Tuula Rasen

Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist | BPC BACP

[Word @umarfof]

Be teachable. You’re not always right.

[Tuula Rasen @TherapySE12]

“You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days.”

― Alain de Botton

[Tuula Rasen @TherapySE12]

"Although it is painful and frustrating to recognise that nothing meaningful can be fixed by pressing a button, I also find it grounding. It’s a relief to recognise that I’m in all these processes and each has its own life"

https://t.co/tPMBqA1OZx

[Tuula Rasen @TherapySE12]

Why does meaningful psychotherapy take a long time? ⬇️

Why does real change take a long time? ⬇️

"Expect anything worthwhile to take a long time."

— Debbie Millman

[Tuula Rasen @TherapySE12]

🎯

[Jonathan Shedler @JonathanShedler]

8 myths about psychoanalytic therapy*

(If they taught you any this in your training, your instructors didn’t know what they were talking about. Sorry.)

❌Therapist is largely silent
❌Therapist is a stone-faced blank screen
❌Therapist doesn’t express opinions/judgments about what patient says
❌Therapist never discloses their own emotional reactions
❌Therapy is about repressed memories
❌The main focus is sex and aggression
❌Breakthroughs happen in a dramatic emotional catharsis
❌Therapies go on endlessly

Yes, these are myths. Every one of them. I’m sorry if you believed whoever told you any of these things. I’m especially sorry if they were people you looked up to.

*adapted from Glen Gabbard, Long-Term Psychodynamic Psychotherapy

[Tuula Rasen @TherapySE12]

From 1917, Freud's discernment of grief and depression:

“In mourning, it is the world which has become poor and empty; in melancholia, it is the ego itself.”

One of his most famous quotes that continues to age well.

[Tuula Rasen @TherapySE12]

"The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge."

— Bertrand Russell

[Tuula Rasen @TherapySE12]

"The break is part of the treatment. Deeper change is made possible by the therapist’s absence and the patient’s survival of it. It hurts [.]"

[Moya Sarner @MoyaSarner]

This week's column is on the importance - and conflicts - of taking a break, in therapy as in life. And I will see you in September...

https://t.co/T9ryLGjmPE

[Tuula Rasen @TherapySE12]

"Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new."

— Ursula K. Le Guin

[In Libro Veritas @InlibroV]

"Far more crucial than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know."

Eric Hoffer
Passionate State of Mind

[Jonathan Shedler @JonathanShedler]

Oftentimes, patients do not come to therapy to change. Not really.

They say and think they want to change. It soon becomes evident they want to continue being exactly the person they have been, and living life in the same self-defeating ways—but feel better doing it.

Real psychotherapy begins with helping the person to understand not only intellectually, but to truly take to heart, that what they want is impossible.

In other words, the real work of therapy may begin with crushing disappointment, as the patient struggles to reconcile with the painful truth: neither the therapist nor anyone else has the power to give them what they want.

To feel different, they must become different. And there is no bypass around that psychological work.

Paradoxically, it is this terrible disappointment that opens the door to realistic hope.

Sadly, for every therapist who understands this and is prepared to join the patient in doing the difficult work, there are many more “therapists” happy to bolster the patient's illusion that they can can feel different without becoming different, and therapy can work by magic.

Choose wisely.

[Tuula Rasen @TherapySE12]

"[S]eems to me that being whatever someone else wants us to be is the exact opposite of growing up into our own adult selves." 🎯

— Moya Sarner (2022) When I Grow Up: Conversations with Adults in Search of Adulthood.

[Tuula Rasen @TherapySE12]

👇🎯

[BrightonPsych @BrightonPsych]

Depth therapy doesn’t work because the psychotherapist is always available to the patient, it works because we are not. It’s in the waiting, the frustration, the rupture and repair, that the internal world begins to shift.

[BrightonPsych @BrightonPsych]

Many people come to therapy saying they want to "feel happier." But what does that mean?

And is happiness really the opposite of depression?

Not in my opinion. Let’s take a closer look. 🧵

[Tuula Rasen @TherapySE12]

“Dreams are the royal road to the unconscious” 🎯

— Sigmund Freud

[Tuula Rasen @TherapySE12]

Indifference breeds isolation and loneliness, while meaning fosters connection and a sense of belonging. 👇

[Jonathan Shedler @JonathanShedler]

“Loneliness is not just the absence of people. It is the absence of purpose, the absence of meaning. When you find yourself in a world where everything seems alien and distant, where every connection is superficial, and every attempt at understanding is met with indifference, you realize that true loneliness is not being alone, but feeling alone in a world that no longer makes sense.”

—Haruki Murakami

[Jonathan Shedler @JonathanShedler]

“The experience of speaking from the heart and being taken seriously builds the psychic architecture that supports the capacity to bear life”

—Nancy McWilliams

[Tuula Rasen @TherapySE12]

"Slower is faster" 🎯

[Jonathan Shedler @JonathanShedler]

The goal of psychotherapy is to insert spaces for awareness where they have not previously existed—and so create opportunities to know ourselves more fully, connect with others more deeply, and live life more congruently

Real psychotherapy is about slowing down—so we can begin to see and understand the patterns that otherwise happen quickly, automatically, without awareness or reflection

Never-ending claims about new ways of “optimizing” or maximizing efficiency betray a misunderstanding of psychotherapy at the most fundamental level. We find ourselves in difficulties because we *cannot* slow down to notice and reflect

👉The rush to optimize every facet of life is the disease not the cure👈

In the spaces, in the pauses we don’t otherwise allow to occur, lie choices we didn’t previously recognize as choices. In those unrecognized spaces lies freedom—freedom from repeating the same painful, self-defeating patterns, freedom to do choose differently, freedom to become better versions of ourselves

This does not and cannot happen on a production schedule

Slower is faster

The relevant question is not, how efficient (quick & cheap) can we make it

The relevant questions are
How self-aware do we wish to be?
How whole do we wish to become?

[Tuula Rasen @TherapySE12]

"[A]lmost everything else is considered to be more important than love: success, prestige, money, power — almost all our energy is used for the learning of how to achieve these aims, and almost none to learn the art of loving."

— Erich Fromm, 1957