It seems astounding to me, although I grant you I\u2019m biased, that people still question whether psychotherapy works.\u00a0 The data is so compelling.\u00a0 If you Google the issue you will find plenty of research proving that, yes, it heals.<\/p>\n
At a more personal level, three examples come to mind, triggered by a patient who recently described her own astonishing response.\u00a0 Even if you are among the converted who already know psychotherapy helps these are powerful and fun examples.<\/p>\n
A man I know suffered his entire adult life from three very intrusive physical problems.\u00a0 First, he had serious, almost debilitating seasonal allergies.\u00a0 He had to take medications, including injections, and still he would sometimes be almost unable to drag himself to work because he was so tired from sneezing and lack of sleep.\u00a0 Second, the allergies sometimes precipitated attacks of asthma; he needed an inhaler and on a few occasions hospitalization.\u00a0 Finally, despite being athletic all his life he suffered bouts of pain and spasm in his lower back which also necessitated several hospitalizations.\u00a0 He is not a psychologically minded person. \u00a0Until his wife said \u201ceither talk to someone or we\u2019re done\u201d he never gave psychotherapy of thought, except with some typically macho disdain. \u00a0The brief course of treatment may have saved his marriage \u2013 he often spoke of his therapist as “the smartest woman in the world” \u2013 but after about six months, once his marriage seemed back on track, he dropped out of treatment; his physical symptoms continued for another 10 years.\u00a0 Then he retired.\u00a0 Suddenly, quite miraculously it seemed to him and to all of us, his physical problems simply disappeared.\u00a0 Within months he was free from allergies, asthma, and back pain.<\/p>\n
Lucy Freeman was a New York Times reporter and a classic New York City type.\u00a0 (I live here and clam the right to say that.)\u00a0 She was high strung, angry, unhappy, and often unable to sleep; she suffered chronic and severe sinus headaches, stomach upset, and fatigue.\u00a0 After medical treatments failed she sought psychoanalysis.\u00a0\u00a0 In her book “Fight against Fears” she describes how shortly after entering this treatment her physical symptoms suddenly, dramatically disappeared.<\/p>\n
Finally, one of my own patients once described an episode of joint pain and headache so severe that she almost could not walk across a room.\u00a0 This was a woman who had recently lost her job, was struggling with a series of painful family stresses, and had a chronic need to apologize, explain herself, and in general feel guilty and constricted.\u00a0 The last thing she could do was acknowledge and attend to physical or emotional discomfort.\u00a0 Particularly while searching for employment and struggling with other pressures she could scarcely consider anything but the next chore.\u00a0 The physical symptoms had occurred in the past, but not since entering treatment; their re-emergence was frightening to her.\u00a0 But over the course of our sessions, she had begun to realize a few things:\u00a0 1) She was not always to blame for the discord around her, the squabbles and animosity among her family members and at her place of employment, or the assault she suffered at the hands of a mentally ill neighbor;\u00a0 2) feelings are real and must be addressed just as one addresses a broken leg.<\/p>\n
It was the second lesson in particular that she was forgetting.\u00a0 This is why her anxiety, frustration, and despair intensified from behavioral symptoms \u2013 emotional tension, persistent apologizing, worry, disturbed sleep \u2013 into the physical symptoms of joint pain and headache.<\/p>\n
When she managed to stop and reflect a little on what was going on in her life, she suddenly realized that all of this was happening on her father’s birthday.\u00a0 She then found herself remembering the rest of her family situation \u2013 multiple estrangements and humiliations \u2013 and how sad and distressing it all was for her.\u00a0 From here her mind went to a gentle inventory of her current situation and again she was able to let herself feel the pain of it all.\u00a0 There was a bout of tears, after which her physical pain was gone.\u00a0 It did not return.\u00a0 By the way, this case example demonstrates one of the themes I’ve discussed in early blog entries (why get in touch<\/a>, and others<\/a> you can click through to see) about why it\u2019s so damned important to do that awful-sounding task of \u201cgetting in touch with your feelings\u201d:\u00a0 Because when you don\u2019t, you have symptoms; and when you do, the symptoms go away!<\/p>\n These three examples are, I admit, among the most dramatic.\u00a0 More typical responses to psychotherapy are described elsewhere in this blog (see links in previous paragraph) and in the many case example in the website<\/a>.\u00a0 But let\u2019s put to bed this archaic notion that psychotherapy is some kind of silly fad for whiny people and it doesn’t do anything.\u00a0 Bad<\/span> psychotherapy doesn’t do anything; the good kind does a lot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It seems astounding to me, although I grant you I\u2019m biased, that people still question whether psychotherapy works.\u00a0 The data is so compelling.\u00a0 If you Google the issue you will find plenty of research proving that, yes, it heals. At … Continue reading