Psychologists Help To Interpret Your Thoughts And Emotions

The job of psychologists is to study human behavior. They help people to understand their problems and to interpret their thoughts and emotions. They listen to the meaning and importance of what their patients tell them.

Jacques Lacan, a French psychoanalyst, proposed that the unconscious has the structure of a language. The unconscious would be such a place where you store your desires, fears and emotions. According to some schools of thought  , psychologists are the ones who give their patients the means to make the unconscious conscious.  Let’s take a closer look at this…

Interpreting your thoughts and emotions and character traits that help psychologists with this

Psychologists possess certain qualities that make it easier to interpret thoughts and emotions. They are also able to articulate these thoughts and emotions in a way that is understandable to the patient. Here are some of these traits they possess:

• Empathy. This is the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. This makes it easier for psychologists to understand how and why certain problems affect their patients.
• Communication. Paul Watzawick, an Austrian psychologist, believes that communication is the foundation of relationships. Therefore, psychologists can interpret thoughts and emotions in their patients.
• Know how to listen. Psychologists need to be attentive and focus on what their patients are saying so that they don’t miss anything important.
• Self-consciousness. Psychologists must be able to distinguish their patients’ problems from their own. If this is not the case, this can have major consequences for the dynamics between psychologist and patient.

non-verbal language

Gestures, facial expressions, intonation and posture also say a lot about what is happening in your life. They can provide valuable information about our emotions that we are not aware of ourselves, making us less likely to express our problems.

It is also true that thoughts and emotions can sometimes not be expressed in words. To decode them, psychologists carefully observe their patients. For example, they pay attention to facial expressions when discussing a problem. Sometimes they also pay attention to how a patient sits in their chair and what they are looking at during the conversation.

Intonation is another thing from which certain information can be read. For example, does the patient’s tone change when he talks about a particular topic? Does he pause? Does he stay quiet? Is he breathless? Does he speak slower — or faster? How loud is he talking?

The parts we just listed are important because they help the psychologist see the whole picture, because they give psychologists hints about their patients’ ideas, perceptions of reality, and feelings. Interpreting thoughts and emotions becomes feasible through these non-verbal hints.

What are the favorite techniques of psychologists?

Here is a list of some of the techniques psychologists use most often:

• cognitive techniques. Aaron Beck, a psychologist from the United States, posited that there is a link between your thoughts and your feelings. Beck believed that we can restructure these thoughts and feelings. Psychologists can help us with this.
• Draw or paint. The process of drawing or painting can expose the unconscious. In this case, the psychotherapist helps the patient express his ideas and emotions when they are difficult to put into words. After that, they can be interpreted.

• By speech. The therapist recognizes and identifies people’s thoughts and emotions while they are talking.
• By behavior. Therapists observe how patients behave during therapy. They also listen to descriptions that patients give about their own behavior and habits outside of therapy. For example, are they aggressive, apathetic, motivated, cheerful?

Further techniques

• Non-verbal language.  Psychologists can help in many cases in interpreting feelings and thoughts. Among other things, by paying a lot of attention to how their patients express themselves non-verbally. They listen to the content of their story but are not distracted from the core of the story. In other words, they always pay attention to gestures, facial expressions and posture.

• Exposing the unconscious. Most psychologists who believe in the existence of the unconscious think that this manifests itself in several ways. This can be through art, speech errors or forgetfulness, for example. Psychologists pay attention to these things and discuss them with their patients. They are the ones who attach meaning to this (if there is any meaning to speak of).
• Psychodrama. This technique was developed by Jacob Levy Moreno in which patients act out a certain event. The psychologist then helps the patient to interpret the scene that has been performed and to understand that something may have come out from the unconscious.

Psychologists as mirrors

Psychologists can often act as a kind of mirror. They look back at the patient’s reactions so that he — the patient — can then interpret them. In addition, they help organize one’s speech and thoughts. They do this by letting the patient speak freely and by acting as a kind of crutch or other support, so that the process does not lose any continuity.