“I’m Too Busy for Analysis”: What a Washington, DC Psychoanalyst Says About Fitting Deep Work Into a Full Life
“I would like to try psychoanalysis, but I don't have the time.”
It is an understandable concern.
For many people in Washington, DC, life is already very full. There is work, commuting, travel, children, relationships, exercise, aging parents, household responsibilities, and the seemingly endless administrative work of adult life. If you are already struggling to fit everything into a week, the idea of meeting with a psychoanalyst several times a week can seem unrealistic.
And sometimes it is.
There are periods of life when the practical demands of psychoanalysis simply don't fit. Work schedules, finances, childcare, health, and other circumstances matter.
But the question of time can also become interesting.
Because when we begin seriously considering making room for psychoanalysis, we may find ourselves asking a larger question:
How did my life come to have so little room in it?
A Full Life May Be a Successful Life
Busyness is not necessarily a problem.
In fact, many of the qualities that create an extraordinarily full life are qualities we value: ambition, responsibility, curiosity, discipline, generosity, and commitment.
Perhaps you built a demanding career because you care deeply about your work. Perhaps you are the person your colleagues depend upon. Maybe you have children you want to spend time with, friendships you value, a partner, professional obligations, exercise, travel, or interests outside work.
A full life can be a meaningful life.
Psychoanalysis can create an opportunity to become curious about how one’s life is organized.
What feels genuinely important to me?
What feels obligatory?
What am I afraid would happen if I were less available?
What do I believe I must accomplish?
What happens when I say no?
And perhaps most importantly: where am I in the life that I have constructed?
Sometimes Busyness Protects Us From Encountering Ourselves
There is another possibility.
For some people, constant activity can make certain experiences easier to avoid.
When there is always another email, meeting, deadline, child to care for, appointment to make, or problem to solve, there is very little empty psychological space.
And empty space can be uncomfortable.
When things become quiet, other experiences sometimes become more noticeable: dissatisfaction, loneliness, grief, anger, uncertainty, desire, or questions about how we are living.
This does not mean that every busy person is defending against an inner life. Nor does it mean that work and achievement are somehow false.
But sometimes busyness serves more than one purpose.
It may allow us to accomplish things we genuinely care about while also helping us avoid experiences we would rather not encounter.
Psychoanalysis becomes a place where both possibilities can be considered.
“I Don't Know What I Would Have to Give Up”
Making time for psychoanalysis involves a practical reality: something has to move.
Perhaps you leave the office earlier. You protect several hours during the week that could otherwise be used for work. You arrange childcare differently. You move a meeting, change a workout, or become less available to other people.
This can immediately raise questions.
Am I allowed to prioritize this?
Can I leave when everyone else is still working?
What happens if someone needs me?
Can I tolerate disappointing someone?
But there may be another meaning to the question of what you would have to give up.
Psychoanalytic work ultimately involves some reorganization of the self.
We begin to recognize ways of thinking, relating, protecting ourselves, and organizing our lives that may have developed for good reasons and may have served us extremely well. Over time, some of those arrangements may no longer be as necessary—or may be preventing something else from developing.
In that sense, analysis really can involve giving things up.
Perhaps it is the conviction that you must always be competent. Perhaps it is a familiar way of avoiding dependency. Maybe it is the expectation that other people will disappoint you, the need to remain indispensable, or an identity built around being the person who never needs anything from anyone.
Even suffering can become familiar. We know who we are inside the psychological arrangements we have lived with for decades.
Giving some of them up can ultimately feel like an enormous relief.
But before it feels relieving, it may also feel terrifying.
If I am no longer the person who takes care of everyone, who am I?
If I stop organizing my life around achievement, what will motivate me?
If I become less guarded, what happens when I need someone?
If I no longer relate to people in the way I always have, what will those relationships become?
Change is appealing when we imagine getting rid of what hurts. It becomes more complicated when we recognize that meaningful psychological change may also disturb aspects of ourselves that feel familiar, valuable, protective, or essential to who we are.
So when someone says, “I don't know what I would have to give up to make room for analysis,” the question may eventually become larger than scheduling.
There is the hour that has to come out of the calendar.
And then there is the more difficult question of what we may have to relinquish in ourselves in order for something new to become possible.
But Won't Analysis Get in the Way of Living My Life?
There can be another concern about beginning psychoanalysis.
If I spend this much time thinking about myself, won't it get in the way of actually living my life?
Several sessions a week is a real commitment. It takes time that could be spent working, seeing friends, exercising, being with family, or simply doing something enjoyable.
But if you are considering psychoanalysis because you have been struggling with something for a long time, it is worth asking another question:
How much is the struggle already getting in the way of your life?
Chronic anxiety takes up time.
Depression takes up time.
So does spending days replaying an interaction, repeatedly finding yourself in relationships that leave you unhappy, being unable to make decisions, feeling chronically inadequate despite your accomplishments, or organizing your choices around fears you do not entirely understand.
These difficulties do not appear on a calendar as appointments.
But they can occupy enormous amounts of psychological space.
Sometimes we adapt to chronic difficulties so thoroughly that we stop noticing how much of life has been organized around them. We avoid certain relationships. We don't pursue something we want. We work constantly. We remain in situations that make us unhappy. We repeat familiar patterns while hoping that this time they will end differently.
In that sense, the question isn't simply whether psychoanalysis will interfere with living your life.
Something may already be interfering with your ability to live the life you want.
And when a difficulty is chronic or repeatedly returns despite our efforts to change it, simply trying not to think about it may not offer a way out.
Some experiences need to be thought about—sometimes repeatedly and from different directions—before they can be understood and worked through.
This is part of what psychoanalysis offers.
The aim isn't endless introspection. Nor is it to make every experience into something that needs to be analyzed.
It is to give sustained attention to the things that have already proven difficult to change, so that they do not have to continue organizing your life in the same way.
There is a paradox here:
Sometimes we have to temporarily give a problem more of our time in order to eventually give the problem less of our life.
The hours spent in analysis are not intended to replace living.
They are intended to make more living possible.
Is Time Spent Looking Inward Really Productive?
For someone with a demanding professional life, several hours a week devoted to psychoanalysis can initially feel like several hours taken away from something more productive.
There is always another email to answer, another meeting to prepare for, another problem that could be solved.
We are accustomed to evaluating time by what it produces:
What did I accomplish?
What did I finish?
What do I have to show for those hours?
Psychoanalysis asks us to think about productivity differently.
Its effects are not necessarily visible at the end of each session. Sometimes you leave with an insight. Sometimes you leave with more questions. Something discussed one week may not become meaningful until months later. Psychological change does not necessarily follow the timetable we expect from professional life.
But time spent looking inward is not necessarily time taken away from the rest of one's life.
When we are overwhelmed by anxiety, conflict, anger, self-criticism, or repetitive emotional struggles, a tremendous amount of mental energy can be consumed by them.
Becoming more emotionally stable does not simply make us feel better.
It can help us think better.
You may become less preoccupied by an interaction that would previously have occupied your mind for days. You may become better able to distinguish an actual problem from your anxiety about the problem. You may have more room to consider several possibilities rather than reacting immediately. You may make decisions with greater clarity because you understand more about what is driving you.
In that sense, the hours devoted to analysis can be time inward well spent.
The time spent thinking about yourself may allow you to think more clearly about everything else.
But this is not simply an argument for becoming more efficient.
Analysis also challenges the assumption that every worthwhile use of time has to justify itself through greater output. Understanding yourself more deeply, suffering less, having greater freedom in your relationships, or becoming less governed by patterns you did not consciously choose may be worthwhile in their own right.
Perhaps the question is not only:
What could I accomplish during the hours I spend in analysis?
It is also:
How might the way I experience all of my other hours change?
Why Does Psychoanalysis Meet So Often?
People sometimes wonder why psychoanalysis involves multiple sessions per week.
Why not do the same work once a week?
Frequency is not simply a matter of receiving “more therapy.” Meeting several times a week changes the nature of the work.
There is greater continuity from one session to another. Something that emerges on Monday can remain alive on Tuesday rather than being reconstructed a week later. Thoughts, dreams, feelings, and reactions have more opportunity to develop rather than being condensed into a weekly report of what happened.
The analytic relationship also becomes more immediate.
You may notice that you are irritated that you have to come again tomorrow. You may feel relieved that the next session is soon. You may wonder what you could possibly have left to say. You may resent the amount of space analysis occupies in your week.
These reactions are not necessarily obstacles to the treatment.
They can become part of it.
The Time Commitment Itself Can Become Part of the Analysis
How we experience the demands of analysis can tell us something about how we experience having needs.
Perhaps protecting the hour feels selfish.
Perhaps leaving work for therapy produces guilt.
Maybe being expected at the same time several days a week feels constraining.
Maybe depending upon another person to be there feels uncomfortable.
Perhaps paying attention to yourself for that much time feels excessive.
Or, perhaps analysis becomes one of the few places in the week protected from everyone else's demands.
Being late, wanting to cancel, resenting a session, eagerly anticipating one, feeling you have “nothing important enough” to discuss, or worrying that you are wasting the analyst's time can all become experiences to think about.
The schedule is therefore not entirely separate from the analysis.
Start Working With a Psychoanalytic Therapist in Washington, DC, Bethesda, MD, and Chevy Chase, MD
If part of you has been circling the idea of analysis while another part insists there's no room for it, that tension is worth taking seriously — not as a scheduling problem to solve, but as a question worth being curious about. The struggles that have been hard to change may already be occupying far more of your life than a few hours a week would. Sometimes we have to give a problem more of our time in order to eventually give it less of our life. If you're in Washington, DC, and wondering whether deep work could fit into your full life, you can start working with Nina Van Sant, LICSW, by following these simple steps:
Meet with a caring psychoanalytic therapist
Learn whether analysis might fit your life right now
Other Services Offered with Nina Van San, LICSW
Psychoanalysis isn’t the only service that I offer. Other services I’m happy to offer include postpartum therapy, therapy for teens, and older adults at different developmental stages. I also provide support for expats and international professionals who are managing cultural adjustment, relocation stress, and major life changes. You can visit my blog or about page for more support today!