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

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

““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