You Will Suffer Better
“You will suffer better” is the most honest summary of what depth psychotherapy offers. Not the elimination of suffering — that is not achievable. What changes is the quality of the suffering: the meaning found within it, the capacity to bear it without being destroyed, and the ability to feel pain clearly rather than escaping it at cost.
“You will suffer better” is the most honest summary of what depth psychotherapy offers. Not the elimination of suffering — that is not achievable. What changes is the quality of the suffering: the meaning found within it, the capacity to bear it without being destroyed, and the ability to feel pain clearly rather than escaping it at cost.
The implicit promise — and why it cannot be kept
Life brings loss. Relationships end. People die. The body ages. These are not problems that analysis can solve. The question is not whether suffering will come — it will — but what the person is able to do with it when it arrives.
What changes
What changes through sustained therapeutic work is not the quantity of suffering but the relationship to it. A person can feel pain without immediately fleeing. They can hold loss without being destroyed. The suffering is still real. But it is legible. And what is legible can be lived with.
The common thread
This is the thread connecting all three of Philippe Jacquet’s major clinical specialisms. Eating disorders, addiction, the isolated person in the coffin — all have found a way to suffer less. The work is about suffering better instead.
“You will not suffer less. You will suffer better.” — Philippe Jacquet
Book a consultation with Philippe Jacquet — psychotherapist and Jungian analyst, London.