When Things Don’t Feel Real
You may be noticing something is off. Your thoughts might feel unfamiliar, or the world may seem confusing or distorted. You might be seeing or hearing things others don’t, or holding beliefs that feel intense and hard to explain.
This can be frightening and isolating. You may find yourself wondering: What is happening to me?
Your Mind Is Trying to Help
Even when things feel chaotic, your mind is still trying to make sense of your experience.
When emotions or life events become too overwhelming, your mind may begin to change how reality feels. This can include strong beliefs, unusual perceptions, or a sense of disconnection from yourself or the world around you.
These experiences are not random. They can be your mind’s way of protecting you from feelings that are too intense, expressing emotions that don’t yet have words, or creating some sense of order when everything feels out of control.
In this way, psychosis can be understood as a way of coping under extreme pressure.
This idea connects closely with how the mind processes and organizes emotional experience. If you’re curious to explore this further, you may find it helpful to read Bion’s Theory of Thinking.
When Life Feels Like Too Much
There are times when life can become overwhelming—through loss, stress, isolation, or a growing sense that things are not stable or safe.
When this builds up, it can feel like too much to process all at once. Instead of facing everything directly, your mind may respond by reshaping your experience of reality.
This is not a personal failure. It is a response to being overwhelmed.
If this resonates with you, please feel free to book a free 20-minute consultation with me.
How Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Can Help
Psychodynamic psychotherapy takes your experience seriously. It does not assume your thoughts or perceptions are meaningless or need to be pushed away.
Instead, the work focuses on understanding what your experience is trying to communicate.
In this kind of therapy, we:
- Explore the meaning of what you are experiencing
- Help you gradually put words to intense or confusing feelings
- Work at a pace that feels manageable for you
- Build a steady, reliable relationship where you feel safe to think and reflect
Over time, this can help you feel more grounded. Experiences that once felt overwhelming or confusing can begin to make more sense and feel more manageable.
The goal is not to take something away from you, but to help you gain more stability, understanding, and choice in how you experience yourself and the world.
If you’re interested in understanding more about what this may entail in practice, you might find it helpful to explore what therapy looks like.
How to Start
I’m Curtis, a psychodynamic psychotherapist whose practice focuses on feeling and understanding the nuances of our emotional lives. Together, we’ll understand what it's like to be you, your thoughts and feelings that often come up, and how you’d like to more meaningfully live your life.
I offer in-person psychodynamic psychotherapy in Vancouver, Yaletown, and online across BC.
If you’re considering reaching out, you can book a free 20-minute consultation to explore what meeting together might look like moving forward.
What you’re experiencing can feel overwhelming – but it can be understood, and you can feel supported throughout this time. You may have received treatment before and felt like it only went so far. Now, together, we can more fully explore what it has been like for you, and more seriously find solutions to living the life you want. We’ll do this gradually in our sessions, each day at a time.
I’ll be glad to meet with you sometime soon.