19/02/2026
Life can bring moments that feel unbearable, loss, illness, or major life changes or experiences.
Often, it can feel like the only hope is to simply bear it. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy offers another path. Rather than confronting everything at once or digging deep into the past, it works by making inroads into what is difficult.
Through small openings, a hesitation, a slip, a dream, or even a glimmer of humour, we can begin to speak about suffering in ways that feel bearable. Humour, in particular, allows what is painful to be expressed indirectly, giving the psyche a protective way to approach what is difficult.
Rob Weatherill, psychoanalyst and writer, highlights this unique role of psychoanalysis:
“Ironically, psychoanalysis has come by default to claim a unique place in contemporary culture: to listen to the subject of the unconscious, i.e. the subject of suffering, of incompleteness, failure and self-hatred, but also of humour and creativity.”
Through this attentive work, listening in the gaps to: hesitations, slips, a dream, or a glimmer of humour, we can begin to form a different relationship with suffering, allowing what once felt stuck, lodged or unspeakable to slowly emerge. It is through these moments of creativity, dreams, and, humour, that we connect with what makes us uniquely human.
Sometimes, all it takes is a door left slightly ajar, a slight crack, a seemingly small opening, letting something new quietly begin to take shape.
If you’d like to explore this work, I offer psychoanalytic psychotherapy in Dundalk. You’re welcome to get in touch.
📍 Dundalk, Ireland�📧www.niamhduffypsychoanalytic
psychotherapy.com�📞 087 1515349