Existential Therapy
There are different definitions of, and approaches to, Existential Therapy. I agree with a rather common definition: Existential Therapy is a philosophical approach to counselling and psychotherapy. Of course, I have already described a "philosophical approach to counselling" on the previous page. I called it Philosophical Counselling. So what is the difference here?
Existential Therapy as I define it, is Philosophical Counselling--which is to say counselling + philosophy--with the addition of a further, third element: pyschotherapy. Existential Therapy is counselling + philosophy + psychotherapy. In Existential Therapy I bring all three disciplines together to help you with your challenges and goals.
But what is psychotherapy, and how is it different to counselling? Again, there are various ways of understanding this, so here are the definitions I have developed over time. Counselling can be defined as a set of conversational skills, and a way of being, which elicits clarity and motivation in a client. I discussed that on the previous page. A counsellor draws on much theoretical knowledge, but counselling itself is less of a theory and more of a practice, a set of skills for eliciting clarity and motivation. A psychotherapy, by contrast, is a specific psychological theory about human nature, including its ills and the antidotes to those ills, which is applied as a therapy--a set of practices which express the theory, and which are aimed at healing, improvement, and growth. There are a range of such theories, and hence there are a range of psychotherapies, including the many different versions of the humanistic, the psychoanalytic, and the cognitive-behavioural therapies.
While counselling and psychotherapy are distinct, many counsellors study both as a part of their training, and some choose to subscribe to a particular psychotherapy. In my case, I have taken deep dives into a wide variety of the psychotherapies, but I prefer to draw on them as a broad background, a wide array of insights and practices from which I choose as is relevant for each individual client. With me, you do not have to choose between these different psychotherapies--these competing psychological theories and therapies--rather we include them in our bigger, broader lens.
On the previous page I described also the kinds of questions and struggles which show that a philosophical approach to therapy is important, and that it may be more important than a psychological approach. Of course, as I noted there, some of our maladies feel much less cognitive. They feel more murky, they are more resistent to reflection and effort. This is the situation where psychological analysis and technique can really shine, and prove its worth alongside philosophical reflection and striving. Let us consider two such cases, two fictional examples: Tim who experiences depression, and Jenna who experiences anxiety.
Tim comes with depression....
Imagine that Tim comes to therapy because he feels depressed. If he sees a psychologist instead of me, they will probably draw on the clinical schema for depression and its indicated treatments as set out in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). My therapy, by contrast, is in no way clinical. It is worth noting that research itself suggests that more than 90 per cent of depression is not an illness, but rather a reaction to a life adversity. Hence, for such depression Existential Therapy can be an excellent option. For in the philosophical and existential model, depression is seen as 1) a challenge in living, 2) a playing out of the human condition, and 3) an experience of a dimension of reality, all of which 4) calls for greater insight and personal growth.
If Tim views himself mainly through the schema of science and technology--as a kind of machine to be diagnosed and fixed--then he may prefer a more clinical mental health service, with its diagnostic schemata and manualised treatments. In that case, he will probably find my approach frustrating. However, if Tim sees himself and his challenges as human in a deeper sense, and as therefore requiring insight, effort, and personal growth, then he will probably gain greater benefit from my approach.
I may start the therapy by engaging Tim in a phenomenological exploration of his experience. Phenomenology is a philosophical exploration, a descriptive exploration of what is, avoiding assumptions and using words that most directly capture the experience. As such exploration continues, insights emerge, and they become more helpfully subtle as we persist. Through such phenomenological exploration with Tim we may find that certain words resonate with, and shed further light on, what he is actually experiencing. Tim shifts from vague and technical words like depressed, to more precise and helpful words which capture his actual experience, for example he comes to distinguish multiple experiences and feelings which he calls despair, pointlessness, boredom, and anger.
We might use these words as the entry point to further insight work, for example by developing a clearer understanding of how Tim's despair, pointlessness, boredom, and anger arise and fall in the context of his life. This naturally leads also to practical questions, such as what is contributing to these, and what needs to change, both on a day to day basis and in terms of Tim's bigger or deeper concerns? This opens up various lines of enquiry and work which amount to a helpful therapy.
There are existential therapists who work in a purely phenomenological way. In my case, I will lead Tim from phenomenology into other kinds of philosophy. We may engage in more critical reflection on the ideological structure of his worldview, including its cultural and other determinants. Is Tim assuming a depressing picture of human nature, or human interactions, and so on?
As I described on the previous page, I am deeply rooted in the classical tradition of philosophy, which explores how our personal qualities shape life, and how we can cultivate them. This is sometimes called Virtue Ethics. So we might also explore what virtues or character strengths Tim is in need of. To consider an intellectual virtue, is there a lack of intellectual humility in Tim's despair, for example does he assume that he knows with certainty what is possible? In that case, Tim may be ignoring the genuine possibility of life being better, and merely giving up too early. And what about the intellectual virtue, is Tim adequatley exercising his rational faculties, or is he hiding behind a mere pretence of rationality? For example, is Time rationalising--using reason for an irrational purpose--for example as a cover for his fear? Backing oneself into a corner in life through fear is indeed depressing. In that case, we are dealing with the vice of cowardice and the virtue of courage: Tim needs to cultivate adequate courage in how he approaches life, if he is to find purpose and satisfaction in life. And what about temperance, the ability to see persist and see things through? That again is necessary for a unified life of purpose. What about wisdom and justice--does Tim have such a view of others and the world, or does he see the world as evil and other people as merely stupid? That's a wrong view, and its pretty damn depressing. There are as many virtues as there are "good qualities" which people need to cultivate a good life. To speak of the need for virtues and vices is not at all to be judgemental, rather it is to assert reality, which is a reality where people are both determined by things, but also free in some important sense: free to shape themselves, to make life better. If Tim is willing to do the work of growing in the virtues needed for his good life--and it comes down to his volition, his willingness to open himself to life, and to do the work-- thenI will readily lead Tim in that work. This is a way in which Existential Therapy (the kind I have defined and practice here) is incredibly powerful.
I have just described various ways in which Existential Therapy can help Tim, blending elements from my typical Philosophical Counselling, with an emphasis on existential-phenomenology which is more common to other existential therapists. But what about the psychotherapies? Within the context of the above explorations, I might also engage Tim in a psychodynamic analysis of his way of being. For example, we might explore his attachment style, his defenses, and his old habitual life strategies and projects. Tim might complain at this point that I am focusing on the past, but in fact I am helping Tim to see how it is he who is still living in the past, and I do this in such a way that he may become more free to choose a different way of being, here in his present, adult context. Those old coping strategies from childhood may have protected Tim when young, but he has unwittingly carried them forward, and they now obstruct his happiness and success. In that case Tim's current suffering is a sign, which exploration can turn into a map, inviting and enabling him to choose a new, more mature way of coping with life, which let's more of the good stuff in. To make that new way of being a reality, we might shift from psychodynamic psychotherapy into using tools from cognitive-behavioural psychotherapy. And, of course ,the humanistic psychotherapeutic aspects of the counselling relationship--the deep empathy and honesty--will be highly impactful throughout, even if we never name them.
Existential Therapy really does balance the philosophical and the psychological. We do not have to choose one and neglect or reject the other. It is not a competition, these do not have to tribes at war, even if that is often how it is out there. Why not do both kinds of work, mixing them together as needed?
What I have described above is an example of how I might work with a client; it is not the way, it is not a description of how I work with any depression. Rather, it shows some of the things I might do. As a therapist I "read" each client in their individuality, and do the things which may best work for them, integrating different therapeutic approaches as needed. Hence my approach looks different with each client. With some people the counselling is very philosophical, while with others it is barely philosophical and more classically psychotherapeutic, while with many it is a mixture. With some clients it is more mechanically cognitive and behavioural, while with some it is more contemplative in a humanistic manner. With some there is a strong challenge with regard to the virtues, while with others it is most phenomenological reflection. Furthermore, the way of working with any individual may change across time.
Jenna comes with anxiety....
If Jenna comes to me speaking of anxiety, we may also engage in a phenomenological exploration and the other kinds of philosophical analysis mentioned above. Let us focus, however, on the kind of distinctly existential analysis which might inform our work, and which gives its name to this therapy. I might make the very existential point to Jenna, that we should not assume that anxiety is merely irrational or disordered--say, a mental illness. Rather, anxiety is often a reasonable reaction to life. Life is a permanently dangerous situation. Things can go very badly indeed, and so much is a matter of chance. To be human is to be deeply vulnerable. The typically clinical question Why are you anxious? might have things backwards. Perhaps the better question is Why are people not more anxious? Perhaps I will work with Jenna to take a different perspective, which may lead to a different relationship with her anxiety.
Talk of a different relationship with anxiety sounds nice and all--we hear it all the time--but what does that actually mean in practice? Through phenomenological analysis, we might start to see a distinction between the various elements of the phenomenon of "Jenna's anxiety," and in particular we might notice a basic distinction between her core anxiety, and her anxiety reactions. When Jenna perceives danger, which might include the anticipation of her own oncoming anxiety, she may engage in habitual reactions. She may start to think a certain way: "Everything will end terribly, with me in the gutter" or "Other people are complete arseholes." She may react with certain habitual feels, for example numbing out, or becoming angry, or distraught, or obsessed. She will start to act in certain ways which make things worse. These are all psychological defenses, ways of not feeling the original feeling, and they wreak havoc in our lives. The existential therapist Irvin Yalom has shown how our reactions to life itself, for example to our vulnerability, can be the root of such defenses.
Through reflection of the above kind, Jenna may come to see a distinction between her original, basic fear or sensations, versus her reactions to that. Previously she mindlessly drew a line around all of it, called it all anxiety, and imagined that this unified ball of horribleness simply happened to her, and was out of her control. Now Jenna is dividing her anxiety into two elements.
Jenna had assumed that her anxiety was one thing, when in fact it is composed of basic sensations plus her reaction to those. She now has a more detailed understanding of both elements, in terms of their particular existence within her. Jenna can now apply theancient wisdom of Stoic philosophy, that there are things in your control, and things outside of it. This is called the Stoic fork. Living with the things you (completely, or mostly, or currently) cannot control requires deepened wisdom. Changing the things you can required many virtues too. Jenna and I get to work on these. Generally this work is implicit--I have quite an implicit way of working with people, because I attend carefully to people's psychological reactiveness as it both obstructs or increases change--but we also work on making an explicit philosophy and practice out of this better way, so that Jenna can carry it forward long after she ends therapy.
The wisdom of acceptance in Jenna's case might involve existential reflection on the inherent place of anxiety in life, so that Jenna can increasingly stop rejecting that fact, and gradually become more and more adept at living with it. It will involve phenomenological skills in "sitting with" the basic sensations of her anxiety, which "happen to her," and becoming less and less reactive. Gradually, Jenna has the basic physiological sensation or thought, but that is all, it passes by, and while she may feel less comfortable than before, she is fine to get on with her day. We see here that there is a paradox in acceptance: precisely by letting go of the need to change things, things often change. But the change only comes by genuinely letting go of the need for it, of genuinely accepting that life is uncomfortable, and dangerous. It is easy to believe that we have accepted that, but certain of our reactions tell a different story.
Alongside the wisdom of acceptance, the work of change is also important. We may work on many elements of Jenna's life, both inwardly and outwardly. For example, a better mindset is important, but so is the creation of the desired security and happiness, insofar as that is possible. Nobody should try to be a psychological superman, and if Jenna is better in a relationship, and wants that, we might work on that. Or perhaps we will work on career satisfaction, or increasing her financial security (I am not a financial advisor, but there are many psychological obstructions to our success, and I work on these, and in association with this, on the positive creation of a plan and its follow-through). Inwardly, Jenna might need to face many fears, and to become more rational about them. Yes, anything can go wrong in life, but there are also probabilities and likelihoods and abilities to handle what comes, and we need to work at basing our feelings on those. We might notice that Jenna's anxiety is fueled by her frequent imagination of being old, poor, sick, and alone. We might notice, for example, that when Jenna does this she is imagining a state which is in the future, and that the future is not something she can control right now. A queer thing happens here, in that Jenna's picture of the future becomes of something which, when it arrives, is out of her control. But she has just conflated her current relationship with a future event, which is a bridge she cannot yet cross, with her relationship with it if and when it happens. What I have just said may sound rather abstract, but I use this example because it is in fact very common, it it really impacts people. Hence, in unpacking the logic of Jenna's fantasies about her life's risks, she may come to see the ways in which they are based on irrationalities which she has not recognised, but which nonetheless have a great impact on her. By undermining such habitual, implicit irrationality in her thinking and imagining, Jenna's fears starts to lose their particular hold on her. The change grows as we do this with her other tangled irrationalities--the system starts to fall apart, Jenna becomes more rational and free.
Looking at virtue again, in the proper, deeper sense of the idea, there are also many things that Jenna forgets, as she fantasise about the horrible future in store for her. She forgets about her power to make herself and life better. What about her neglected desire for a deeper philosophy or spirituality, which can transform future bad experiences? What about those "old people" who are experiencing the poverty or illness which Jenna fears, and yet who make their life deeply meaningful? Much of our misery is a failure to grow into our higher possibilities, qualities of being and living which lift us above our fears and despair, by making our life into something more. We may continue to suffer, but we experience how there are more important things, and we become focused on those. It turns out that life is not about freedom from suffering, even if that is a fine goal at times. The fact is that we are surrounded by people who make these differences in their life as the years go on, although of course they are invisible to us unless we pay attention and reflect, unless we go on our own hero's journey.
In Conclusion
The view of Existential Therapy is that your suffering and challenges call on you to draw on all that is better within yourself. That includes your capacities for intelligence, insight, wisdom, courage, will-power, determination, emotional skillfulness, compassion, and so on. Your challenges are an invitation to accept and enact your particular "hero's journey," to grow, and to live and experience in fuller ways. The goal of existential therapy is not safety, but rather capacity. It is to take an active rather than passive approach to life. To reach deep within yourself. Existential Therapy is about doing something with what life does to you. It is about shaping things, both within and without. In taking such a stance, and doing these things, this therapy is about finding your strength, your joy, your meaning. In our therapeutic hours I invite you to live this way, to go deep into your concerns and your life, as a springboard to continue such living outside of our hours together.
Existential Therapy is Philosophical Counselling but with an emphasis on the inclusion of psychotherapy. Some people want only or mainly Philosophical Counselling. Others want the inclusion of a more psychological focus as well, which is Existential Therapy. If you cannot decide which one is right for you, don't worry: my approach is open, experimental; we simply start talking, and paying attention, and what is needed will show itself.
There are different definitions of, and approaches to, Existential Therapy. I agree with a rather common definition: Existential Therapy is a philosophical approach to counselling and psychotherapy. Of course, I have already described a "philosophical approach to counselling" on the previous page. I called it Philosophical Counselling. So what is the difference here?
Existential Therapy as I define it, is Philosophical Counselling--which is to say counselling + philosophy--with the addition of a further, third element: pyschotherapy. Existential Therapy is counselling + philosophy + psychotherapy. In Existential Therapy I bring all three disciplines together to help you with your challenges and goals.
But what is psychotherapy, and how is it different to counselling? Again, there are various ways of understanding this, so here are the definitions I have developed over time. Counselling can be defined as a set of conversational skills, and a way of being, which elicits clarity and motivation in a client. I discussed that on the previous page. A counsellor draws on much theoretical knowledge, but counselling itself is less of a theory and more of a practice, a set of skills for eliciting clarity and motivation. A psychotherapy, by contrast, is a specific psychological theory about human nature, including its ills and the antidotes to those ills, which is applied as a therapy--a set of practices which express the theory, and which are aimed at healing, improvement, and growth. There are a range of such theories, and hence there are a range of psychotherapies, including the many different versions of the humanistic, the psychoanalytic, and the cognitive-behavioural therapies.
While counselling and psychotherapy are distinct, many counsellors study both as a part of their training, and some choose to subscribe to a particular psychotherapy. In my case, I have taken deep dives into a wide variety of the psychotherapies, but I prefer to draw on them as a broad background, a wide array of insights and practices from which I choose as is relevant for each individual client. With me, you do not have to choose between these different psychotherapies--these competing psychological theories and therapies--rather we include them in our bigger, broader lens.
On the previous page I described also the kinds of questions and struggles which show that a philosophical approach to therapy is important, and that it may be more important than a psychological approach. Of course, as I noted there, some of our maladies feel much less cognitive. They feel more murky, they are more resistent to reflection and effort. This is the situation where psychological analysis and technique can really shine, and prove its worth alongside philosophical reflection and striving. Let us consider two such cases, two fictional examples: Tim who experiences depression, and Jenna who experiences anxiety.
Tim comes with depression....
Imagine that Tim comes to therapy because he feels depressed. If he sees a psychologist instead of me, they will probably draw on the clinical schema for depression and its indicated treatments as set out in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). My therapy, by contrast, is in no way clinical. It is worth noting that research itself suggests that more than 90 per cent of depression is not an illness, but rather a reaction to a life adversity. Hence, for such depression Existential Therapy can be an excellent option. For in the philosophical and existential model, depression is seen as 1) a challenge in living, 2) a playing out of the human condition, and 3) an experience of a dimension of reality, all of which 4) calls for greater insight and personal growth.
If Tim views himself mainly through the schema of science and technology--as a kind of machine to be diagnosed and fixed--then he may prefer a more clinical mental health service, with its diagnostic schemata and manualised treatments. In that case, he will probably find my approach frustrating. However, if Tim sees himself and his challenges as human in a deeper sense, and as therefore requiring insight, effort, and personal growth, then he will probably gain greater benefit from my approach.
I may start the therapy by engaging Tim in a phenomenological exploration of his experience. Phenomenology is a philosophical exploration, a descriptive exploration of what is, avoiding assumptions and using words that most directly capture the experience. As such exploration continues, insights emerge, and they become more helpfully subtle as we persist. Through such phenomenological exploration with Tim we may find that certain words resonate with, and shed further light on, what he is actually experiencing. Tim shifts from vague and technical words like depressed, to more precise and helpful words which capture his actual experience, for example he comes to distinguish multiple experiences and feelings which he calls despair, pointlessness, boredom, and anger.
We might use these words as the entry point to further insight work, for example by developing a clearer understanding of how Tim's despair, pointlessness, boredom, and anger arise and fall in the context of his life. This naturally leads also to practical questions, such as what is contributing to these, and what needs to change, both on a day to day basis and in terms of Tim's bigger or deeper concerns? This opens up various lines of enquiry and work which amount to a helpful therapy.
There are existential therapists who work in a purely phenomenological way. In my case, I will lead Tim from phenomenology into other kinds of philosophy. We may engage in more critical reflection on the ideological structure of his worldview, including its cultural and other determinants. Is Tim assuming a depressing picture of human nature, or human interactions, and so on?
As I described on the previous page, I am deeply rooted in the classical tradition of philosophy, which explores how our personal qualities shape life, and how we can cultivate them. This is sometimes called Virtue Ethics. So we might also explore what virtues or character strengths Tim is in need of. To consider an intellectual virtue, is there a lack of intellectual humility in Tim's despair, for example does he assume that he knows with certainty what is possible? In that case, Tim may be ignoring the genuine possibility of life being better, and merely giving up too early. And what about the intellectual virtue, is Tim adequatley exercising his rational faculties, or is he hiding behind a mere pretence of rationality? For example, is Time rationalising--using reason for an irrational purpose--for example as a cover for his fear? Backing oneself into a corner in life through fear is indeed depressing. In that case, we are dealing with the vice of cowardice and the virtue of courage: Tim needs to cultivate adequate courage in how he approaches life, if he is to find purpose and satisfaction in life. And what about temperance, the ability to see persist and see things through? That again is necessary for a unified life of purpose. What about wisdom and justice--does Tim have such a view of others and the world, or does he see the world as evil and other people as merely stupid? That's a wrong view, and its pretty damn depressing. There are as many virtues as there are "good qualities" which people need to cultivate a good life. To speak of the need for virtues and vices is not at all to be judgemental, rather it is to assert reality, which is a reality where people are both determined by things, but also free in some important sense: free to shape themselves, to make life better. If Tim is willing to do the work of growing in the virtues needed for his good life--and it comes down to his volition, his willingness to open himself to life, and to do the work-- thenI will readily lead Tim in that work. This is a way in which Existential Therapy (the kind I have defined and practice here) is incredibly powerful.
I have just described various ways in which Existential Therapy can help Tim, blending elements from my typical Philosophical Counselling, with an emphasis on existential-phenomenology which is more common to other existential therapists. But what about the psychotherapies? Within the context of the above explorations, I might also engage Tim in a psychodynamic analysis of his way of being. For example, we might explore his attachment style, his defenses, and his old habitual life strategies and projects. Tim might complain at this point that I am focusing on the past, but in fact I am helping Tim to see how it is he who is still living in the past, and I do this in such a way that he may become more free to choose a different way of being, here in his present, adult context. Those old coping strategies from childhood may have protected Tim when young, but he has unwittingly carried them forward, and they now obstruct his happiness and success. In that case Tim's current suffering is a sign, which exploration can turn into a map, inviting and enabling him to choose a new, more mature way of coping with life, which let's more of the good stuff in. To make that new way of being a reality, we might shift from psychodynamic psychotherapy into using tools from cognitive-behavioural psychotherapy. And, of course ,the humanistic psychotherapeutic aspects of the counselling relationship--the deep empathy and honesty--will be highly impactful throughout, even if we never name them.
Existential Therapy really does balance the philosophical and the psychological. We do not have to choose one and neglect or reject the other. It is not a competition, these do not have to tribes at war, even if that is often how it is out there. Why not do both kinds of work, mixing them together as needed?
What I have described above is an example of how I might work with a client; it is not the way, it is not a description of how I work with any depression. Rather, it shows some of the things I might do. As a therapist I "read" each client in their individuality, and do the things which may best work for them, integrating different therapeutic approaches as needed. Hence my approach looks different with each client. With some people the counselling is very philosophical, while with others it is barely philosophical and more classically psychotherapeutic, while with many it is a mixture. With some clients it is more mechanically cognitive and behavioural, while with some it is more contemplative in a humanistic manner. With some there is a strong challenge with regard to the virtues, while with others it is most phenomenological reflection. Furthermore, the way of working with any individual may change across time.
Jenna comes with anxiety....
If Jenna comes to me speaking of anxiety, we may also engage in a phenomenological exploration and the other kinds of philosophical analysis mentioned above. Let us focus, however, on the kind of distinctly existential analysis which might inform our work, and which gives its name to this therapy. I might make the very existential point to Jenna, that we should not assume that anxiety is merely irrational or disordered--say, a mental illness. Rather, anxiety is often a reasonable reaction to life. Life is a permanently dangerous situation. Things can go very badly indeed, and so much is a matter of chance. To be human is to be deeply vulnerable. The typically clinical question Why are you anxious? might have things backwards. Perhaps the better question is Why are people not more anxious? Perhaps I will work with Jenna to take a different perspective, which may lead to a different relationship with her anxiety.
Talk of a different relationship with anxiety sounds nice and all--we hear it all the time--but what does that actually mean in practice? Through phenomenological analysis, we might start to see a distinction between the various elements of the phenomenon of "Jenna's anxiety," and in particular we might notice a basic distinction between her core anxiety, and her anxiety reactions. When Jenna perceives danger, which might include the anticipation of her own oncoming anxiety, she may engage in habitual reactions. She may start to think a certain way: "Everything will end terribly, with me in the gutter" or "Other people are complete arseholes." She may react with certain habitual feels, for example numbing out, or becoming angry, or distraught, or obsessed. She will start to act in certain ways which make things worse. These are all psychological defenses, ways of not feeling the original feeling, and they wreak havoc in our lives. The existential therapist Irvin Yalom has shown how our reactions to life itself, for example to our vulnerability, can be the root of such defenses.
Through reflection of the above kind, Jenna may come to see a distinction between her original, basic fear or sensations, versus her reactions to that. Previously she mindlessly drew a line around all of it, called it all anxiety, and imagined that this unified ball of horribleness simply happened to her, and was out of her control. Now Jenna is dividing her anxiety into two elements.
Jenna had assumed that her anxiety was one thing, when in fact it is composed of basic sensations plus her reaction to those. She now has a more detailed understanding of both elements, in terms of their particular existence within her. Jenna can now apply theancient wisdom of Stoic philosophy, that there are things in your control, and things outside of it. This is called the Stoic fork. Living with the things you (completely, or mostly, or currently) cannot control requires deepened wisdom. Changing the things you can required many virtues too. Jenna and I get to work on these. Generally this work is implicit--I have quite an implicit way of working with people, because I attend carefully to people's psychological reactiveness as it both obstructs or increases change--but we also work on making an explicit philosophy and practice out of this better way, so that Jenna can carry it forward long after she ends therapy.
The wisdom of acceptance in Jenna's case might involve existential reflection on the inherent place of anxiety in life, so that Jenna can increasingly stop rejecting that fact, and gradually become more and more adept at living with it. It will involve phenomenological skills in "sitting with" the basic sensations of her anxiety, which "happen to her," and becoming less and less reactive. Gradually, Jenna has the basic physiological sensation or thought, but that is all, it passes by, and while she may feel less comfortable than before, she is fine to get on with her day. We see here that there is a paradox in acceptance: precisely by letting go of the need to change things, things often change. But the change only comes by genuinely letting go of the need for it, of genuinely accepting that life is uncomfortable, and dangerous. It is easy to believe that we have accepted that, but certain of our reactions tell a different story.
Alongside the wisdom of acceptance, the work of change is also important. We may work on many elements of Jenna's life, both inwardly and outwardly. For example, a better mindset is important, but so is the creation of the desired security and happiness, insofar as that is possible. Nobody should try to be a psychological superman, and if Jenna is better in a relationship, and wants that, we might work on that. Or perhaps we will work on career satisfaction, or increasing her financial security (I am not a financial advisor, but there are many psychological obstructions to our success, and I work on these, and in association with this, on the positive creation of a plan and its follow-through). Inwardly, Jenna might need to face many fears, and to become more rational about them. Yes, anything can go wrong in life, but there are also probabilities and likelihoods and abilities to handle what comes, and we need to work at basing our feelings on those. We might notice that Jenna's anxiety is fueled by her frequent imagination of being old, poor, sick, and alone. We might notice, for example, that when Jenna does this she is imagining a state which is in the future, and that the future is not something she can control right now. A queer thing happens here, in that Jenna's picture of the future becomes of something which, when it arrives, is out of her control. But she has just conflated her current relationship with a future event, which is a bridge she cannot yet cross, with her relationship with it if and when it happens. What I have just said may sound rather abstract, but I use this example because it is in fact very common, it it really impacts people. Hence, in unpacking the logic of Jenna's fantasies about her life's risks, she may come to see the ways in which they are based on irrationalities which she has not recognised, but which nonetheless have a great impact on her. By undermining such habitual, implicit irrationality in her thinking and imagining, Jenna's fears starts to lose their particular hold on her. The change grows as we do this with her other tangled irrationalities--the system starts to fall apart, Jenna becomes more rational and free.
Looking at virtue again, in the proper, deeper sense of the idea, there are also many things that Jenna forgets, as she fantasise about the horrible future in store for her. She forgets about her power to make herself and life better. What about her neglected desire for a deeper philosophy or spirituality, which can transform future bad experiences? What about those "old people" who are experiencing the poverty or illness which Jenna fears, and yet who make their life deeply meaningful? Much of our misery is a failure to grow into our higher possibilities, qualities of being and living which lift us above our fears and despair, by making our life into something more. We may continue to suffer, but we experience how there are more important things, and we become focused on those. It turns out that life is not about freedom from suffering, even if that is a fine goal at times. The fact is that we are surrounded by people who make these differences in their life as the years go on, although of course they are invisible to us unless we pay attention and reflect, unless we go on our own hero's journey.
In Conclusion
The view of Existential Therapy is that your suffering and challenges call on you to draw on all that is better within yourself. That includes your capacities for intelligence, insight, wisdom, courage, will-power, determination, emotional skillfulness, compassion, and so on. Your challenges are an invitation to accept and enact your particular "hero's journey," to grow, and to live and experience in fuller ways. The goal of existential therapy is not safety, but rather capacity. It is to take an active rather than passive approach to life. To reach deep within yourself. Existential Therapy is about doing something with what life does to you. It is about shaping things, both within and without. In taking such a stance, and doing these things, this therapy is about finding your strength, your joy, your meaning. In our therapeutic hours I invite you to live this way, to go deep into your concerns and your life, as a springboard to continue such living outside of our hours together.
Existential Therapy is Philosophical Counselling but with an emphasis on the inclusion of psychotherapy. Some people want only or mainly Philosophical Counselling. Others want the inclusion of a more psychological focus as well, which is Existential Therapy. If you cannot decide which one is right for you, don't worry: my approach is open, experimental; we simply start talking, and paying attention, and what is needed will show itself.
