Psychodynamic Therapy
What Psychodynamic Therapy is and how trauma-informed therapists may use it.
Psychodynamic Therapy
What this modality focuses on
Psychodynamic therapy is an approach that pays close attention to how past experiences, relationships, and emotional patterns may be influencing life in the present. It often explores the “deeper layers” of thoughts and feelings, including reactions that might feel confusing, automatic, or hard to explain.
This modality often focuses on:
- Unconscious patterns: Feelings, beliefs, or habits that may be outside everyday awareness but still shape choices, relationships, and self-image.
- Early relationships and attachment: How experiences with caregivers and important people in the past may influence how safety, trust, and connection are experienced now.
- Inner conflicts: Mixed or opposing feelings, such as wanting closeness and also feeling wary of it, or wanting to speak up and also feeling afraid to do so.
- Defense and coping patterns: Ways of protecting oneself emotionally, like numbing feelings, disconnecting, people-pleasing, or joking about painful experiences.
- Repeating relational patterns: Noticing if similar dynamics seem to show up again and again in friendships, family, work, or intimate relationships.
The overall focus is often on understanding the “why underneath” emotional pain or stuck places, with the hope that increased awareness can open space for new ways of relating to oneself and others.
How it may support trauma survivors
Some trauma survivors are drawn to psychodynamic therapy because it pays attention to the long-term impact of experience, not only to specific symptoms. It can offer room to explore how trauma may have shaped beliefs about safety, trust, worthiness, and relationships.
In a psychodynamic approach, exploration may include:
- Making sense of the past: Tracing how earlier experiences, including trauma, might connect with current emotions, triggers, or relationship patterns.
- Understanding survival strategies: Looking at coping behaviors not as “failures” but as creative ways the mind and body tried to stay safe, even if those strategies no longer feel helpful.
- Exploring identity and self-worth: Gently questioning messages learned from harmful or invalidating environments, and considering alternative, more self-compassionate views.
- Repairing relational expectations: Noticing expectations like “people will leave,” “I will not be believed,” or “my needs are too much,” and exploring where they may have come from.
- Integrating complex feelings: Allowing space for grief, anger, loyalty, confusion, or ambivalence that may surround people or places connected to traumatic experiences.
For many people, having steady, predictable space to explore painful histories at their own pace can feel supportive alongside other resources, community, or self-directed healing tools such as those shared on sites like https://www.dv.support.
What sessions may typically include (neutral, gentle)
Psychodynamic therapy is often conversational and reflective. The pace may be slower, with time spent noticing and exploring feelings rather than quickly moving to specific strategies or action plans.
Sessions may gently include:
- Free-flowing conversation: Space to talk about whatever feels most present—current stress, dreams, memories, relationship concerns, or body sensations connected to emotions.
- Exploring patterns: Curiosity about how certain themes keep showing up, such as feeling rejected, overlooked, controlled, or abandoned.
- Linking present and past: Wondering together how a current reaction might be connected with earlier experiences of hurt, fear, or disconnection.
- Attention to emotions: Noticing shifts in feelings during the session, such as discomfort, numbness, anger, relief, or tenderness.
- Reflecting on the therapeutic relationship itself: Some people explore how they experience the therapist (for example, trusting, distant, critical, safe, unsafe) as a way of understanding broader relational patterns.
How people can decide if this approach fits their needs
Choosing a modality can be a very personal process. Psychodynamic therapy may feel like a possible fit for people who are curious about their inner world and interested in taking time to understand how the past and present connect.
Some questions that may help with reflection include:
- Does exploring deeper emotional patterns, not just surface-level symptoms, feel appealing or at least worth trying?
- Is there interest in understanding how earlier relationships or experiences might be influencing current interactions and self-image?
- Does a slower, more exploratory pace feel supportive, or does it feel frustrating or overwhelming right now?
- Is there room in life for a longer-term process, or is a shorter-term, skills-oriented approach more accessible at this moment?
- When reading a therapist’s description of their psychodynamic work, does their language feel grounding, respectful, and aligned with personal values and identities?
Some people also combine psychodynamic therapy with other modalities over time, depending on access, preferences, and what feels manageable. It is completely valid to ask potential therapists how they integrate psychodynamic ideas with other approaches, how they strive to be trauma-informed, and how they support people in setting a pace that feels as safe as possible.