We all find ways of dealing with what happens to us.
Sometimes they work. Sometimes, not so much. We can keep ourselves busy, try to think positively, exercise, work more, distract ourselves, avoid whatever is troubling us. We can also turn to other things that, for a while, help us not to think: withdrawing, eating, drinking, using substances, controlling, repeating certain behaviours. Not all of these solutions are necessarily problematic. Many of them are simply the ways we have found to keep going.
When a Solution Stops Working
The problem arises when something that once helped us stops working. When a solution starts to become a problem. When something keeps repeating itself despite us. When a distress appears that we can no longer silence, avoid or control.
Perhaps that is when beginning an analysis can become a possibility: not to find a definitive way of covering over what is missing, but to try another way of doing something with it.
Because there is something fundamental that we consider from a psychoanalytic perspective: lack is not an accident of our lives, nor is it something we can eventually eliminate. There is a hole. And we spend much of our lives circling around its edge.
Some of us are further from the edge; others are closer. Sometimes we fall in. And very often, we build ways of keeping ourselves at a distance that allows us to live. These ways are not something to be judged: many times, they were the best solutions we could find.
Listening to the Symptom
The symptom can also be understood from this perspective. Not simply as something that needs to be eliminated, but as a solution, a singular way of dealing with something we did not know how to deal with otherwise. This is why, in analysis, the aim is not simply to make the symptom disappear, but to listen to what it has to say and to what function it serves in our lives.
And listening requires us to pause.
Analysis is a process of working things through. It is not about receiving answers or learning to become a better version of ourselves. It is about speaking and, above all, learning to listen to what we ourselves say.
Because we do not always know what we are saying.
Sometimes it appears in a dream. In a forgotten moment. In a wrong word. In a (Freudian) slip of the tongue. In a repetition. In something that makes us laugh when we did not expect to laugh. The unconscious also appears there: in what slips out, interrupts our story and surprises us.
Humour can open a door too. Sometimes we can approach something difficult more easily when we are able to laugh about it. A laugh can say something that we were not yet able to say in any other way.
What We Do Not Know About Ourselves
In this sense, analysis can lead us to a paradoxical discovery: the more we think we know ourselves, the more we may encounter what we do not know about ourselves.
We discover that we are not as much in charge of ourselves as we tend to believe. That there are desires, words, identifications and ways of relating to others that we have received from elsewhere. That some things we considered deeply our own may not be entirely ours. That our history is not necessarily destined to repeat itself in the same way.
This does not mean inventing a different past. It means being able to tell our story again from another position. And when the way we tell ourselves our story changes, the possibilities we imagine for our future can change too.
Letting Go of Certainties
But this movement comes at a cost.
An analysis involves losses. It can mean letting go of certain certainties, particular images of who we believe ourselves to be, familiar ways of finding satisfaction, even solutions that helped us hold ourselves together for a long time. This is why it also involves mourning.
It is not always comfortable to discover that what we want to leave behind also served a purpose. Nor is it easy to accept that some things do not have a definitive solution.
Perhaps this is why therapy is not, ultimately, about finding happiness.
Happiness can function like a carrot we keep chasing on the horizon: when I achieve this, when I sort that out, when I finally become the person I want to be, then I will be alright. Psychoanalysis proposes something different. It does not promise a life without problems, without losses, without anxiety or without new challenges.
What can change is our relationship with them.
And perhaps, above all, our movement.
That desire can become less a destination and more a compass. Something that guides us, sets us in motion and opens up possibilities. Not so that we can finally reach a state of completeness, but so that we can live with greater freedom, leaving room for what we do not yet know.
Making Room For Desire
An analysis requires time, patience, commitment and, sometimes, a certain amount of courage. Because it means coming closer to the edge and looking a little more closely at what we have spent so long trying to avoid.
Not to fall.
Not to cover the hole.
But to discover that perhaps we can find a different way of doing something with it.
A new kind of craft, perhaps: learning to live knowing that something is missing, without allowing that lack to decide everything for us.
And from there, making room for desire.
For what can still surprise us.
For what we do not yet know.
If something in this resonates with you, I invite you to open up a pause in the middle of the noise and chaos that surround us, in a time and space where I listen to you so that you can listen to yourself.
A space where words can find room, and where, little by little, a singular way of speaking can emerge. An invitation to listen to what perhaps, until now, has not been able to be heard, a wager that I will accompany you in making.
Melisa Mauriño is a psychologist and psychotherapist with over 15 years of clinical experience. Her work is grounded in psychoanalysis and informed by a strong interest in language, identity, relationships and the ways people make meaning of their experiences. She works with adults in English and Spanish, both in person and online.