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



Only Dostoyevsky knows me...

You walk to the back isle labeled Philosophy, pull White Nights off the shelf, slide your back down the shelves sprawling your legs out as you sit to read, “It suddenly seemed to me that I was lonely, that everyone was forsaking me and going away from me. . .For though I have been living almost eight years in Petersburg I had hardly an acquaintance. . .I felt afraid of being left alone, and for three whole days I wandered about the town in profound dejection, not knowing what to do with myself. . .They of course do not know me, but I know them. I know them intimately; I have almost made a study of their faces. . .For two evenings I was puzzling my brains to think what amiss in my corner; why I feel so uncomfortable in it. . .” A woman searching for a book beside you steps in-between your legs, Excuse me, I’m just searching for Camus’s The Stranger.

You know when you read something, and it feels as though the words you are reading came from your own thoughts? That happens a lot when you read philosophy, thoughts you thought no one else thought are captured in literature or philosophical novels waiting for you to see you in them.

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

Photo from film: A Woman is a Woman (1961)

Dostoevsky, White Nights (1848)

#philosophy #existential #existentialcrisis #nooneunderstandsme

#suffering #deepthinker #lifeishard #literature

#makemeaning #existentialist #loneliness #createyourlife

#existentialism #dostoevsky



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

danie-franco-zFnk_bTLApo-unsplash.jpg

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

javier-allegue-barros-55bVEzGVnzY-unsplash.jpg

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

ante-hamersmit-r657ehVymDE-unsplash.jpg
originality is born.jpg

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

steven-ramon-ODbOdeQVF2Q-unsplash.jpg

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

jonatan-becerra-Frdj333dsuY-unsplash.jpg

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.

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

People Who Mean Something to Us will Always Mean Something to Us

What does it mean to truly let someone go?

It doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t feel right.

Sitting in the pit of my stomach,

I don’t want to rid myself of you.

Do I have a choice to never remember someone I care deeply for?

How could you let someone go if you forever remember them?

When we let go of someone we love,

All those experiences, all those words of wisdom,

all that prior presence,

manifests itself as part of the things that consciously and unconsciously change you.

People who mean something to us will always mean something to us.

Them just meaning this much means something.

Your interpretation of the thing makes meaning. The meaning associated with the thing itself evolves as you experience new experiences. Where the previous interpretation presents itself in a new light and therefore this new interpretation contributes to the meaning of the original thing.

The same thing infinitely evolving within your finite existence adding meaning to this life you’re presently living.

To let go of someone you love,

You must consciously acknowledge you cannot reach them.

They cannot be turned toward, leaned on,

seen.

You will never know how you’ve impacted them or how new experiences have contributed to any future interpretation of their everyday life.

You will no longer bear witness to them.

To let go of them you can consciously choose to take them with you.

Letting go when you’d rather choose not to.

Teachers of humility, courage, and free choice.

Ethical mentors that perpetually reverberate the things we’ve learned in life,

Our relational sound boards.

Our space for private inquiry and internal exploration.

Our therapists.

How has your experience with this person contributed to your understanding of who you’ve come to be thus far?

Why do we let go of people?

People who we love dies.

People who would rather not communicate.

They couldn’t confront themselves or you.

They couldn’t grow with you.

When someone who saw you no longer sees you.

What it felt like to be seen when they saw you comes with you.

What if you notice no one sees you like them?

What does that end up meaning to you?

Revelatory moments of ourselves.

Never-ending.

You know what it feels like to be truly seen.

People manifest as change in us across a lifespan.

They fall to the tapestry of lived experience reappearing from the engagement with something that elicited original thoughts of them.

Coffee shop in a museum of art.

Dirty chai.

Leaning backwards. I look up.

Accordions dangled from the ceiling above me, how couldn’t I think of you.

Sipping and swirling with notes of insight.

With the deepest sense of gratitude for free choice.

What a bright light. . .

#insight

© Victoria Venturella, Existential Dialogues, The Existentialist

#futureself

#time

#space

#agency

#freechoice

#change

#presentmoment

#bepresent

#presence

#beingseen

#beingheard

#showingup

#vulnerablity

#courage

#memories

#existentialangst

#angst

#hereandnow

#whatsatstake

#beseen

#lovedeeply

#existential

#existentialdread

#trusttheuniverse

#existentialphenomeology

#victoriaventurella

#relationshipwithself #communication #transcendence

#futureself #infinitepossibilities

#existentialpsychotherapy

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

wesley-balten-xjS9YXVFTt4-unsplash.jpg

How many unsent letters do you file in your mind?

How many times does it take you to form the first sentence?

Back spacing in deep thought.

Where do you put all those love letters?

last words never said?

What about all those questions?

potential proposals?

all that honesty?

sudden arrivals of insight?

Why haven’t you told them yet?

Are you afraid of true love?

Why do you think you have forever?

Why would you wait to tell them what you continually wish to share with them?

Being vulnerable is transformative and healing.

What about those moments that you no longer feel like you are where you were?

Where do you file all the letters you write yourself? Those meaningful monologues of the deepest internal texture?

You don’t have to journal everyday to journal.

#journaling

#unsentletters

#writeletters

#havehardconversations

#fallinlove

#livedeeply

#lovedeeply

#liveloudly

#loveloudly

#beauthentic

#existentialquestions

#askmorequestions

#existentialangst

#angst

#hereandnow

#whatsatstake

#beseen

#lovedeeply

#existential

#existentialdread

#trusttheuniverse

#existentialphenomeology

#victoriaventurella

#relationshipwithself #communication #transcendence

#futureself #infinitepossibilities

#existentialpsychotherapy

Victoria Venturella, MA, Existential Phenomenological Psychotherapist

© Victoria Venturella, Existential Dialogues, The Existentialist

How far do you expand thought?

When you think a thought does it stop right there?

 

Do you stretch it to every corner of the world?

 

Do you take it inward and sit with it real deep?

 

Do you blurt it out letting it fall into the room?

 

How far does your curiosity guide you?

 

Are you willing to unravel where this thought came from?

 

How many experiences merge for you to conjure such an interpretation?

 

What do you do when something you are thinking doesn’t make sense?

 

What thoughts do you choose not to entertain?

 

When do you let a thought go on purpose?

 

Where does it go when it feels like it evaporates?

 

What do you consciously do with thoughts that continually resurface?

 

Do you sound out your feelings on paper?

 

What do you do with all the images you imagine? Do you ever imagine painting them?

 

Sketching them out blanketly in the sky above the sea, lost in thought staring lightly blue.

 

What do you do with the thoughts you zone out deeply thinking about?

 

How far do those thoughts expand when you forgot everything else mattered?

 

What does it feel like to think in silence?

 

How many instruments do you hear in this song?

 

Have you ever considered how many things influenced one thought? Chain of thoughts? Perpetual thoughts?

 

What do you do when you realize something you do comes from your Mother? Father? Caregiver? Mentor? Partner? Friend? How many thoughts become attached to that?

 

Have you ever examined what you tell yourself and ponder where it comes from?

 

Those questions that flood our psyche.

 

Have you ever considered what led you to such a passion? Where is this energy stored?

 

What do you do with creative juices felt in abundance?

 

How many branches hold a potential possibility in this imaginative thinking tree?

 

How many thoughts get lost in your shower?

 

What about the last one before you sleep?

 

What about the thoughts that pertain to why we are even here?

What do you think it means to be free?

 

To be free we must all be free.

 

 

Have you ever challenged yourself to find your own answer?

 

 

Do you hinder your best-self due to the perception of the other?

 

 

How important is it to you to form your own opinion?

 

Caption- [How far do you expand thought?]

 

#thinkdeeper

#doresearch

#deepthinker

 #formyourownopinion

 

#philosophy

 

#poet

 

#deeppoems

 

#poems

#thinkingthing

#thinker

#think

 

 

#askmorequestions

#question

 

#existentialquestions

 

#showerthoughts

 

#freewill

#freedom

 

#deepconversations

 

Can you attempt to exist within the shoes of the other?

 

#thinktank

#brainstorm

#imagination

#imagine

#dreambigger

#dreambig

#ideamachiene

#youchoose

#loveyourself

#yourarepowerful

#youarehere

#youexist

#existential

#existentialangst

#existentialdread

#trusttheuniverse

 

#existentialphenomeology

#victoriaventurella

#relationshipwithself #communication #transcendence

#futureself #infinitepossibilities

#existentialpsychotherapy

Victoria Venturella, MA, Existential Phenomenological Psychotherapist, LMHCA

@ExistentialDialogues

@Centralpurposetherapy

© Victoria Venturella, Existential Dialogues, The Existentialist

““To perceive is suddenly to commit to an entire future of experiences in a present that never, strictly speaking, guarantees that future; to perceive is to believe in a world. It is this opening to a world that makes perceptual truth possible, or the actual realization of a Wahr-Nehmung, and permits us “to cross out” the preceding illusion, to hold it to be null and void. . .I was conscious of seeing a shadow and now I am conscious of having only seen a fly. My belonging to the world allows me to compensate for the fluctuations of the cogito, to displace one cogito in favor of another, and to meet up with the truth of my thought beyond its appearance (p.311). ”
— Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception