Analysis and pain

This post comes from some comment discussion with ama about therapy and analytical thinking; she says “I don’t care about understanding without change and relief.”

I think it was Freud who said the goal of therapy is to exchange morbid something or other for ordinary human misery.

Someone else said that it’s not so much that prayer changes things as that prayer changes oneself.

Understanding cannot stop, end, or control pain. Pain exists in this dark, fallen world, just as joy exists in this world that still bears the stamp of its loving creator.

Understanding does not change the past — what happened that hurt you or me did happen, and no amount of analysis can make it unhappen.

Understanding can change the way we experience pain.

DBT and other things has helped me in the process of learning to experience pain or any other feeling as something that is part of life, comes and goes, does not rule me, hurts but doesn’t destroy.

Understanding mainly helps me stop — again and again — fighting against reality. When I understand the sources of pain, the reasons I react the way I do to certain things, the desires that drive my will, and so on, I can remind myself that pain isn’t a flaw in my thinking — that I can’t change reality by will alone.

DBT and other things help me know when and how I can change some things, and when and how I must accept what cannot be changed. The only way radical acceptance is possible is when you realize the difference between accepting reality and condoning it.

In the past, every time I got depressed I would put just about my entire life on hold and concentrate all my energy on analyzing the depression — its roots, its reasons, its insights, its imperatives, etc.

Gradually I realized a few things. First of all, the same themes, ideas, and phrases would come up in my analyses, often in the same order. I don’t have to do the whole analysis all over again each time. Secondly, the depression always lifted eventually, and there was seldom any connection between the lift and analytical insight. Moods change, and are not directly tied to thinking alone (take that, CBT). Third, the depression would always come back; there was no sense in stopping life to deal with it, because dealing with it didn’t really have any effect on it, and because it seemed to be an integral part of my life.

I have nothing against analytical thinking. Hey — I’m a blogger and a journaler and I’ve been in therapy. Perhaps the problem is that I might still associate analyzing with willfulness, resisting reality, and trying to change things by understanding alone. Instead, most of the work of therapy must be about actually experiencing emotions and not only analyzing them. There is more to the person than mind alone.