Each person at least once in his life experienced anxiety. Everybody is tormented by eternal existential questions. What it is? Fear of eternity, caused by sad thoughts about the perishability of being, fear of premature death … Everyone suffers from these sufferings: someone more and someone less. The lion's share of such experiences, according to experts (psychologists and psychotherapists), goes to people who are used to giving in to life's difficulties, whom no one has taught to assert their rights and express emotions. This category includes orphans or those who were left without parents early.
The essence of existentialism
Someone acquires the meaning of being by believing in the existence of God. Someone finds another way to be on the other side of limiting thoughts and factors. One way to alleviate human suffering is through psychotherapy.
Existential questions, according to practitioners from the field of psychotherapy, exist for this, so that, being alone with my problem, a person thinks: “How can I help myself?” In order to try to find answers, the individual sought funds and found ways to fill his life with meaning: he was engaged in creativity, took care of his neighbors, devoted himself to the struggle for what he considered important, learned to love and be loved.
The task of psychotherapy is not to be content with quoting the ideas and principles of the great earthlings. The purpose of this discipline is to help a person master the basic rules of communication and building relationships with other members of society.
Epicurus Samos
Self-improvement through the search for answers to existential questions is a topic that concerns not only modern specialists. The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus, for example, considered the main human fear of fear of losing his life. He devoted most of his work to this topic, pursuing a noble goal: to help ordinary mortals survive their main fear.
Epicurus of Samos saw his task in helping his neighbors striving to achieve the highest goal in life - to be happy. Considering that pleasure is the main condition for gaining happiness, the great philosopher of antiquity invested in this concept a completely unconventional meaning for modern man. The pleasure in understanding Epicurus is the absence of bodily and mental suffering, that is, it has nothing to do with debauchery, gluttony and satisfaction of ambitions.
The task of an existential psychologist
An ordinary person is unlikely to think about what existential questions of human existence are. However, having felt that his life, figuratively speaking, “flowed along a distorted channel”, “stands still” or “sweeps past”, asks them to himself. Frightened by the absence of any events, the individual, linking this emptiness with the presence of bad habits or with the underdevelopment of some of his personal qualities, turns to an existential psychologist with a corresponding question. In his eyes, a specialist psychologist is a person who can change his life, help him discover a new, interesting side of life.
Understanding that events that fill the life is just a reflection of one’s own way of being and is in no way connected with personal qualities does not come immediately. Thus, existential questions are related to the life of the individual, and not to his personal qualities. An existential psychologist does not search for a single and real “I” client, but offers the latter to pay attention to the current life situation and do everything possible so that a way out of the confused situation is found with the least loss.
Life difficulties are natural.
Life difficulties are a natural phenomenon, and a person who does not know how to perceive the troubles that life throws up to him, new opportunities, “stomps on the spot”, not knowing in which direction to move. A sense of personal competence and a sense of freedom of choice comes with the realization that each person is the builder of his life. The psychologist’s task is to examine the existential questions of a person who is experiencing another tragedy of life, to help her come closer to the realization that current events are a consequence of past actions.
According to the professor, doctor of medicine and practicing existential psychotherapist Emmy Van Dorzen, each person must decide for himself whether he should change and how much in order to feel happy and free. The woman scientist admits that some people who feel the importance of their own lives may have a desire to abandon change, and they will do the right thing, because this is their choice.
The proponent of group psychotherapy, Irwin David Yalom, like colleagues, expressed confidence that life situations in which the individual is involved most often reflect his personal difficulties. It is impossible to get answers to existential questions, as well as to key ones concerning birth and death, free choice and necessity, loneliness and dependence, meaning and emptiness. But due to the fact that a person will not be able to feel the fullness of life until he independently arrives at the only correct conclusion, existential psychologists pay special attention to the study of universal human issues.
How to get rid of a sense of meaninglessness?
Existential themes have worried humanity at all times. The most common of them sounds something like this: "How to get rid of the sense of meaninglessness of earthly existence?" A visit to the psychotherapist’s office is, firstly, an analysis of past life experiences, secondly, a discussion of the current state of affairs and, thirdly, discussions about a desired and possible future.
Awareness of the usefulness of experience gained in the past enhances the feeling of being full, discussing the current situation allows you to look at your own life as something valuable, and identifying the consequences and searching for new opportunities increases the feeling of freedom of choice.
