Befriending Your Unconscious through Depth Therapy

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” - Carl Jung

While all forms of psychotherapy seek to delve into our lives, depth therapy is focused on accessing the deepest parts of who we are - namely, the unconscious. It’s a journey inward, focusing on the parts of ourselves we have little access to or knowledge of in our day to day. Depth therapy communes with the unconscious in order to explore, heal, and befriend our innermost selves, which includes both our lightest parts and our shadows.

Exploration of the unconscious is nothing new. In psychology, it’s a key component of Sigmund Freud’s and Carl Jung’s work and was their greatest shared interest. While the unconscious can seem mystical and perhaps unknowable, depth therapy seeks to dispel the mystery through a variety of modalities to access the unconscious in whatever way best serves the client. Some of these modalities include: psychodynamic therapy, psychoanalysis, psychosomatic therapy, and transpersonal therapy.

If we understand the unconscious simply as the part of ourselves that is just out of view, we begin to open ourselves to the possibility of uncovering its wisdom. Our unconscious selves are no different from our conscious selves. The only difference lies in our awareness of one over the other. Whether you are struggling with an issue in your life you just can’t solve, dealing with trauma, simply want to understand yourself more, depth therapy can help.

How is Depth Therapy Different from Regular Talk Therapy?

Psychotherapy, or talk therapy, can be an invaluable means of peeling back many of the layers of the human psyche. Through conversation, the therapist and the client explore various aspects of the client’s life and relationships. Talk therapy is usually solution-focused as it seeks to overcome unhealthy thoughts and behaviors by exploring their causes and developing coping strategies around them.

Depth therapy utilizes all of the advantages of talk therapy, but it doesn’t stop there. Using an array of holistic, transpersonal, and somatic therapy techniques, depth therapy seeks to access the unconscious for exploration, healing, and transformation.

Depth Therapy and Trauma

Depth therapy can be especially transformative in dealing with PTSD and trauma. Trauma runs deep in our bodies and minds, usually far beyond our awareness. The effects transcend the traumatic event, as even unconsciously triggered traumatic memories can dysregulate our entire bodies.

Depth therapy offers many paths to healing from trauma. Connecting with our unconscious can help integrate traumatic memories into a broader, more comprehensive picture of the event or events. Depth therapy techniques such as parts work (also known as Internal Family Systems) can help us get to the root causes of our trauma responses by exploring parts of ourselves we’ve long compartmentalized.

Depth Therapy Techniques to Access the Unconscious

There are several techniques therapists use to access the unconscious realms of their clients, including:

Free association
- Verbalizing whatever thoughts come to mind without filtering during a therapy session. This is a simple but effective way to become acquainted with those unconscious thoughts that lie just beneath the surface. It allows those thoughts to see the light of day so to speak, which can be helpful as they often cause undue harm just by being stuck in the shadows of our minds.
Dream analysis
- Interpreting the symbolic meaning of dreams. Talking out your dreams with a therapist can shed light on what your unconscious is processing.
Psychodynamic therapy
- Connecting current struggles with past experiences. Often drawing from childhood memories, whether conscious or unconscious, a therapist seeks to help a client understand the role their early life plays in their life now.
Active imagination and symbolism exploration
- Rooted in Jungian psychology, these practices delve into the symbols and characters we might come across in our unconscious. It allows us to interact with them, talk to them, and hear from them.

Transpersonal Psychotherapy

Just as the term describes, transpersonal psychotherapy explores that which is beyond the personal identity of the self. Through a holistic lens, transpersonal therapy seeks to include all aspects that impact a person’s lived experience, including the mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, and environmental pieces. It seeks to transcend ordinary states of consciousness and explore what we refer to as ‘peak’ experiences with consciousness, including meditation, visualization, and flow states.

Transpersonal psychotherapy embraces spirituality and interconnectedness with all life. It is informed by many Eastern traditions as well as humanistic psychology in the West. Through its use of those peak states of consciousness, we explore realms beyond our conscious sense of self.

Somatic Therapy

Somatic techniques take a body-centered approach to therapy. Instead of just focusing on the mind, somatic therapy seeks to incorporate the messages, signals, and wisdom from the body to support healing in the whole self: body, mind, and spirit. Somatic therapy can be especially helpful in managing PTSD and trauma healing. Types of somatic therapy include:

Somatic Experiencing - Focusing on trauma, somatic experiencing explores how trauma feels in your body in order to ultimately release it.

Guided imagery - A technique used to induce relaxation in the body through a guided visualization. Guided imagery calls on the senses and inner voice to create a holistic experience that can be effective in managing stress, anxiety, and even physical pain.
Hakomi Mindful Somatic Therapy - Hakomi therapy utilizes the Eastern tenets of nonviolence and mindfulness to usher the client into a state of non-judgemental awareness and acceptance of the present moment. The therapist then helps the client notice signals of unconscious harmful beliefs in the body to work through and release them.

Depth therapy seeks to explore the fullness of the self through uncovering the unconscious. By skillfully implementing these techniques, we can discover who we truly are, why we are who we are, and who we are meant to be. If you’re interested in learning more, feel free to setup a free consultation call here.

What is Depth Therapy?