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How does psychotherapy work?

Ian Pittaway anger, counselling, emotions, feeling sad, feelings, psychotherapy, relationship issues, script, script backlash, Transactional Analysis, transference

Someone who has never experienced psychotherapy may understandably have questions about what it is like, how it works, and why it works. While psychotherapy sessions are different for every person, tailored to a client’s needs, based on the person’s biography and the issues they present, there is nonetheless a general pattern that a series of sessions follows. This article sets out that pattern, intended as a guide for clients.

The general principles of therapy are set out, and we see what that might look like in practice with a fictitious client, Steve, whose relationship is on shaky ground because he repeatedly has arguments that don’t make any sense to himself or his partner.  

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The Drama Triangle: reinforcing the unresolved past

Ian Pittaway anger, anxiety, co-dependence, co-dependency, counselling, Drama Triangle, ego states, emotions, Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another (FDIA), Factitious Disorder Imposed on Self (FDIS), family issues, family roles, FDIA, FDIS, fear, feeling sad, feelings, Munchausen syndrome, Munchausen syndrome by proxy, parenting, Persecutor, projection, projection and denial, projective identification, psychotherapy, racket emotions, relationship issues, Rescuer, sadness, shame, Transactional Analysis, transference, Victim

One of the roles of psychotherapy is to offer the client new ways to understand their emotional dilemma, with the aim of resolving the impasse. When someone keeps replicating the same pattern of discontent, a repeating carousel of unhappy relationships which reinforce the same fear of rejection, or sadness, or anger, it is a potential sign that the Drama Triangle is being enacted.

This article explains the origin of the Drama Triangle in childhood; its three positions – Rescuer, Victim, Persecutor; what the Drama Triangle looks like in practice; and how this can be worked through and resolved in the therapy room.

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Body calming exercise – with downloadable MP3

Ian Pittaway alienation, anger, anxiety, body calming exercise, calming exercise, counselling, depersonalisation, depression, dissociation, emotions, fear, feelings, hypervigilance, panic, panic attack, post-traumatic stress, psychosomatic responses, psychosomatic symptoms, psychotherapy, sadness, self-alienation, transference, trauma

A panic attack is an experience of being overwhelmed by unresolved emotional trauma, an event in the past revisited in the present as if it is happening again. The long-term therapeutic resolution of that trauma is personal and therefore different for each person. In the short-term, the psychosomatic (emotional and physical) alarm response may be calmed by an exercise which brings the person back into the safe here and now. The first part of this article explains the therapeutic theory behind the body calming exercise; and the second part is the exercise itself, available as a downloadable MP3.

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Emotions: why they’re all useful, and the cycle of problems when emotions are blocked

Ian Pittaway anger, anti-depressants, counselling, depression, emotions, fear, feelings, fury, happiness, psychotherapy, racket emotions, rage, Transactional Analysis

The key task of counselling or psychotherapy is to raise a person’s awareness of their own processes, to help them become attentive to their habitual patterns of thoughts and emotions. Of the four basic emotions – happiness, sadness, fear and anger – it is often the case that a person has learned that one emotion is ‘bad’, that they aren’t allowed it, that they should resist feeling it.  

This article outlines the purpose of emotions; why some are blocked or ‘banned’ in some families; how an ‘approved’ emotion is used as a substitute; how the banning of an emotion can lead to a repeated cycle of unresolved feelings; and how psychotherapy can help.

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