The benefits of psychotherapy don’t come from self-disclosure. They come from working through inner obstacles (like shame and fear of judgment) to self-disclosure. This work must happen in the therapy relationship. Take it outside the relationship and it’s no longer therapy. Psychotherapy works because there is skin in the game. In all relationships, including psychotherapy, there is vulnerability and risk. You may feel shamed. You may be judged. You may be rejected. Remove these risks and you remove the therapy. It becomes a meaningless illusion. It’s the illusion that there is such a thing as connection without vulnerability. There isn’t. It’s the illusion of understanding, without risk of misunderstanding. It’s the illusion of facing emotional risks, without actual bravery. It’s buying into a comforting lie. Real psychotherapy is never a game of pretend. It’s never about comforting illusion in place of difficult truth. It’s about facing ourselves honestly, in a real relationship that comes with real risk. This is how emotional change and growth happen. The core defining feature of real psychotherapy is facing the truth, and telling the truth, and living the truth. Not living in illusion. So many want a bypass. There is no bypass.

“Good psychotherapy creates the conditions for its own expiration because the patient will no longer need us. As Winnicott noted, ‘We all hope our patients will finish with us and forget us, and they will find living itself to be the therapy that makes sense.’” —Nancy McWilliams

Some therapists speak of trauma work / shadow work / family of origin work / dream work / parts work / attachment work / etc. etc. as if they were separate things or special skill sets Psychodynamic therapist don’t use these terms. Frankly, they sound silly to us. They’re the bread and butter of what we do, day in day out We also have a special term for this kind of work. We call it “psychotherapy”