Key Terms

Supporting mental health through personalized therapy, emotional healing, and proven strategies for a balanced, fulfilling life.

Contact Me

Transference

People tend to react to others in ways shaped by earlier relationships, especially early caregiving experiences. These patterns often happen automatically. For example, someone may expect rejection, need approval, or become overly dependent without fully realizing why.
In therapy, these reactions often show up in the relationship with the therapist. A person might feel unusually trusting, critical, disappointed, or dependent. These responses are not random—they are shaped by earlier experiences and expectations carried into the present.
Psychodynamic therapy uses these moments to help patients understand their patterns more clearly. Instead of just talking about relationships, the patterns are seen as they happen in real time. This can make it possible to recognize how past experiences continue to influence current relationships and to begin responding in new ways.
Research supports the importance of relationship patterns in therapy. The quality of the therapeutic relationship, including how these patterns are understood and worked through, is one of the strongest predictors of outcome across different types of treatment (Norcross & Lambert, 2019).

Resistance

As therapy begins to touch on more difficult thoughts and feelings, people often pull back in some way. This is a normal response. Avoiding painful material can happen by changing the subject, becoming quiet, missing sessions, or feeling that therapy is no longer useful.
These reactions are not seen as obstacles to treatment, but as meaningful signals. They often indicate that something important—and potentially uncomfortable—is close to awareness.
In therapy, these moments are approached with curiosity rather than pressure. Over time, as patients feel safer and more supported, they are usually better able to face difficult emotions and understand what they have been avoiding.
Working through these patterns is a key part of change. Research shows that the ability to reflect on one’s own thoughts and feelings—sometimes called mentalization or reflective functioning—is associated with better outcomes in psychodynamic treatment (Fonagy et al., 2002).

Trauma

Trauma refers to experiences that overwhelm a person’s ability to cope. This can include events such as loss, accidents, or other deeply distressing situations. The effects are not only immediate—trauma can continue to affect emotions, thinking, and relationships long after the event has passed.
People who have experienced trauma may find themselves repeatedly thinking about it, reliving it in dreams, or reacting strongly in situations that seem unrelated. This is not a conscious choice; it reflects how the mind tries to process something that was too overwhelming at the time.
Therapy provides a space to work through these experiences gradually. This often involves making sense of what happened, putting feelings into words, and integrating the experience into a broader understanding of one’s life.
Research supports the importance of psychological treatment for trauma, often in combination with other approaches when appropriate. Effective trauma therapy typically involves helping the person feel safe enough to process the experience and develop new ways of responding (American Psychological Association, 2017).
Dan Sutleman
Clinical Social Work/Therapist, MSW, LICSW

Dan Sutelman LICSW