| People often come to my office for a consultation, and at some point during the interview, ask me how I can possibly help them. I usually tell them, “talking helps.” More than not, this thought is met with profound mistrust. The potential patient will say something like “I hope you’re not one of those therapists who doesn’t talk. I’m not paying you to listen to me ramble on. I could do that with a tape recorder.” These skeptics want my guidance, my advise, the solution to their problems or the secret to happiness, which they seem to fantasize I am willfully withholding from them. They doubt my competence and my ethics if all I am going to do is sit there and try to understand them. | 
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Yet after working with psychoanalytic patients for many years and carefully studying my successes and my failures, I can say with some conviction that saying everything is the key to a successful analysis and a satisfying life. Patients who are good talkers are the ones who get better.
Does this idea ring true in your own experience? Does talking with others about a problem you have, rather than impulsively going into action to solve it, improve your chances of finding constructive solutions to life’s challenges? If, on reflection, you find that talking things out, inserting words between your impulses and your actions, helps you make better decisions, why do you think that is so? Why is talking such a useful tool?
Does this idea ring true in your own experience? Does talking with others about a problem you have, rather than impulsively going into action to solve it, improve your chances of finding constructive solutions to life’s challenges? If, on reflection, you find that talking things out, inserting words between your impulses and your actions, helps you make better decisions, why do you think that is so? Why is talking such a useful tool?
I believe talking is so effective
because it actually has the power
to change the brain.
because it actually has the power
to change the brain.
Most people who are unhappy with their lives are being controlled by their own primitive impulses and feelings. They get angry or anxious or sexually attracted to the wrong person, and that causes them to go into action which is self-destructive. They make a bad marriage, lose a job, destroy their relationships with their children because they are being ruled by their own out-of-control feelings.
In these unhappy people’s lives, there is no real thought or consideration between the impulse and the action. This makes for a life that is unsatisfying at best, and, more often, bleak or chaotic. Do you know people like this---people who don’t really talk very much, but instead take drugs, kick the dog, indulge in self-destructive sex, disappear from relationships? People like that are compulsive. They’re not steering their own ships but instead are being controlled by their primitive impulses.
Talking about things in therapy disrupts that compulsive process. It delays going into action which may be self-destructive. It puts the higher levels of the brain, where logic and reason reside, in control of the more reptilian parts of the brain, where our sexual and aggressive drives are created. Talking actually strengthens the higher levels of the brain in a way that begins to give the talker control over his life. He (or she) may still have primitive impulses and feelings, but they no longer control his life.
And as he strengthens the more evolved parts of his brain by putting all thoughts and feelings into words before making any decision or taking any action, he actually takes charge of his own destiny.
In these unhappy people’s lives, there is no real thought or consideration between the impulse and the action. This makes for a life that is unsatisfying at best, and, more often, bleak or chaotic. Do you know people like this---people who don’t really talk very much, but instead take drugs, kick the dog, indulge in self-destructive sex, disappear from relationships? People like that are compulsive. They’re not steering their own ships but instead are being controlled by their primitive impulses.
Talking about things in therapy disrupts that compulsive process. It delays going into action which may be self-destructive. It puts the higher levels of the brain, where logic and reason reside, in control of the more reptilian parts of the brain, where our sexual and aggressive drives are created. Talking actually strengthens the higher levels of the brain in a way that begins to give the talker control over his life. He (or she) may still have primitive impulses and feelings, but they no longer control his life.
And as he strengthens the more evolved parts of his brain by putting all thoughts and feelings into words before making any decision or taking any action, he actually takes charge of his own destiny.
Learn more about using talk therapy to take control of your life with Dr. Holmes's new book, Wrestling with Destiny.
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