential View: Living a Life That No Longer Fits

Existential psychotherapy approaches the issue from a slightly different angle.

Rather than focusing primarily on the past, existential thinkers explore how these inherited patterns shape our experience of being alive in the present.

Over time, our coping strategies can become so familiar that they begin to feel like our personality.

We may tell ourselves:

• "I'm just an anxious person."

• "I'm the strong one."

• "I'm not good with relationships."

• "I always put others first."

These identities can become cages that limit our freedom.

Existential philosophers such as Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre suggested that human beings naturally drift into habitual ways of living. We often follow established patterns because they feel safe and predictable.

Yet something within us continues to seek authenticity.

Part of us knows that we are living according to old scripts rather than our genuine desires, values, and possibilities.

This creates a tension between who we have become and who we might be.

When the Old Defences Stop Working

Many people come to therapy when their long-standing coping strategies begin to fail.

The perfectionist burns out.

The people-pleaser feels resentful and exhausted.

The avoider finds themselves increasingly isolated.

The self-reliant person feels profoundly lonely.

The very strategies that once protected us begin creating suffering.

This can be a painful period. People often describe feeling stuck, confused, lost, or overwhelmed. They know something isn't working, but they may not understand why.

From both psychodynamic and existential perspectives, this crisis is not necessarily a sign that something is wrong.

It may be a sign that growth is trying to happen.

The old ways of surviving are no longer enough.

The psyche is asking for something new.

Therapy as a Space for Understanding

Psychodynamic therapy helps us uncover the unconscious origins of our patterns.

Together, therapist and client explore recurring themes, emotions, relationships, fears, and defences. Gradually, connections emerge between past experiences and present difficulties.

Existential therapy asks different but complementary questions:

• How am I living?

• What choices am I making?

• What am I avoiding?

• What kind of life do I want to create?

• What does authenticity mean for me?

As understanding deepens, choice becomes possible.

Patterns that once felt automatic begin to loosen their grip.

The Possibility of Change

One of the most hopeful aspects of psychotherapy is the recognition that our patterns are not our destiny.

They were learned.

They made sense.

They helped us survive.

But they do not have to define the rest of our lives.

When we understand the emotional logic behind our behaviours, we can begin relating to ourselves with greater compassion rather than criticism.

The goal is not to blame our past or erase it.

The goal is to become conscious of the forces that have shaped us, so that we can respond to life with greater freedom, authenticity, and self-awareness.

Often, the moment we realise "something isn't working anymore" is not the beginning of failure.

It is the beginning of change.

Sonia Phocas

Be One Counselling

www.beonecounselling.com

A warm, confidential space to explore the patterns that shape your life and discover new ways of being.

Why Choose Psychodynamic Psychotherapy

Why Choose Psychodynamic Psychotherapy?

Understanding Yourself Beneath the Surface

Sometimes emotional struggles can feel like an iceberg. We notice the anxiety, low mood, relationship difficulties, panic or feeling "stuck" on the surface, but underneath there may be deeper patterns quietly shaping how we think, feel and relate to others.

Psychodynamic psychotherapy is a form of talking therapy that helps people explore those deeper emotional layers. Rather than only focusing on symptoms, it looks at the roots of emotional difficulties and how past experiences may still influence present life.

It is a therapy of insight, self-understanding, emotional healing and meaningful change.

What Is Psychodynamic Psychotherapy?

Psychodynamic psychotherapy developed from the work of Sigmund Freud, often considered the father of psychoanalysis. Freud believed that unconscious thoughts, early childhood experiences and unresolved conflicts can shape our emotional world without us fully realising it.

Over time, psychodynamic therapy evolved into a more modern, relational and compassionate approach. Influential thinkers such as Anna Freud, Melanie Klein, and Donald Winnicott expanded these ideas and explored how early relationships affect emotional development, identity, attachment and self-esteem.

Today, psychodynamic psychotherapy is widely used to support people with anxiety, depression, trauma, relationship issues, panic attacks, low self-worth and emotional difficulties that may feel difficult to explain.

The Main Idea Behind Psychodynamic Therapy

Psychodynamic therapy asks an important question:

“Why do I keep feeling, reacting, or relating in this way?”

Rather than simply managing symptoms, therapy explores:

• Repeating emotional patterns

• Unconscious fears and conflicts

• Early attachment experiences

• Difficult relationships

• Emotional wounds from the past

• Defence mechanisms and coping styles

• Feelings that may have been pushed aside or unspoken

Sometimes we develop ways of coping that once protected us, but no longer serve us well in adult life.

For example:

• People pleasing may develop from fear of rejection

• Emotional withdrawal may come from past hurt

• Anxiety may be linked to unresolved fear or insecurity

• Perfectionism may hide deeper feelings of inadequacy

Psychodynamic psychotherapy helps bring these patterns into awareness so they can be understood rather than simply repeated.

The Benefits of Psychodynamic Psychotherapy

Greater Self-Awareness

Therapy can help you understand why you think, feel and react the way you do. Many people begin to notice patterns that they were previously unaware of.

Long-Term Emotional Change

Rather than offering quick fixes, psychodynamic therapy aims for deeper and more lasting emotional growth.

Improved Relationships

Understanding attachment styles, communication patterns and unconscious expectations can improve relationships with partners, family, friends and even yourself.

Reduced Anxiety and Depression

Research shows psychodynamic therapy can be highly effective in reducing symptoms of anxiety and depression, particularly when emotional difficulties are rooted in long-standing patterns or unresolved experiences.

A Safe Space to Reflect

Life often moves quickly. Therapy creates space to pause and explore emotions that may have been ignored, buried, or difficult to express.

Better Emotional Regulation

People often become more able to tolerate emotions without feeling overwhelmed, shut down, or reactive.

Stronger Sense of Identity

Therapy can help people reconnect with who they are beneath anxiety, trauma, expectations, or emotional survival strategies. 

Important Figures in Psychodynamic Therapy

Sigmund Freud

Freud introduced the idea that unconscious thoughts and childhood experiences influence behaviour and emotional life. He believed that talking openly could help uncover hidden conflicts and promote healing.

Anna Freud

Anna Freud expanded her father’s work and explored defence mechanisms, the psychological strategies people unconsciously use to protect themselves from emotional pain.

Melanie Klein

Klein focused on early childhood relationships and emotional development. Her work explored how early experiences shape feelings of safety, trust, anxiety and connection.

Donald Winnicott

Winnicott introduced important ideas about attachment, emotional development and the “true self.” He emphasised the importance of a safe, reliable environment for emotional growth and healing.

One of his best-known concepts is the idea of the “good enough parent,” recognising that perfection is neither possible nor necessary for healthy emotional development.

What Happens in a Psychodynamic Therapy Session?

Sessions usually involve open conversation in a calm, confidential, and non-judgemental space.

You may talk about:

• Current struggles

• Relationships

• Childhood experiences

• Dreams or recurring thoughts

• Anxiety or low mood

• Feelings that are difficult to express

• Repeating patterns in life

The therapist does not "tell you who you are"  or "tell you what to do." Instead, therapy becomes a collaborative process of curiosity, reflection and understanding.

Over time, connections often begin to emerge between past experiences and present emotional difficulties.

Is Psychodynamic Therapy Right for You?

Psychodynamic psychotherapy may be helpful if you:

• Feel stuck in repeating patterns

• Struggle with anxiety, depression, or low self-esteem

• Experience relationship difficulties

• Want deeper self-understanding

• Feel emotionally overwhelmed or disconnected

• Have unresolved grief or trauma

• Often wonder why you react strongly to certain situations

• Want lasting emotional change rather than short-term symptom management

Final Thoughts

Psychodynamic psychotherapy is not about blaming the past. It is about understanding how your experiences may have shaped you, and creating the opportunity for greater freedom, self-awareness, and emotional wellbeing in the present.

Sometimes the mind carries old stories quietly beneath the surface. Therapy offers a space where those stories can finally be heard, understood and gently transformed.

Therapy available in Greek and English.

Be One Counselling

www.beonecounselling.com

Navigating the Depths: Couples Therapy

Navigating the Depths: Couples Therapy Through Psychodynamic and Existential Lenses

When a couple walks into a therapy room, they are usually looking for a tactical fix. They want to know how to stop a recurring argument, how to negotiate chores, or how to repair a communication "glitch."

But as therapists, we know that the surface-level argument is rarely the real argument.

When we look at relationships through the combined lenses of psychodynamic and existential psychotherapy, we move past the quick fixes. Instead, we invite couples to explore the unconscious blueprints of their past and the profound, sometimes terrifying, freedoms of their present. Here is a look at how these two profound modalities intersect to create deep, lasting relational transformation.

The Psychodynamic Approach: Unpacking the "Ghost" in the Room

Psychodynamic couples therapy operates on a core truth: we do not marry a stranger; we marry our unfinished business. Our early childhood

attachments form the template for how we expect to be loved, rejected, or abandoned.

In the therapy room, this manifests in a few distinct ways:

● Object Relations and Projection: We often unconsciously select partners who possess both the positive and negative traits of our primary caregivers. If a client felt chronically dismissed by an emotionally unavailable parent, they may project that same unavailability onto their partner, reacting to a minor moment of distraction as if it were a catastrophic abandonment.

● The Repetition Compulsion: Couples often recreate the painful dynamics of their childhoods in a subconscious attempt to "rewrite the ending." The therapist’s role is to help the couple see that they are playing out an old script.

● Collusive Defenses: Couples often form an unconscious pact. For example, one partner acts out all the anger for both of them, while the other plays the rational, detached peacemaker.

By interpreting these dynamics, the psychodynamic therapist helps the couple move from blame ("You are doing this to me") to insight ("We are caught in an old dance together").

The Existential Approach: Meeting in the "Here and Now"

While the psychodynamic lens looks backward to understand the why, the existential lens looks directly at the now to understand the what next. Existential couples therapy is grounded in the "givens" of human existence: freedom, isolation, meaning, and mortality.

In a relationship, these existential realities show up as core anxieties:

● The Illusion of Oneness: Many couples seek therapy because they are terrified of the space between them. Existential therapy challenges the romantic myth of "two becoming one." It helps partners accept their

fundamental aloneness—realizing that no matter how close they are,

they remain two separate entities.

● The Terror of Freedom and Responsibility: It is easier to blame a

partner for one’s unhappiness than to admit, "I am free, and I am responsible for my own life choices." Existential therapy pushes partners to claim their agency rather than playing the victim to the relationship.

● Choosing Authenticity Over Harmony: Many couples maintain a "false peace" by suppressing their true feelings to avoid conflict. An existential therapist encourages radical, authentic encounters in the room, believing that a relationship built on a facade is inherently fragile.

The Integration: Where the Past Meets the Present

How do these two approaches harmonize in a live session? Imagine a couple arguing about a forgotten anniversary.

The psychodynamic intervention uncovers why the forgotten date feels like a soul-crushing rejection (linking it back to a childhood where milestone events were routinely ignored by a parent).

Once that insight is integrated, the existential intervention takes over. The therapist invites the wounded partner to tolerate the anxiety of their partner's human fallibility, to accept the reality that their partner cannot perfectly heal their childhood wounds, and to consciously choose how to respond in the present moment.

A Deeper Way to Love

By weaving together the psychodynamic and existential approaches, couples therapy ceases to be a courtroom where partners litigate who is right and who is wrong. Instead, the therapy room becomes a sacred space where two adults learn to dismantle their old defenses, stand firmly in their own existential skin, and choose to love each other not out of need, but out of freedom.

www.beonecounselling.com

Be One Counselling

In the Shadow of Winter 

A Deeper Look at Seasonal Affective Disorder

Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) often gets described as “winter depression,” but that phrase barely scratches the surface. From an existential and psychodynamic lens, SAD can feel less like a simple reaction to darker days and more like a quiet, recurring descent into an inner landscape that mirrors the outer season.

An existential perspective: when the world dims, meaning flickers

Existentially, human beings are meaning-makers, living in a world that doesn’t always cooperate. Winter, with its shortened days and muted colours, can feel like the environment withdrawing its invitation to engage. The light goes, and with it, a certain sense of aliveness.

SAD can be understood as an intensified confrontation with existential givens:

• ●  Isolation: As social activity reduces, the sense of separateness can sharpen. The world feels further away, people less reachable.

• ●  Meaninglessness: The usual structures that provide purpose like activity, movement and connection lose their vitality. What once felt engaging can feel flat or hollow.

• ●  Embodiment and limitation: The body slows, energy drops. This can feel like a reminder of our limits, even our mortality.

• ●  Freedom and paralysis: Existential theory speaks of freedom as both gift and burden. In SAD, the reduced energy and motivation can create a painful tension between what one could do and what one feels capable of doing.

  Winter becomes symbolic. It can echo an inner “wintering,” where parts of the self feel dormant, disconnected, or stripped of meaning. For some, this stirs deeper questions: What sustains me when the external world offers less? Who am I when I am not “doing”?

• 
  

A psychodynamic perspective: the return of the internal winter

From a psychodynamic viewpoint, SAD may be less about the season itself and more about what the season activates internally.

Darkness, cold, and withdrawal can resonate with earlier emotional experiences:

• ●  Loss and absence: Shorter days may unconsciously evoke early experiences of separation, neglect, or emotional unavailability. The fading light can symbolise a withdrawing caregiver or lost connection.

• ●  Regression: Lower energy and increased sleep can be understood as a form of regression, a return to a more dependent, inward state where unresolved feelings may surface.

• ●  Unprocessed affect: When external stimulation decreases, internal material often becomes louder. Feelings that are usually kept at bay by busyness may emerge: sadness, anger, longing.

• 
  

• ●  Internal objects: The “darkness” may not just be environmental but relational, an activation of internalised figures that feel critical, absent or unresponsive.

  In this sense, SAD can be seen as a seasonal reactivation of an internal emotional climate. The external winter provides the conditions in which the internal world becomes more dominant, sometimes overwhelming.                                                                                                                          

  Where both perspectives meet

  Both existential and psychodynamic approaches converge on a key idea: SAD is not only about light exposure, but about our relationship with the world, with others and with oneself.

• 
  

• ●  The existential lens highlights a disruption in meaning and connection with the world.

• ●  The psychodynamic lens highlights a reawakening of internal relational patterns and emotional histories.

Together, they suggest that SAD is both a loss of outer light and a turning toward inner darkness—and that darkness may carry both pain and information.

Symptoms of SAD

People experiencing Seasonal Affective Disorder may notice a cluster of emotional, cognitive, and physical symptoms:

• ●  Depressed mood: Feeling persistently sad, anxious, or empty.

• ●  Loss of interest or pleasure: Decreased interest in activities you once enjoyed.

• ●  Low energy: Feeling fatigued or having low energy levels, even with sufficient

  sleep.

• ●  Changes in sleep patterns: Sleeping too much or experiencing insomnia.

• ●  Changes in appetite or weight: Craving carbohydrates and gaining weight, or

  losing interest in food and losing weight.

• ●  Difficulty concentrating: Finding it hard to focus or experiencing brain fog.

• ●  Feeling hopeless or worthless: Negative thoughts about oneself or life in general.

• ●  Social withdrawal: Avoiding social interactions or feeling disconnected from

  others.

• ●  Irritability: Feeling agitated, easily annoyed, or experiencing mood swings.

• ●  Physical symptoms: Some individuals may experience physical symptoms like

  headaches or body aches.                                                                                                                      

  A gentle closing thought

  SAD can feel like being pulled into a dimly lit room with no obvious exit. But from these perspectives, the room is not empty. It is furnished with meaning, memory and parts of the self that may not get much attention during brighter seasons.

  The work, therapeutically, is not only to “get out of the dark,” but to understand what the dark is holding, saying, and how to move through it without losing oneself inside it.                             

https://www.beonecounselling.com/

Be One Counselling

When The Past Won't Stay Past: A Psychodynamic and Existential Look at PTSD and CPTSD

When the Past Won’t Stay Past: A Psychodynamic and Existential Look at PTSD and CPTSD

Trauma has a strange sense of time. It doesn’t behave like a memory filed neatly in a cabinet. It’s more like a song that keeps restarting mid-chorus, uninvited, at full volume, when you’re just trying to make a cup of tea.

When people talk about trauma, they often mean PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder). But there’s also CPTSD (Complex PTSD), which tends to grow not from one overwhelming event, but from repeated, relational experiences over time, often in childhood or close relationships. Think of PTSD as a lightning strike. CPTSD is more like living for years under a sky that never quite clears.

Let’s wander through this landscape together, with two lenses: psychodynamic and existential. One looks backward, tracing the roots. The other looks outward, asking what it all means to be human in the aftermath.

The Psychodynamic Lens: The Past is Still Breathing

From a psychodynamic perspective, trauma doesn’t just “happen and end.” It gets woven into the fabric of the mind, particularly in the parts that don’t speak in words.

Unprocessed trauma tends to live in:

• bodily sensations

• emotional reactions

• relational patterns

A person might know they are safe, yet feel unsafe. That’s because the nervous system is still responding to an older script.

In PTSD, this often shows up as:

• flashbacks

• nightmares

• hypervigilance

In CPTSD, the imprint goes deeper into the personality structure:

• chronic shame

• difficulty trusting others

• unstable sense of self

• patterns of attachment that feel confusing or painful

Psychodynamically, we might say the past hasn’t been symbolised properly. It hasn’t been digested. So instead of being remembered, it is re-lived.

There’s also the idea of repetition. The psyche, in its stubborn wisdom, sometimes recreates familiar emotional environments, not because it enjoys suffering, but because it is trying to resolve something unfinished. It’s like returning to the same locked door, hoping this time it might open.

CPTSD and Relationships: Where the Wound Learns to Speak

CPTSD is often relational in origin, so it shows up most vividly in relationships.

You might see:

• intense fear of abandonment

• difficulty with boundaries

• emotional numbing followed by overwhelm

• a constant scanning for danger in others

From a psychodynamic view, early relationships become templates. If care was inconsistent, intrusive, or unsafe, the internal world carries those patterns forward.

So a present-day partner, friend, or even therapist can accidentally step into roles that belong to the past. Not literally, of course, but emotionally. The mind says, “I’ve been here before,” even when it hasn’t.

The Existential Lens: What Happens to Meaning After Trauma?

If psychodynamic thinking asks, “What happened to you?”, existential thinking asks, “What does it mean to be you, now?”

Trauma can shake the foundations of existence:

• Is the world safe?

• Can I trust others?

• Who am I, really?

• What does the future hold?

After trauma, these questions don’t feel philosophical. They feel urgent.

For someone with PTSD or CPTSD, the world can lose its predictability. Life stops feeling like a story with a direction and starts to feel like a series of unpredictable jolts. The sense of continuity, of being the same “me” across time, can fracture.

There’s also a confrontation with vulnerability. Trauma strips away the comforting illusion that we are in control. And that can lead to:

• anxiety

• despair

• a sense of isolation

But existential thought doesn’t stop there. It also holds a quieter, more hopeful idea: that even within constraint, there is still the possibility of choice, meaning, and authorship.

Not in a simplistic “everything happens for a reason” way. More in the sense that:
something happened, and now I must decide how I live with it.

The Meeting Point: Where Insight and Meaning Shake Hands

When you bring these two approaches together, something interesting happens.

The psychodynamic lens helps us understand:

• why certain feelings are so intense

• why patterns repeat

• why the body reacts before the mind can think

The existential lens helps us explore:

• how to live with this history

• how to rebuild a sense of self

• how to find meaning without denying pain

Together, they create a kind of dialogue between past and present.

Therapy as a Living Space

In therapy, especially relational or psychodynamic work, something subtle but powerful happens. The therapy room becomes a place where:

• past patterns emerge in real time

• feelings can be named and understood

• new relational experiences can be felt, not just thought about

For someone with CPTSD, this can be particularly important. Healing is not just about insight. It’s about experiencing a relationship that feels different. Safer. More consistent. More real.

From an existential angle, therapy is also a place to gently ask:

• Who am I beyond what happened to me?

• What kind of life do I want to shape now?

A Final Thought

Trauma can make life feel like it’s been hijacked by the past. Like you’re living in a loop written by someone else.

But the story is not frozen.

Psychodynamic work helps you understand the script. Existential work helps you decide what to do with it.

And somewhere between the two, there’s a quiet, stubborn possibility:
that even if the past still echoes, it doesn’t get the final word.

https://www.beonecounselling.com/

Be One Counselling

World Mental Health Day: Listening to the Unconscious

World Mental Health Day: Listening to the Unconscious

Each year, World Mental Health Day invites us to think about our emotional wellbeing, but “mental health” is more than the absence of distress. From a psychodynamic perspective, it’s about cultivating a deeper understanding of our inner world: the thoughts, feelings, and unconscious patterns that quietly shape our lives.

The Unconscious at Work

Much of what influences our mental state happens beneath awareness. Old experiences, particularly early relationships, leave emotional traces that inform how we relate to ourselves and others. When life becomes stressful or uncertain, these traces can reappear in disguised forms: anxiety, irritability, perfectionism, or withdrawal.

In psychodynamic terms, these are often defences, ways the mind protects us from painful feelings or memories that once felt overwhelming. They are not “bad” or “wrong”; they are creative adaptations. Yet over time, what once helped us survive can start to limit how freely we live and connect.

The Value of Reflection

Taking a psychodynamic stance means slowing down and becoming curious about what lies beneath our surface reactions.

Why do certain situations stir such strong emotions?

Why do some patterns in relationships seem to repeat?

What might my symptoms be trying to express?

This kind of inquiry isn’t about blame or diagnosis, but about meaning. It allows us to see our difficulties not as signs of weakness, but as communications from the unconscious, as signals that something inside us is asking to be understood.

Therapy as a Space for Discovery

In the therapy room, the therapeutic relationship itself becomes a mirror for unconscious patterns. Feelings that arise between client and therapist, such as trust, frustration, or longing are not incidental. They are part of the work. Through this relational lens, we can begin to notice and gently reinterpret old emotional templates.
The process of insight can be subtle and gradual, but its effects are profound. As we make sense of what once felt chaotic or confusing, we develop a stronger and more integrated sense of self.

Making Mental Health Day Meaningful

On this World Mental Health Day, instead of focusing solely on “coping” or “positivity,” we might also honour the complexity of being human.

We might ask:

What part of myself have I been avoiding?

What emotions keep resurfacing, asking to be noticed?

What would it be like to listen to my inner world with curiosity rather than criticism?

True mental health involves not just the management of symptoms, but the ongoing process of self-discovery: the understanding of how our past informs (and forms) our present, and how awareness opens the door to change.

A Final Reflection

The psychodynamic approach reminds us that the mind is layered, symbolic, and deeply relational. To look inward is not self-indulgent, rather it is an act of compassion and courage.
Therapy offers a unique space to pause, reflect, and listen more deeply to yourself. If you’re curious about what your feelings might be trying to tell you, consider reaching out to begin that conversation.
Psychodynamic therapy is rooted in the belief that growth happens through understanding and relationship. If you’d like to explore your experiences in a thoughtful and supportive setting, therapy can be a meaningful place to start. 

https://www.counsellingbirmingham.com/