Effervescence, Oil on Canvas, by Catherine Grace

"Effervescence" Oil on canvas completed 03/2023

"Effervescence" explores the inevitability of death, specifically the fleeting feelings of freedom and permanence in a restrictive "evaporating" world. 

Catherine Grace

is an artist originally from Rome, NY who works predominantly in theatre and film. “I am riveted by questions about what it means to exist in our world today. My work often explores feelings of pervasive aridity and emotional deprivation in the human spirit in the face of societal opulence, often drawing on absurd elements that heighten the ridiculous. Through my work I seek to evoke a deep emotional response in my viewer, one that stirs, and perhaps even cathartically heals.”

Personal links:

instagram.com/1catherinegrace

linktr.ee/1catherinegrace

Member of International Existential Phenomenological Book Club, inspired from the Being and Nothingness Series. 

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

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

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

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

Read Something that Provokes you to Read More

What illuminates for you when you see me, is something I could never see of myself.

Gliding along the surface keeping our eyes out for what shimmers in our ever-shifting temporal constellation. If we are to discover anything new along the way to where we are going, we must be open to change. I must be open to the idea that something beyond me right now could change me; anything other than me that I interact with has the power to change me.

You need the freedom to take a moment to read something when it provokes you to read more.

You continue to re-arrange your internal bookshelf, making space for the next must read.

When will you give yourself the space to learn freely?

Why must you always be doing something else when something over here sparked your curiosity?

Only in the preservation of art, does it extend beyond the experience it was originally created in. It is in the experience we consciously occupy that we are drawn into the ideas that were once written. We mingle in the space that exists between the book and our mind as it leads us into an unescapable dialogue with ourselves in an adventurous form. Experiential moments that render time transform us, because if something moves you, it shows you something in relation to yourself.

© Victoria Venturella, Existential Dialogues, The Existentialist

#readmore

#read

#reading

#maketime

#makespace

#beproductive in all of life.

#freedom

#internaldialogue

#letsgo

#timelessness

#giveyourselfpermission

#creative

#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

#beheard

#feellove

#lovedeeply

#loveyourself

#yourarepowerful

#youarehere

#youexist

#existential

#existentialangst

#existentialdread

#trusttheuniverse

#youchoose

#createyourlife

#compassion

#existentialphenomeology

#victoriaventurella

#relationshipwithself #communication #transcendence

#futureself #infinitepossibilities

#existentialpsychotherapy

Victoria Venturella, MA, Existential Phenomenological Psychotherapist, LMHCA

Do not regret what you have done: Existence precedes essence

Every experience you have lived thus far contributes to the human being you are today. If you had the power to change your previously lived experiences, it would change who you have come to be and potentially the trajectory of how you have lived your life. You may not have been driven to study the things you have, your interests may have been different, you may not have found yourself in the specific relationships you have encountered. You may not know your children as they are, maybe you did not have children. Your personality and the way you relate to the world would no longer exist as you currently experience it.

You are born into a world that is not of your choosing. You cannot decide who your parents are, where you grow up geographically, what your name is, how you will be educated, what kinds of interactions you will observe, how you will be punished or treated, if you will be respected, protected, and loved. As a child you cannot choose to forego abuse, neglect, and any other traumatic experiences. These experiences shape how you interact with the world and become the backdrop you unconsciously and consciously pull from when making sense of the present situation across a lifetime. In fact, it is highly likely that you will grow up to believe the way you were treated is how one is to be treated. Until one day your awareness shifts in your cognitive maturation, when you witness opposition in the way others respond to you and world. Holding yourself in contempt for the choices made before and after your cognitive faculties fully develop prevents you from embracing your whole self in its truest form in each present moment. You cannot separate yourself from who you have come to be. You can only move forward.

When we move into adulthood, we become the agent of our lives. Your choices are now only yours to make. These choices are grounded in the understandings of what you have come to know up until this point. It is up to you to utilize the resources within the world to discover what is known beyond you.

Whenever you are making a choice, pay attention to what is present within you. That internal voice is your authentic internal dialogue. Let yourself engage with the back-and-forth movement of thought. When you make choices that align with your moral compass and you choose choices that are authentically sound, you will never regret the life you have chosen to live. If you could stand behind the choices you make completely for where you are in this moment of time when the choices were made, then how could you regret the choices you have made if you honor your present and past self with compassion?

To love yourself completely you must love everything you have been through. Even the things that cause you to feel embarrassed or shameful. You will forever depart from yourself. If you depart from a place of love and compassion you will paint your external landscape in similar hues of wonder.

Author: Victoria Venturella, Existential Phenomenological Psychotherapist

© Victoria Venturella, Existential Dialogues, The Existentialist