How “Just Talking” Helps
The power of giving sorrow words.
“Give sorrow words” —psychoanalyst William Shakespeare (Macbeth)
How will just talking in therapy help me get better?
Words are powerful containers of emotion. The act of putting thoughts and feelings into words transforms them, making them more manageable.
When we put experience into words and share it with another, we bring it into the light of day.
Putting words to experience allows it to be processed differently—integrated with other memories and with the whole of who we are.
Words bring our responses increasingly under conscious and voluntary control.
Words are powerful containers of emotion.
This expands freedom and choice, where previously our responses were automatic or experienced as obligatory.
The clarity opens the door to solutions that were previously invisible.
Communicating our pain creates an essential relational connection with another human being—connection around experiences previously carried in isolation and fear.
This activates the emotion-regulating functions of secure attachment. Emotional regulation begins as a process for two. Another person’s accurate recognition of our emotional states gives them form and makes them manageable. These experiences of recognition become the building blocks of our capacity to self-regulate.
It also builds our capacity for authentic empathy and intimacy—making life more meaningful, and its inevitable blows more bearable.
It mobilizes psychological strengths and opens possibilities for new emotional growth.
This is why talking with a psychotherapist is different from talking to yourself, a chatbot, or a journal: a journal cannot look back with recognition. A chatbot cannot share your experience or connect on an emotional level. To be understood and responded to by another human being is the earliest form of regulation, beginning in infancy and continuing throughout life.
So what begins as the simple act of giving words to pain becomes something larger: a new way of relating to yourself, others, and the world.
This is why psychotherapy was originally called “the talking cure.”
“Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak
Whispers the o’er-fraught heart and bids it break.”
—William Shakespeare
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Thanks a lot for all your substack posts. I get an email each time one is released, and always make the time to read it. Really appreciate you disseminating your knowledge and experience so far, wide and free!
I was just wondering if you have any recommended reading that further summarises/ expands on what you’ve mentioned regarding the underlying neurobiological processes around novel secure attachment processes within therapy? Im really interested in learning more. I’m vaguely aware of the work of fonagy and ?allen Schore- but haven’t read much of their work. Is/ are there any key text(s) that you’d recommend to understand this further in a non convoluted way?
Thanks so much
This is marvelous. One thing I have noticed is that there is a lot of resistance and defensiveness in the therapeutic community to reflective work and internality as well as the idea of a therapeutic process. Many therapists write with lots of jargon which is so off putting, and they also miss the essence of what we do. I am a psychoanalyst who also works as a support group leader for chronic pain patients. Not being a therapist when I am a therapist by profession (I also have chronic pain) has been challenging, but also very interesting, as well as life affirming. It is also kind of lonely as few people in the outside world know of this way of communicating. Few understand what therapy is. I feel privileged to be part of your Substack and it is nice to have a place to exchange ideas and feel part of a community I can resonate with.