Existential Phenomenological Psychotherapy

Existentialism is a philosophical theory that is used as an approach in psychotherapy. Every person is a unique individual with a responsibility to will themselves free and be an agent of choice in pursuit of their fullest potential. In that one must discover who they are, what they want to do, how they want to show up in the world, what is meaningful to them, and proceed honoring their authentic self. Some people contemplate what their ultimate purpose in life is? What this life means? Some question if it means anything at all. Our finite nature perplexes people and causes grave anxiety. Existential psychotherapy opens space to unpack all the feelings that come from the thoughts of people we love and ourselves seizing to exist. It encourages you to embrace uncertainty as a foundation of life. To cherish anxiety as nature’s way of telling you that something at hand needs your attention and you might need to make a choice. We mustn’t silence our curiosities and passions. We must have the courage to confront the vibrancy of life.

Phenomenology is the conscious experience of something. In the context of psychotherapy, it is the conscious experience of the client’s description of their conscious experience of everyday life. As they describe their present world to us, they unconsciously reveal connections to their previous experiences. The reason they may show up in the way they are in this instance with their partner, may be indictive of how they were treated or witnessed others being treated as a child. There is no present moment devoid of our prior experiences. The way we interpreted what happened to us stays with us. Unpacking our experiences with a psychotherapist helps us process the fullness of what occurred and helps us hold it differently.

The relationship between the client and therapist is a key component in this work. What happens between the client and therapist is indicative of what happens out in the world between client and other people. By calling attention to what is experienced in the here and now, clients learn to become more present, aware of self, and relational wounds are worked through leading to reintegration.

© Victoria Venturella, MA, Wait a Meta, Existential Dialogues

Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina

How to live with uncertainty

1. Acknowledge you do not know everything. Embrace being a lifelong learner.

2. Accept that the way you imagine it will be, will be different.

3. Find beauty in mystery, surprise, experience of wordlessness, and the distance of time.

4. Knowing the outcome before its occurrence is humanly impossible.

5. Know you will not always have a way to describe what you are trying to articulate.

6. You will never know the wisdom of your future self before you’re there.

7. Accept uncertainty as a foundation of life.

   © Victoria Venturella, MA, Wait a Meta, Existential Dialogues

Incandescent

Smoldering from the depths of me,

Smoke rises.

Out my vented chest

Butterflies flutter--

Your iris painted

the color of my minds sea.

Labradorite cinereal.

My silvered lantern.

fissured branches,

glowing ember.

Effervescent beauty seeps through me.

Chromatic metamorphosis.

Like moonlight you cast a beam,

On all the places that must

be seen.

Sepia budded vines entangled,

Growing.

I'm already something new.

© Victoria Venturella, MA, Wait a Meta, Existential Dialogues

The Power of The Future Not Yet

There is a path from here to there paved in reels of undeveloped film.

You are the only one who will ever see it the way you experienced it.

You get to keep all the pictures.

You can choose which way to go

but you’ll never be for certain the future of not yet.

Life lives in mystery, love, and what’s not yet known.

The power of the future not yet.

© Victoria Venturella, MA, The Existentialist, Existential Dialogues

Do you sometimes feel that this global pandemic will never end?

We seem to have hit another place collectively. Many of us in disbelief that this is still happening. We have become concerned as to how long this will continue. All the social distancing, travel, and large crowd restrictions, and having to wear masks in all indoor places. Parents concerned to send their children to school. Kids worried about going to school whether its due to social anxiety or their own fear of covid and not having the vaccine just yet. Polarized views on the safety of the vaccine are causing major divides within friends and familial systems.

We still must make space for hope. Hope that one day it will not be this way. That we will have overcome this. After all, we will never have this moment back.

Savor this present experience as it is.

What a beautiful moment here in the chaos of this which we call life.

Take it all in. For all its uncertainty. All that is present in the here and now.

In this historical time to be alive.

Look at where we are.

Sit with what you are grateful for.

Cherish your travels. Every path you take in life.

Whatever direction this pandemic has taken you we all grieve the absence of what we collectively experienced. Before covid existed.

We must remember that all things that we experience in life contribute to how we interpret the world. This pandemic has given us all something to create from. Even in such grave tragedy beauty blooms brightly in the darkest corners. What feels like the end of the world becomes a gift to learn from.

During the pandemic life has continued to prevail, people have gotten married, divorced, met their partners, moved to a new place, started a new job, had a baby, started a business, started therapy, wrote books, created art, reimagined what life could look like in the future suspending how we always knew it to be.

Have compassion for how you are experiencing this situation.

Have compassion for the you that has been experiencing this situation the entire time.

© Victoria Venturella, MA, The Existentialist, Existential Dialogues

Moon Clock

Moon Clock

In full vulnerability

Illuminating bright

Luminescence.

You see yourself glimmer

In the gaze of the Other.

Temporal rotation.

Within a shadow

We meet ourselves.

Where are we?

With myself how do I see myself?

In thought? On the page? In a recording?

In my reflections of my recent experiences.

I see myself in you. I see you in myself.

Part of each other’s present evolution.

You no longer are where you were.

One section of chapters becoming the palate to paint the next section.

Opening my evolution from the page I am on today.

Moon Clock

Time to illuminate the world to reveal who we are to ourselves.

Without the world who would we be?

How could we see who we are without all that exists beyond us?

We would be nothing without the world.

© Victoria Venturella, MA, The Existentialist, Existential Dialogues

If you believe it's possible the world inspired you

Everything we create comes from the experiences we have in the world.

Originality is born from human experience.

The world has so much beauty to show you even in its absurdity.

If you believe it’s possible then the world inspired you.

© Victoria Venturella, MA, Existential Phenomenological Psychotherapist, The Existentialist, Existential Dialogues

#originality

#inspiration #inspire

@existentialdialogues

Time Vanishes Promptly Easily Finding Yourself in a Creative Headspace

Having ADHD allows for us to experience the world from infinite angles.

We must learn how to navigate in this terrain, while cherishing who you are.

You see the world from a unique individual perspective, as we all do.

How can we best create your everyday landscape to experience all your gifts to their fullest potentiality?

When we recognize the situation or thing differently, that never inherently means that what you see is wrong. How you experience the situation allows for you to see things in a unique way. An idea comes to you. Quickly you search for a pen. While the words briskly begin to leave you. You’ve moved on to something else. Which later prompts you to search for something in a different room.

Time vanishes promptly easily finding yourself in a creative headspace. Splashing loudly in a completely new project equally intriguing.

We just need to learn how to navigate such a landscape that grabs so much of our undivided attention.

Achieving a consistent state of timelessness is something to cherish. How can you fit it in without letting the other areas of your life suffer?

How can we better manage our time to manifest our big ideas?

Pausing with life as it draws your attention is something to be valued.

How can you incorporate the way you see the world while adhering to societal norms and systems that were built for the collective majority?

There is nothing wrong with needing more time for things.

Everyone in the world could read the same book and we would all have different perspective on it.

You are with yourself for your entire life.

Pay attention to what works best for you. Honor what you need to live into your fullest potential. Never hinder the others capacity to become their best selves too. For me to be free you must be free.

What are all your living projects?

The ones that continue onward, and never seem to be finished?

© Victoria Venturella, MA, The Existentialist, Existential Dialogues

Making Errors is Part of What Makes Us a Perfect Human

Who defines perfect?

Who defines your imperfections?

Society leaves space for human error because it’s a given that human beings will potentially miss something in any given circumstance.

You can try to excel at something, lower the potentiality for making a mistake in this or that. You can attempt to perfect what you or society consider imperfections. But the mere fact that these imperfections exist are absolutely what makes you a perfect human.

Would you be human without error?

Being a perfect human accounts for the potentiality of not knowing, not seeing, not hearing, not understanding, memory misalignment. While at the same time we have lots of resources out there to help us learn, get on track, inform ourselves, to make better choices. Even if you were an expert in the field at something, there is always the potential for not having noticed something, doesn’t mean you won’t notice it later, and if someone pointed it out to you right now you would integrate it into what you know seamlessly.

There isn’t a human being that exists that doesn’t warrant grace for human error. Therefore, making errors is part of what makes us a perfect human.

Let’s consider what society deems as perfect, or what you consider as perfect. Someone who is perfect knows how to show up at all social situations, can pick up on every social cue and respond effectively, can feel into their emotions, can master every single thing they try on the first attempt, can beat everyone at everything, you name it they will win it, can raise perfect children just like themselves, can be everywhere at the exact same moment, can satisfy all the needs of everyone they know at the same time, practices self-care, takes on new hobbies, pursues all their passions and excels at every single one of them, gets exceptional sleep nightly, wakes up with a pep in their step onto the kitchen to make an amazing breakfast that fulfills all the nutrients needed to jump start the day, can pick up on all social cues as if they are a mind reader and know exactly how to respond to the other to where they can be just as supportive as they are needing to be, never gets sick, the body and mind coincide until late age and body depletion never hinders what they want to pursue in late life, they know every answer to everything, they can win every talk show, they remember everything they have been through in life and having exceptional recall, they photograph books into their brain and file them away for easy access later, nothing they ever cook tastes off and never burns, they never trip walking up the stairs, they always know where they are going, they never accidently add something together wrong, they learned every foreign language, and can speak it fluently to native cultures, they give excellent massages and have the capacity to be emotionally supportive to everyone in the world in the same way a therapist can to a select number of clients without conflict of interest, their attachment style is completely secure regardless of how they were treated as a child, the trauma they experience in the world is processed on their own in their own head, everything can be articulated and nothing is too complicated, they write all the New York Times best sellers, writes prolific poetry, graduates Cum Laude after choosing from any of all schools they were accepted into, never gets into a car accident, upholds a physique that never wavers no matter what they eat or whether they work out or not, never not thinks of a possible option to why something may be the way that it is, they can instantly consider all the potential possibilities with all possible outcomes and make a choice on the spot without having to sleep on it, they remember everyone’s birthday, they know every holiday in every culture by heart, calls all their friends and family in a sufficient amount of time to maintain close relationships, never kills a plant they pot, never leaves the oven on, never gets sun burned, they can also hear everything around them perfectly as if each thing is isolated on its own within every situation, there is not room for any error.

© Victoria Venturella, MA, The Existentialist, Existential Dialogues

#perfection

#imperfection

#beingperfect

#makingmistakes

#humanerror

Free Fall into the Universe

Even when it feels like the ground no longer exists below you,

And the outcome seems infinitely uncertain,

Allow yourself to free fall into the universe of the unknown.

So much will come from your willingness to find out what will one day be.

Be with the mystery,

Love fully even with the potential heartbreak,

New choices lead us somewhere else.

Live freely.

Live loudly.

Live into your fullest potential in life.

© Victoria Venturella, MA, The Existentialist, Existential Dialogues

Gone long enough for home to feel foreign and familiar at the same time

Long enough to lose my rhythm,

Experience a completely new one.

When the space you created

Was with you anywhere you existed.

Being with what the experience is giving us.

Adaptation with known impermanence

Savor every unique sliver of those moments.

Your home is where you create it, but it starts

In your inner self.

Even your home can become foreign the longer you exist away from it,

Familiarity caught within all the things that have shifted for me.

Every corner reveals potentiality.

New visions are coming to me, ideas that must be written.

Home.

This is a place you create.

An empty canvas to slouch paint all over.

You build your shelter and continuously invent it.

You are the creator of your life.

Like a glimmer on a crystal rock,

Light brings out the sparkles from

Infinite angles.

© Victoria Venturella, MA, The Existentialist, Existential Dialogues

#createyourownlife

#manifest

#curiosity

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#youareyourhome

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#existentialangst

#angst

#hereandnow

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#beseen

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#existential

#existentialdread

#trusttheuniverse

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#victoriaventurella

#relationshipwithself #communication #transcendence

#futureself #infinitepossibilities

#existentialpsychotherapy

We Already Know

Dropping in,

here we sit.

Present with such certainty.

You will feel someone love you just as hard.

You’ll never be too much.

Energy completely matched.

Mutual. Same page.

Perpetually pursued.

Like a parachute,

Expanding widely in your wind.

In a tree house,

dangling our feet,

the universe feels,

our gratitude.

Emerging,

Spilling over my cup,

My saucer,

My heart.

Vividly living

the prime of your life.

All those relationships didn’t work out so you can experience the one that will.

© Victoria Venturella, MA, The Existentialist, Existential Dialogues

#growtogether #relationshipwithself #lifelonglearner #transcendence #metamorphosis #change #evolving #growth #truelove #lovefully #heartbreak #love #loveyourself #communication #relationships #futureself #existentialquestions #victoriaventurella #existentialism #phenomenology #existentialphenomenology #existentialangst #angst #beingwithyourself #existentialpsychology #centralpurposetherapy

Victoria Venturella, MA, Existential Phenomenological Psychotherapist

My heart.

Where are you?

Heart pieces shattered floating inside.

Sinking weight of sadness.

Not sure where you went.

Roses drooping swaying in the wind,

Old seeds sprouting,

The movement from there to here,

Inside the petals,

Caught in a pre-emptive bloom.

Holding my knees,

Drenched in the musk of you,

Notes of dialogues flutter in,

All those authentic gestures,

Willingness to see,

Awareness of being seen,

We bloom again.

Meeting the edge of each other,

Perpetually asymmetrical.

Saying the things people never give space to,

Encouraging hard conversations.

Wading in the full truth we swim.

© Victoria Venturella, MA, The Existentialist, Existential Dialogues

Relationships do not magically begin where you want them to be

Relationships do not magically begin where you want them to be. You must work toward having a shared existence you both want to live in. However you expected it to be won’t be how it actually is. Your partner is an entirely different human being with their own mind, and they have their own ideas as to how they imagined this going.

We all like to think that we could find “the one” that fits perfect with us, but in all reality the ones that fit perfect with us in the beginning ends up eventually having ruptures and dissonance that will need to be worked through together. Two human beings that come together will never be absolutely on point at all times. The only thing you can do is acknowledge when you are not and make space together to figure out where to go from there.

If what you imagine wanting in a relationship is not happening in the first few months with someone, consider what it is you are really wanting. Is it marriage? Is it kids? Is it everyday cuddles? Is it the everydayness of life you want to share with someone? Is it that you want to build a life with your best friend and support each other’s growth and dreams? Now consider how do you get to that point with someone? Do you skip the dates for dinner and a movie? Do you skip the endless conversations to figure out who each other are? Do you start from knowing deeply, loving deeply, and living fully enmeshed? Relationships take work to get to a place where longevity is prominent. It takes time to be the others other in this full-bodied all-encompassing way.

Then there are those people who meet and after only a few encounters they know they must be with that person. Are we all living for a situation like this to occur? These stories are rare and prevalent enough for them to exist as a rational possibility for us all to imagine it would occur for us too. If we never experience it, are we missing out? Is finding someone and facing the raw hard reality with the other meaningless? Even those people who feel they must be together after just a few encounters come up against the reality of their differences in who they are as people. There will be times where you do not understand each other, where you miss the other completely, where you disappoint the other without even understanding why, where you want to do something, but they want to do something else, where they think it is totally fine and you absolutely disagree. How you work together through these fissures is what moves the relationship along or contributes to its potential disintegration. You must learn to grow together, or you will grow apart preventing each other from fully blooming.

© Victoria Venturella, Existential Dialogues, The Existentialist

#relationships #infinitehuman #sharedexistence #beingseen #beingheard #activelistening #everdayliving #relationshipsarehard #relationshipsarework #communication #bepresent #besupportive #marriage #justmarried #theone #centralpurposetherapy #existential #existentialphenomeology #victoriaventurella #relationshipwithself #communication #transcendence #futureself #infinitepossibilities #existentialpsychotherapy

Even dogs leave us too soon

It doesn’t feel good to feel your heart hurting.

You give yourself to the universe knowing your heart will be broken over and over again. To experience the full breadth of love.

Even dogs leave us too soon.

A life without letting yourself feel fully doesn’t feel any better.

If you proceed into whatever will be without holding back, you may experience something that it is significantly different than the rest.

Where the potency of its knowing, seeing, hearing, being with, enlivens you.

The power of the future not yet.

What if the best experiences of your life are still not yet lived?

It might hit you one day. Out of nowhere.

You are in the living room tying your shoes.

You hear them coming closer, their bare feet across the cherry wood hall.

Dancing in silence, as if your favorite song was on, their scent lingers.

Enamored, in awe, you acknowledge this is the human you built this all with.

People arrive and you have no idea when they will be here.

What are you waiting for?

Go on, lean in.

Why are you saving to feel this later?

You may outlive your dog but what if you never felt that much love?

It is better to have felt the full breadth of love then to protect yourself from feeling heart break?

There will always be tragedy in life. Live your life vibrantly.

Knowing what it feels like to love something this much, mirrors the beauty in living.

How could you experience the fullness of what love has to offer if you only bring a part of you in?

What does going all in look like for you?

What are you afraid of happening if you let yourself love them fully?

How long do we teeter on the edge of something that offers us much more?

If you believe the mystery ahead is special, it will be.

#mindset

#whatyoutellyourselfmatters

#letyourselflovefully

#livividly

© Victoria Venturella, Existential Dialogues, The Existentialist

#liveloudly

#youmustfullyparticipate

#love

#dreambigger

#beseen

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#feellove

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#relationshipwithself #communication #transcendence

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#existentialpsychotherapy

Victoria Venturella, MA, Existential Phenomenological Psychotherapist, LMHCA

If you keep it all inside, you’ll never hear yourself say it.

If you never say it out loud then you won’t benefit from hearing yourself say it. Especially when someone else is listening simultaneously helping you to see it.

Other people show us ourselves.

When you say something out loud to the other, you hear yourself say it. Something happens when you acknowledge what you just said.

When you see that I see. The response to what is said is experienced verbally and non-verbally suspending all judgement. Bringing something to you in the purest form of authenticity for the betterment of who you are becoming.

The experiences you have stay with you. An interaction between you two arrives as a kodak moment at some unfamiliar juncture in a future present moment.

Every experience summons previous experiences. Whether consciously or unconsciously we make sense of what we are experiencing in the here and now. Unfamiliarity instantly reveals itself along the ambiguous edges of what we automatically find familiar. Sitting in the garden room anchored top of minds edge. Thoughts blossom rapidly in the immediacy of what is known as known and unknown. Questions take a seat, front row. They raise their hands pointing all over a map of meaning pressed deeply in minds wall. Full scenes and flashes of just one part dive into the deep end of our heart. Simultaneously placing our experience and our interpretations upon the present in ways we could not completely see for ourselves.

Every immediate connection in a present instance is not known. You will never know for certain what within the periphery of your focal point will reappear at some foreign unknown future present situation.

Questions come from and are answered through imagination. You would not have been able to conjure up such a plausible possibility had you not considered what could be based on what is. What is always includes part of what is not yet known. Even what is known can one day be known as something else. We must leave space in every present moment for the future to show us an unknown unknown. You can proceed with full certainty that you do not know everything. The ocean’s perpetual mystery and the endless ambiguity found in the universe existing beyond us, gives you uncertainty you can rely on. Human beings evolve. You can be for certain something manmade will exist in the future that may or may not advance our species, remaining forever unknown to you.
© Victoria Venturella, Existential Dialogues, The Existentialist

How to live with uncertainty:

·      Acknowledge you do not know everything. There are the known knowns, the known unknowns, and the unknown unknowns.

·      Embrace being a life-long learner.

·      Accept that the way you imagine it will be, will be different.

·      Find beauty in mystery, surprise, experience without translation, and the distance of time.

·      Knowing the outcome before its occurrence is humanly impossible. You must accept you will never know exactly how your job, relationship, week, or day will go.

·      Know you will not always have a way to describe what you want to articulate.

·      You will never know the wisdom of your future self before you are there.

·      You must accept that you may not know the reason for why any of this exists in your lifetime.

·      Accept uncertainty as a foundation of life.

·      You are an architect of your own life. Build the frame for experience to live in.

Author: Victoria Venturella, MA, Existential Phenomenological Psychotherapist, LMHCA

© Victoria Venturella, Existential Dialogues, The Existentialist

Expect the Unexpected

You can count on there being something unknown about every given situation. You cannot be for certain what someone will say. How the meeting will go. When you will receive a phone call, or an email, or a knock on your door. You cannot know how a relationship will evolve, if you will get married, if you will have children, if it will all work out as you hope.

You cannot know exactly how you will feel 10 years from now about this specific subject matter. You may have evolved so far beyond where you are right now that you have a completely new perspective.

Everything between now and the next moment is undetermined. We cannot control the weather. We can not control the response of others.

We do have control over how we respond to the situation. The situation could play itself out as we had imagined it would, or not. You can strive to get to where you aspire to be, and you may just get there. Proceed as if you will.

Proceed as if it will work out.

Just know that one thing is for certain, you cannot know for certain what will occur in the future. We can depend on ambiguity to perpetually exist in all parts of life.

© Victoria Venturella, Existential Dialogues, The Existentialist

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