Conversations with Therapists — Andrea Laznik Amit, RP
Host: Welcome back to Conversations with Therapists. Today I’m joined by Andrea Laznik Amit of Talking Cure Psychotherapy. Andrea, thank you for being here.
Andrea: Thank you.
Host: So Andrea, you’ve spent more than 25 years helping people through some of life’s most difficult moments. What first drew you to becoming a therapist, and what has kept you passionate about this work all these years?
Andrea: So I think my passion started in high school, before going to university. I always had questions — why do people react in different ways to the same situations? Why do they make different choices in the same situation? That really fascinated me and was like a mystery for me. For example, why are certain students extremely anxious before an exam and others are so chill about it and don’t care? So the motivation of people to do things — that was a real passion for me.
I started, you know, by just reading books, literature, where you have characters and you can understand their motives. But I felt like just reading a character in a book is not alive enough for me. So I was thinking, okay, so where is it really alive, where you can really address people’s choices and behaviors and thoughts and emotions? And I landed on psychology.
Also, I think I myself had a very positive experience with therapy as a teenager, going through difficulties of the age and with parents and other members of my family. So that started creating in me the idea that this is what I want to do.
And throughout time, my passion has kept up — first of all, because I also see that people are helped by psychotherapy and they are getting to where they want to be. They better their lives. It may be a little or a lot, small changes or big changes, but I can see the change, the movement, and I really like to see that — how people suddenly, you know, through the process, talk differently, think differently about things.
And also, for me, it’s always still a mystery. No two patients are the same, and there’s always something new that I have to learn, and to get to know someone. I’m really curious about it on a person-to-person, human level.
Host: What type of problems or issues can you help with as a therapist, and what aren’t really your focus areas? How long does therapy typically take?
Andrea: I usually help people with things that they want to achieve for themselves and that is an inner problem. So I cannot change the world, the wars that are going on. Unfortunately, if someone wants to change their partner, their kids, their parents, I cannot help with that. But if someone has an inner problem — how to deal with this situation, with these people — then it’s the right place.
Psychotherapy is usually a process. It’s not a quick fix, my type of therapy. It varies depending on what the person wants to change and when their problem started. It’s not the same thing if they were, for example, depressed for the last two or three months, as if they are telling me, “Oh, we were always depressed. This is the way I knew myself.”
So if it is something recent — a crisis, a change in life, because you know even happy changes can bring sometimes mixed emotions, a marriage, a kid is born — these are shorter therapies usually. But things that accompany a person for a long period of time in their lives can be a longer time for therapy, if they want to change that.
Host: Of course. You describe your work as looking beyond the symptoms to understand the deeper emotional patterns that might be driving them. Can you explain a little bit what that actually looks like with you in therapy, and why that approach specifically can be so transformative?
Andrea: So, yes. Usually, for example, people come because their symptoms bother them — symptoms maybe of depression, anxiety, or they’ve gone through certain trauma, or they have pain in their body. We will not only address the symptoms, even though we strive for a change in the symptoms for sure, but what is underneath.
So if we take, for example, depression — many times depression is not what people in popular conversation think, that it’s being sad. No, it’s not only being sad. Many times it is being numb. And this is our way of dealing with difficult emotions that we have. For example, depression can be anger that we feel towards other people directed towards ourselves. Someone that hurt us, maybe even a long time ago, that we want to hurt back but we feel bad about it. So we direct it onto ourselves and we hurt ourselves. We punish ourselves sometimes by isolation, by lack of motivation.
This is what it means to look underneath the symptoms. So, where was the origin of these feelings? And when we connect to the original feelings instead of the self-punishment in depression, for example, it is usually very helpful and helps us get relief in symptoms of depression.
But this is just one example. You know, self-punishment can also be a lot of criticism, when we grew up with a very critical parent or teacher or siblings. And again, as a kid, we don’t have the tools. We just have to survive in our family. So it helped us maybe to lay low and not get angry about it, not get bothered by it. But maybe when we grow up and we are still in this modus operandi, it’s not helping us anymore, because for example we cannot set limits, we cannot protect ourselves when someone else is hurting us.
And with all these things, this deeper therapy can help you when you see that the way of dealing with problems is not working for you anymore, even though it may have worked in the past.
Host: Certain patterns — even though you might not have felt the best, they could have been adaptive because they kept you going. Say you were —
Andrea: Exactly.
Host: You know, the feeling of anxiety — maybe it didn’t feel very good, but maybe it pushed you to keep going because you were scared of what might happen if you dropped the ball on something, or let yourself rest and properly take care of yourself.
Andrea: Exactly. But then when you are an adult and you see that you have a problem taking care of yourself, then it’s a moment maybe to address this pattern.
Host: Mhm. You’ve trained in several different therapeutic approaches, including psychoanalytic therapy, intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy, and clinical hypnosis. First of all, I’m very interested in the hypnosis, but also — how do you decide what each person needs, and what does tailoring therapy actually look like from session to session?
Andrea: So first of all, the baseline is the psychoanalytic therapy, which addresses the subconscious, meaning the things that we don’t know about ourselves. The things that we already know are less interesting — we know them, and we usually address them.
I can give you an example of how we address the subconscious, because someone can ask, well, if it is subconscious, how can you get to that? So for example, if somebody says, “Yes, I want to deal with this thing that I have,” but at the same time their body is really tense and they look really frightened — then you can start asking, is it a yes, or is it a conflict about the yes, a yes and a no? Because there is this gap between what they say and how their body reacts.
This is one of the ways I can address the subconscious, and maybe ask you about it: do you notice that you are really positive about this goal, but your body looks frightened? And then we can start addressing a conflict — that one part of you wants it and the other part doesn’t want it — until you are more aware of the conflict, and you are freer to choose when you have more awareness.
So we start by getting to know you and your history, and the patterns that are related to your history and to the present problems. Because we are not going to the past just because we are curious about it, but we try to link how it is related to the present. And usually it is a free conversation where you bring your examples and your goals. I will never give you advice. I will never tell you what to talk about.
At a certain point in therapy, we may decide that it will be a good idea to introduce hypnotherapy. For example, if you are extremely anxious, I can teach you self-hypnosis, and that can help you relax a little bit so that you can be open the way you want to be open. If you suffer from chronic pain, I find that hypnosis can be really helpful. But for me, the way I work, hypnosis doesn’t stand on its own. It is part of a broader therapy. I never start with it. I want to get to know you first, and then I introduce it in certain sessions to facilitate our journey together.
Host: For someone who may not know much about hypnosis — myself included — what are the basic principles of it? Is it sort of a guided meditation? I mean, when I think of hypnosis, I think of almost like, I don’t know, some sort of witch casting a spell and the person waking up and then being magically better. But in practice, can you give us a little bit of a picture of what it looks like in a therapy setting?
Andrea: So some people think that clinical hypnosis is a little bit like the hypnosis that used to be used in all kinds of amusement shows and things like that. Today, it’s not very ethical doing that, and when we do it in a clinical setting it is different.
So first of all, it is guided by you. You are in control, and it’s not a magic wand. You decide how deep you want to go. But usually it’s a state between being awake and asleep. So it’s like the moment at night when you fall asleep and you’re not completely here and not completely there. When our mind is in that state, it is usually more receptive to your goals, to your dialogue with the subconscious. If there is some resistance, or something that you don’t want to do or go there or think about, your mind won’t go there. Even in hypnosis, you are totally in control.
Sometimes I do recordings with patients so that they can listen to it and teach themselves. It is a relaxation, but unlike meditation — the aim of meditation is to not think. The aim of hypnosis is to do something with our subconscious, something that we want to do. For example, to convince our subconscious to give up on pain. So in that sense it’s different, because we use our imagination, the power of our imagination, which is very powerful, to change something that we want to change. And when we are in this very relaxed state, usually the subconscious is more willing to change it. But if you are still very resistant, you don’t need to worry — that won’t happen.
Host: To wrap up — I feel like we only really touched the surface of all the amazing work that you do. But for somebody who’s watching or listening and who’s been thinking about therapy, but they’re not sure if this is the right time for them, what would you want them to know? And what do you hope people take away from the experience of working with you?
Andrea: First of all, most people don’t start therapy being completely convinced that this is the solution for their problems. And it’s okay, you know, to have doubts, to have thoughts, to bring them up in therapy and to discuss them. This should be an open communication, where you can discuss where you want to go, if you have doubts about it, if you don’t like something that is happening.
But usually the most important thing in therapy is personal chemistry. And the same way that not two friends fit the same person, it’s the same thing with therapists. And I encourage people — you know, I tell them, take two, three sessions to see if you feel comfortable to open up, and if this is the right answer for you at this time. Because only you know that. I cannot say it.
And I hope that when we work together, apart from the changes that you want to achieve — the most important thing for me is that people come out with hope. Hope that they can change things that they want to change, and/or that they don’t want to change things that they like, even though maybe some other people in their surroundings want them to change that — so that they feel more centered and hopeful about themselves and about life.
Host: Andrea, thank you so much for being here today. I know I learned a lot, and I’m really excited for whoever’s watching this to reach out to you, feel hope, and gain clarity. So, thank you.
Andrea: Thank you.