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

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

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

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