All right in today's uh lesson we're going to learn all about existential theory and its application to psychotherapy so um we'll be talking about the roots of existential therapy and how it uh emerged from existential philosophy now if We were to think of the word existential and look for its root uh the root of the word is exists or existence right so one of the foundational questions around existential therapy is trying to figure out well what is the purpose one's purpose in life and how to make meaning of the world that they're in so obviously
From an existential philosophy um the focus is on things like death right which is a bookend of life uh responsibility [Music] uh free will or freedom and the pursuit of uh meaning and meaning making right so victor frankel is one of the leading figures in this field and one of his relatively famous quotes is Man also only returns to himself to be concerned with his self after he has missed his mission has failed to find meaning in life right so um the emphasis of this quote is that with hardship and with failure it's an opportunity
to reassess so uh existential psychotherapy focuses on self-awareness Uh facing the challenges of life and human existence and encourages us to become a more authentic being so as a whole um this approach existential psychotherapy focuses on a composite individual and it Goes away from a reductionist model of trying to break people down to uh their biochemistry their dna or their childhood or social or educational experiences uh the composite individual the whole person uh is far greater than all of its elements and we're going to hear that stated very nicely when we talk About gestalt right
so we are meaning makers as individuals we're always trying to understand well why did this happen um what can i learn from it how do i grow from it trying to seek meaning out of uh the experiences we have uh so this particular model of therapy puts a strong emphasis on Getting that deep understanding of what we're living for and why we're here so if we were to do a brief history there are some philosophers that are important to understanding existential philosophy so kierkegaard uh he was a pretty re uh related religious individual He was
um a famous philosopher living in copenhagen and uh he as i said he grew up pretty religious but he had a crisis of faith and through his crisis of faith he determined that religious faith was irrational right um and that might come as a threat to some Uh but he wasn't meant to um attack any individual personally but he he felt that um more important than religion are our choices our subjective choices uh values like responsibility and honesty and commitment were more important than you know worrying about a god figure hovering over you trying to
Uh figure out why you did what you did and then we have nietzsche um who uh also viewed religion particularly christianity pretty negatively and in one of his uh books he says god is dead so he felt that religion was used as a tool Uh to put pressure on people to behave morally when in reality um we don't believe that people who are religious are more moral than people are irreligious or a religious right so that's what we that's where we're at today uh so instead of focusing on um reward and punishment and [Music] You
know if you don't do this god's gonna be upset with you he put emphasis on positive activities such as creativity uh things that make you happy joy uh joyful activities and obviously um what provides me happiness isn't necessarily what provides another person happiness but the focus should be on Living a high quality life and doing the things that make you happy you know [Music] steve jobs is a good example of someone who who was a master at this and he once gave a commencement address um at stanford university i believe it was and he he
talked about his philosophy of life which is That if he does something and he doesn't like it um and then another day goes by and he doesn't like it a third day goes by and he doesn't like it eventually he says you know what this isn't this isn't for me and he moves on so uh he also in that graduation address was talking about Doing the things that make you happy and provide meaning in life for you um and if it didn't you know provide him any happiness or satisfaction he stepped away from many different
things sean paul sartier was another uh philosopher a french philosopher who talked about existentialism and uh this is uh one of the more Powerful quotes from his work um man's essence is his ex is his existence right so finding your essence or your purpose in life is going to be important and another quote is freedom is existence and existence precedes essence right so um finding one's purpose in life finding meaning and living in accordance with one's essence is gonna make Our existence uh all that much more joyful in this world then we get to some
of our psychology figures people like rallo may rallo may tried to explain sartier's point of view and he says um that is to say there would be no essences no truth no structure in reality no logical forms no logos no god nor any morality except as man is affirming his freedom makes these truths so Our mindset and our choice to believe in a higher power creates that higher power to some degree um our um belief in what our purpose is makes that a defining force in who we are and so forth victor frankel now victor
frankl is an interesting figure as well um you know he survived the holocaust right he lost Uh his entire family in the concentration camps and then he became a psychiatrist and came up with this logo therapy uh in his book man's search for meaning now if there is anyone that you could think of who might have a pessimistic worldview or cynical world View it could be victor frankel right because he saw so many atrocities right but he took those experiences in life and he uh tried to understand like well you know you know i survived
what's the purpose of that what's my role in life so um he he has a famous quote Um or he i should say he defines the famous quote of nietzsche which is he who has a why to live can bear almost anyhow and one of the things i heard victor frankel say was that um you are stripped of all your freedoms in in the concentration camp Uh they tell you what to wear where to go when to get up when to go to bed uh whether you're gonna live or die uh but he said one
of the things that kept him alive was finding small things that he could exert uh free will over and make choice so he you know he reframed a lot of them Negative experiences in the holocaust and he said well it's true that they could tell me um when to get up right but i have a choice whether when they tell me that um i get out of uh my bed and stand up in the barracks or i stay in bed now obviously the consequence of Staying in bed would be fatal but nevertheless it's still a
choice when they fed uh moldy bread and slop he had a choice whether to eat it not eat it share it with other individuals who are weaker and so forth so there there are all these little choices that he Said they can't take away from me and that's how he survived right so uh he tried to um exert free will as much as possible all right so he does come up with uh logotherapy which is purely focus on meaning making from a therapeutic model and He talks about the statue of responsibility um he wanted to
build a statue on the west coast similar to the statue of liberty which is in on the east coast in new york right so he felt that if the statue of liberty was symbolic of freedom then there should be another statue on The west coast symbolic of responsibility now rallo may rallo may again he brought existential psychology or existential thought into american psychotherapy interesting to note rallo may was a a fairly influential figure uh not just in the american psychological association but new york state psychological association um so he brings A lot of these existential
therapies and and thought um to the united states and new york psychology so in terms of um his life history as he moves uh forward he starts as a missionary and eventually studies under alfred adler and we talked about adler in the previous uh discussion About you know trying to um have that masculine protest and striving for superiority and reaching one's potential it should not shock you that he was influenced by this and many of the existential ideas share some overlap with alfred adler but studying with adler in vienna it really Really impacted him in
a way that he uh yeah he got his divinity degree but then he shifted gears uh towards uh clinical psychology now uh rallo may as i said you know he is pretty influential but he wrote all the way up into the 1980s so one of his quotes about Uh existence is i happen to exist at this given moment in time and space and my problem is how am i going to be aware of that fact and what am i going to do about it so um that was sort of a clarion call or a charge
towards action to recognize that we are a product of our zeitgeist and ort geist uh we're a product of our time Uh and space and uh our views and values are going to be influenced by that uh you know in 2020 um i happened to be the president of new york state psychological association and uh before you know being elected i had so many lofty goals and things that i wanted to accomplish um and then in 2020 Covet happened and my priorities had to shift towards uh the needs of that time and the needs of
of being a new yorker right in the early aspects of in 19 new york was one of the earliest hat and the the heaviest hit so advocating for alternative ways to accumulate hours to get licensed and helping graduate Students graduate and helping practitioners be able to do remote therapy for telephone only services these became a top priority and how to work with insurance companies uh that you know you would get appropriate reimbursement um these became top priorities and while Uh i did say that i wanted to protect practice and work towards that you know i
could not have envisioned that but i i was given that responsibility um based on the time in in place and so i was in that moment i had to react to what the needs of the community were and then you fast forward uh to Uh june and you have the june 2020 you have the george floyd incident um and then there's more of a you know belated awakening of uh racial inequities and trying to increase dialogue within and outside of the association around trying to become a more equitable society That became a priority and it's
true again you know when i think of what my mission statement was when i was running and elected you know one of my pillars is diversity and diversity equity inclusion were important to me before it became popular but i was able to harness the experiences of the time and actually move that agenda along so When rallo may says okay i'm i'm existing in at this moment in this time in this place what am i going to do about it that means i have a responsibility to um whoever is around me at that time in place
uh so i give that example and i'm not patting myself on the back but it's kind of highlights the point That we are born into a time period we are born into a geographic area and we have a responsibility uh to step up to the plate and address the needs of that time and place all right so we also talk about dialectics which are polarized positions or contrasting positions uh And dialectic uh positions or contrasting positions are perfectly normal and they're you know it's uh accepted so people like fritz pearls says every psychological phenomenon is
experienced as a polarity right so perfectly fine uh to see things in in poles and then to develop a synthesis around that Right so um it's okay to see things at the polls but to um blend them understand them that's going to be more important and that's what uh hegel talked about right so he talks about dialectical processes and there are four four steps of the process first you develop an idea Which automatically creates a polar opposite thought now once you have these polar opposite thoughts uh there's going to be conflict right uh and our
job is to reconcile this conflict synthesize the uh opposing points of view and to create a higher truth so that's hegel's uh four-step process of dialectics now existential philosophy it's important to Understand that i gave you a crash course i didn't cover everyone so obviously it didn't start with kierkegaard nietzsche uh satay and hegel right so there were philosophers even before them people like socrates and plato have really incredible ideas that are thousands of years prior uh and then obviously it doesn't stop With these individuals and the same thing can be said about psychotherapy right
so existential therapy doesn't end with alfred adler victor franco and rallo may right and it um it continues today so there are people like irvin yalum and i'm not going to go through all of these individuals but irvin yalum took existential Um theory and applied it to group counseling and kurt schneider is one of the leaders in humanistic psychology so there are a lot of individuals who continue to develop these existential perspectives now let's go Through some of the belief sets right so rallo may talks about i am experienced right so that is an experience
of being right or of existing right so you might hear this referred to as an ontological experience um which is uh you know trying to understand uh what is it like to exist in the here and now Now it is one of the cool things about existential is that it's very present to future oriented whereas freud was looking into your past more and how that shaped you till now so um there's always uh you know it's an exploration so uh psychotherapy focuses on self-awareness and self-discovery and That's where growth comes from you know i had
a mentor dr stanley graham who uh when i was um doing my pre-doctoral internship you know he helped guide me in practice because sometimes we don't want to touch on difficult topics or painful experiences too deeply and he reminded me that growth comes from uncomfortable places So it's perfectly fine to go there because that's where the self-awareness and self-discovery is going to come from now being in the world has four existential components or ways so you have umvelt which is being with nature or the physical world myth belt which is being with the social world
Eigenvelt which is being with the world of the self and then uber or the spiritual world now all four of these planes of existence occur simultaneously and throughout everything in life right so you cannot separate uh the physical world social world your view of the self and spiritual World from who you are they all happen at the same time and they happen in every aspect of our life now we also talk about a demonic and demonic is not the same as demonic right we're not talking about demons but a demonic is a elemental force or
energy uh that could be constructive or uh destructive in terms of Impulses um and the demonic this elemental force can actually take over the whole person right at least according to rallo mary right so rallo may says the demonic is the urge in every being to affirm itself assert itself perpetuate and increase itself right so the goal Is uh if we are going to recognize that it could be destructive or constructive the goal would be to take the energy force that resides inside of us and harness them into more constructive or creative behavior so anxiety
anxiety is normal right where you you know whenever you think about your purpose in life or existence um meaning and things like That that should create some level of anxiety now there's normal anxiety uh and i put normal in quotes and then there's neurotic anxiety uh also in quotes right so normal anxiety is appropriate anxiety uh it's uh relatively proportional to the situation so it's not exaggerated or highly over represent anxiety the anxiety is relative to the situation um Anxiety is meaningful and then it promotes some kind of solution or constructive uh action whereas neurotic
anxiety as i said this is an overwhelming anxiety it is disproportionate to the situation uh and because of that we we wind up avoiding or denying or repressing our our experience and that results in us not Um solving whatever problem we have it's usually destructive in many ways now guilt the guilt is another uh experience guilt does not necessarily have to be a bad thing so normal guilt is considered functional um it encourages us to become more conscientious in our actions and thoughts It allows us to reflect on that which is appropriate or ethical or
moral whereas neurotic guilt is a source of psychological illness or pathology and it's exaggerated and then ultimately um this results in self-critical self-punitive uh ways so Going to irving yala yalum talks about existential psychodynamics and he said there are four ultimate concerns that we all are faced with death freedom isolation and meaninglessness so um the concept of death well death and life exists simultaneously Right now we don't like to think about death in fact um uh ernest becker wrote a book called the denial of death and he talks about how we go to great lengths
not to face death in fact we don't even like to use the word death so if we have death that surround us we say oh they passed away they went to a better place we use euphemisms not to have to deal with the Feelings of death but according to yalum death wears continuously beneath the membrane of life and it exerts a vast influence upon experiencing conduct so we know it's there we don't like to think about it but it lurks beneath the surface at all times and then another thing we talk about is uh death
is a primordial source of Anxiety or pathology right so uh but to face death is to motivate oneself to to drink with greater enthusiasm from the cup of life a call to live in the now as an individual self with freedom of choice it's poetic isn't it what what yalum says um but ultimately Um recognizing our mortality could inspire us to live life more fully and i'm sure you've heard the term bucket list usually um most people don't write bucket lists early in their life but as we get older we're like okay well what do
we want to do before we die that's called a bucket list before we Kick the bucket right we don't want to say die we kick the bucket um so that that bucket list is our one attempt to live life uh to the fullest there's actually a great movie with morgan freeman and jack nicholson about the bucket list right you should watch it and it really shows you how people cope with The potential of the inevitability of death i should say and morgan freeman takes a more constructive and positive approach towards making meaning and living life
to the fullest whereas in the beginning uh jack nicholson is all about basic pleasure and uh you know trying to have one last hurrah So it it really talks about how people cope with death it's pretty fascinating now we also have freedom right freedom is another aspect of who we are and so rta remember the philosopher says we're condemned to freedom now why is freedom a condemnation well the truth is that if we have freedom then our choices matter And if our choices matter then we have to be responsible for the choices we make so
um that's the burden of freedom is that if you're free then you have a personal responsibility for the choices you make and um you cannot blame others for your choices or non-choices i see this a lot Um in couples therapy where a person will you know talk about their partner and how they're not doing this or they're not doing that and uh as if to say their partner is 100 to blame for all the problems and that's not true uh all relationships are shared responsibilities share choices and i oftentimes will say you know it sounds
like you're just a fly on the wall observing this relationship Uh and then i'll follow it up with well what might you do that contributes to the problems you're facing in your relationship and notice the focus is shifted to that individual and challenging them to face you know their personal choice and their their their responsibilities so existential isolation um nobody wants to be alone but the reality is is that We do enter the the world alone and we leave the world alone um so when you're born and you die there are very few people in
your circle very few people around you but by nature in that middle part between the book ends of life and death we want to find connection we are social animals uh we desire and create connectivity Right so um we in general as therapists if we feel someone is socially isolated or existentially isolated we will try and help them find more connection with others whether it be their friends whether it be family members and so forth and we do acknowledge that there is always going to be some distinction or separateness between that Individual and another in
fact uh if there isn't that separateness that's also pathological right we talk about enmeshment in families all right so um one way to deal with being isolated or being alone is denial so people say no everything's fine or push things out of the surface Now uh an existential crisis is uh normal right so um if a person you know has lived within a framework for so long and then they step out of that framework they might say well what is my purpose in life what is you know What is my meaning what is meaning of
my life right what am i here to do well not knowing the answer to that question can result in anxiety uh it can result in distress and that's a a common finding in research is that not knowing one's uh purpose in life can result in increased anxiety uh when i teach personality theory and i get to Existential thought and humanistic thought i usually ask my students well what is your purpose in life and what do you what are you here to do in this world and i have to tell you this is an incredibly difficult
question for college students to answer and of course most of the time i smile and then i say Well if you can't answer that question you're in good company because most people at your phase of life are still trying to figure it out there are some people who know from early childhood or middle childhood exactly what they're going to do but most people it's not the case adolescence and emerging adulthood are times of self-exploration And that's what helps people figure out their purpose so now existentialists would say the answer to the question what is the
meaning of my life uh the existentialists would say well life has no inherent meaning right it's up to you to define or create or discover your meaning there's no objective answer this question your major challenge Is to develop a sense of purpose and meaning in a world that appears meaningless right so it's subjective to who you are so uh from this point of view you'll you become the meaning maker you create the purpose for your life in this world and uh you know one thing that isn't said is that it it can shift over time
Uh and what you think is your purpose and what you value it is perfectly normal for that change across the lifespan so um having meaning uh having purpose having connection to religion and spirituality uh tend to be fairly uh useful and they tend to be Adaptive in nature and promote healthy mental health right so i i may have said in another you know series that religion and spirituality were you know part of the discipline in its early stages people like william james and whatnot but it became taboo to talk about it when we had sigmund
freud and b.f skinner and john watson They got rid of all of this religion spirituality and only in the 1960s do we see a re-emergence of focus on religion and spirituality but the research is strong that they promote positive mental health now victor frankie franco suggests that humans are always being Pulled towards meaning right there um there is always um you know a drive pulling us to reach our potential and do things that uh have purpose and meaning right so um even though we're being pulled in that direction the question is is there meaning in
life towards which humans strive so Victor franco says uh yeah humans have a will to meaning we have a basic tendency or drive to have meaning and in fact meaning does exist in the world but um we don't attribute meaning to things but rather we find them we find meaning we don't invent meaning rather we detect them right so it's um our job to identify and detect Things that provide meaning to us another story um it's interesting to note i'm a clinical psychologist and i'm a professor and um when i first started going to school
you know i you know i knew that i wanted to be a clinical psychologist but i did not know that i wanted to be a professor and uh well how did i become a professor It happened that my second semester of graduate school i had a mentor who said hey do you want to make some money while going to graduate school i said sure i'm a broke college student why not right and uh he said well we have and what's called a grad a line with uh cuny uh and that is to say Um we
can um give you a part-time teaching job so i say yeah why not and at that time it paid 54 dollars an hour and i was like holy smokes you know it beats the 10 an hour working in the pizza shop uh so i agreed and i remember that when i went they gave me intro to psychology which is a survey course it's one of the more Easy courses to teach because it's very broad but not deep so as you're in grad school you're going to learn more and more so i took it i went
to the secretary and she gives me a book exploring psychology by david myers and chalk and she says good luck and there was a lot of anxiety but when i stepped into the classroom For the first time i fell in love with teaching and my whole mindset shifted from wanting to be a clinical psychologist full time to wanting to be a professor full-time and a part-time clinical psychologist i never could have envisioned my path being what it was But listening to my messages listening to what made me feel like i was making a difference and
shaping and guiding the next generation it pulled me towards being a professor more now i do both uh but uh it's interesting that uh victor frankl's words are so powerful to me right where either way i would have Meaning right i'm gonna help people work through psychological distress or i'm going to shape people of the next generation so but i could have never imagined that my life would be what it is today and i'm grateful that i was willing to take the risk and change my path so We talked about logotherapy right uh victor frankel
talks about logotherapy which is all about finding meaning developing a sense of purpose and celebrating our responsibility for free choice now is frankel the only one who talked about it no ervin yalum did too so paths that provide Meaning in individuals life could be altruism trying to do kind deeds not for the sake of a reward but because it's right and we want to better the world dedication to a cause right that could be your calling right creativity uh transcendence or self-transcendence suffering now suffering seems like a you know an interesting one to be on
the List but people emerge from suffering there's a great deal of research on something called post-traumatic growth people can use their suffering as a uh as something that helps them define themselves and grow from it religion spirituality hedonism well hedonism is if it's Misused but seeking purely pleasure and then obviously self-actualization or reaching one's potential right so the goal of therapy is to increase self-awareness right to uh develop awareness um Related to death freedom isolation and life's meaning right so we try and develop a sense of awareness um develop that meaning because eventually we are
going to die and we're going to grapple with how we use our free will whether we develop the sense of meaning or whether we feel isolated now Uh bujintel talks about psychotherapy and self-discovery as follows there's no final or definitive statement to be made about psychotherapy about human psychology about life we are always in a process of sketching possibilities of discovering of becoming And it's interesting i love this quote because once we achieve the unimaginable life continues to occur and now after we've achieved things that we could have never imagined and we are still alive
well then we create new goals and new ways to find purpose and meaning beyond that which we originally sketched out so psychopathology or psychological Disorder uh occurs from diminished self-awareness so once again uh mujintel says uh without awareness we carry out pre-programmed actions feel preset emotions or act on predetermined judgments because we've lost our centers so uh we go on autopilot right so Going on autopilot and not being attuned and focused on purpose in life we can develop emotional numbness we could have uh guilt and anxiety and avoid trying to feel those and not reach
our potential or not strive towards that which uh is our purpose in life uh and all of that is according to buchentel existential Psychopathology so in terms of practitioners uh what strategies do we use what interventions do we use well i will tell you that there is no singular handbook this is existential uh therapy it's actually pretty pragmatic and um it seems like a hodgepodge of techniques Because the goal is to connect with the individual and help them grow that is the goal and if you're going to follow technical interventions to a t you run
the risk of losing genuineness you can run the risk of appearing like a fake a phony or uh an artificial person so trying to get people to Uh focus on the i thou or the interpersonal experience is much better than uh rigidity with techniques but of course you know we still have to talk about the things that are elements of therapy right so one element is forming an eye vowel relationship right so um it helps people develop connection remember we talked about People feeling disconnected or self-isolated um it helps develop a sense of immediacy which
is linked to freedom and responsibility and decision-making uh helps people develop uh self-awareness and insight or depth and because it's i thou uh it helps to develop mutuality versus an i it where you're like that Person and not you i thou is you and me we're connected and responsible for our outcomes so that's the interpersonal element and then obviously as therapists we focus on transparency and authenticity we are allowed to bring more of ourself into the room there is nothing wrong with uh sharing more about who you are and Your experience um uh and just
being yourself there's nothing wrong with that you don't have to play a role that has been scripted for you as a therapist so we could talk about our experiences in the treatment we could talk about our emotions and treatment and so forth so we Highlight personal responsibility so you are the choices you make so if your choices are therapeutic you're going to get better if your choices are non-therapeutic you're going to stay stuck and i use this as well in therapy when i talk to people and i say believe it or not i am not
the number one determinant of your success in therapy You are because all i can give you are tools insight and uh new ways of thinking about things that you might not have had but ultimately you have to do the hard work so if your choices lead you towards addressing whatever problems you have then you're going to be better off for it but if you engage in Denial resistance avoidance um you know withholding things that could be important you're going to be as sick as your secrets all right now there is a presence right that we
use so we tend to be uh in the room as much as possible i'm sure you've seen sometimes Therapists can appear distracted so the more interested we appear the more fully in the room we are the more presence we have and impact we have right so we also can do empathic uh mirroring and focusing right so um mirroring and focusing can occur in three different ways according to kirk schneider so you have a topical Focus which is take a moment to see what's present for you that's really cool right because most of us in therapy
we say okay what's going on how has your week been these kind of things and people can default to whatever they've been talking about but if we say take a moment to see what's present for you That could be anything that's happening in real time in this moment right a topical expansion if someone is being superficial you might say say tell me more about that or if they're trying to uh avoid the topic you might say hang on hang on stay with that for a minute or sit with that for a minute right to help
them further process experience and then Obviously when there's discrepancies between that which you're saying uh something which is their content and that which you see them or experience them as their process you can challenge them that uh with that you could say you know you say you're fine but your face is downcast so you know sometimes people their words and their feelings could be incongruent and our job is to highlight that We offer feedback right so we provide information about what we're experiencing in the session uh we provide confrontation now confrontation is a tricky one
because when you do confrontation it has to come from [Music] a caring place it has to come from a true intent of wanting to see a person grow And it has to be done in a compassionate way so it doesn't mean that just because we're supportive that we always agree with you it is our job to challenge you with inconsistencies and discrepancies and things like that it's our job but we have to do it with your growth in mind with your feelings in mind in a way That is going to be make you more likely
to work on something rather than shut down now um mindfulness which you might hear of mindfulness based cognitive therapy mindfulness based stress reduction techniques and mindfulness therapies for dialectical behavioral therapy and things like that But at the heart of mindfulness is being in the present without an agenda and accepting things for what they are well if that is what mindfulness is then mindfulness could also fit into an existential model and then of course cognitive reframing or reframing meaning helps a person you know look at their experience from a negative Way so trying to make meaning
out of suffering is a technique that victor frankl used but people like albert ellis and aaron beck which are responsible for rational emotive behavioral therapy and traditional cognitive therapy they used it too so what's really cool is you're starting to see the utility of existential therapy As it relates to other approaches so the therapy skills now adam said techniques are skills skills are owned ways of being a hammer is only useful if you have the skill to use it right so um the techniques we use i think that's what what he's trying to say Is
that the approaches we use in therapy we may not use all of them but the techniques we use we have to be masterful with so if you know we try and employ some strategy that we're not trained in well then that's like using a hammer and not knowing how to use it right it's going to be more destructive than Constructive all right we also talk about paradoxical intention now this you heard about from alfred adler in the previous uh presentation but um with paradoxical intention or the anti-suggestion we encouraged a person to intentionally exaggerate whatever
the maladaptive experience is or whatever the uncomfortable reality is Um that's causing them anxiety now the truth is because things are paradoxical uh you're gonna automatically shift from that extreme point of view to the opposite extreme in a dialectical sense right so um even though it seems counterintuitive by prescribing the problem um then you actually help get growth so It's it's pretty uh ingenious now um it naturally shifts your focus you you can also help a client distance themselves from whatever uncomfortability is by using uh humor humor is a powerful tool in therapy uh and
so forth now we talk about awareness and integration Uh mahoney said all individuals experience natural human rhythms of expansion and constriction so what is con constriction that's retreating or distancing oneself from contact with the outside world or whatever their problem is expansion it it's more of like approaching the world moving assertively in the world and dealing with the pain uh and risks that you take and then Ultimately growing from them now so existential integrative psychotherapy takes our client awareness and our understanding of the natural problems and helps you find your center help you find you
know what grounds you now what i'm going to do here is i'm going to show you a video as i always do and this video is going to be all about existential psychotherapy Um and various elements of it so let me share that screen and i'm gonna minimize myself and we're gonna start [Music] this session is an example of the existential approach and it features a colleague of ours dr nilda soto bishop if i were to try to boil down existential the existential perspective into a sentence or so i'd say it focuses On meaning and
so the listening focus for the counselor or psychotherapist is on listening for what's important or meaningful to the individual client right i also think it's about self-awareness and consciousness and it's about living life fully embracing life fully even in the face of death and other ultimate existential concerns Including aging which is a big one for some of us peggy who's featured in this clip is a 62 year old graduate student so obviously some of these issues are real for her and nilda helps peggy focus on some doubts and some concerns as well as being genuine
and spontaneous in the session another thing is that she also tries to develop an i vow relationship i think that's consistent with existential Theory i have our relationship being of deep respect and honoring of the other person and yet at the same time being genuine and spontaneous so let's watch nelda and peggy at work [Music] where do you want to go with this session what do you feel like you could um benefit most from talking about this session well you know that picture of the big jar and uh stephen cubby i think and you put
the Phil with the big rocks and then you say is the jar full and say oh yes the jar is full and then he says well no wait look you can put all this gravel in it yes and then then does it fall oh yeah well no you can put the sand in and then put the water in and then what's the lesson and the people always think the lesson is you can always get more in the jar but the lesson is really that those big rocks Have to go in first so i've been thinking
about that a lot to have to know what the big rocks are and make sure they're in the jar and so my family and work and school and my spiritual life all in the jar and i guess i would say that in these last few weeks i just feel like those four rocks are jockeying for position in that jar Yeah okay they're jockeying for position in that jar but they all fit in the jar they're in the jar in the jar and they fit yeah so tell me what what position do they need to be
in well what do they what are they i actually would like to throw the work rock out of the jar oh really yeah i feel um just i feel frustrated at work like it's Just i'm in the wrong place it's taking up too much time for the amount of reward all of the reward is just financial and i am ready to say you know they always say follow your passion it's funny and that seems completely unrealistic especially toward the end of life when you're supposed to be thinking of putting stuff away but but when i
think so i should just do this for another 10 years and retire It just makes me feel like screaming and tearing out my hair i can't physically can't do it i have to do something else something different yeah it takes such a big chunk of life you know i'd like to say in fact i do say to my husband why don't you just think about this and see how you feel and i actually do think that will be part of the process when he just says You know i just feel like you need to do
this and he hasn't said that yet i mean he's asked me if i think this is just an expensive hobby switch yeah for a while i could sort of agree with him i sort of feels i'm just doing it for fun but the more i'm in the program the more i sort of like fish or cut bait you're either going to be invested in it Or else you're just you know like i don't know you just wanted a diploma on your wall that would be an expensive hobby it would be an expensive hobby but school
was one of the rocks yeah and sounds like it incorporates some of that spiritual part and yeah and the work and family right it's bringing me together with my son and my Husband always just says i know you were born to go to school so even if it's an expensive hobby he wants to be able to provide that for me yes and i think born to go to school is one thing but born to be in the program you're in yeah that's different isn't it it's taken a while isn't that different i can't well it's
so many years when i didn't feel like a grown-up i remember Being at my daughter's volleyball game when she was in junior high and during a break the coach came over was talking to some of us sitting on the bleachers and in the middle of this conversation which is always kind of difficult for me i never can think of what to say and i thought he thinks i'm a grown-up i was like i was a mom of a teenage kid but inside no that just wasn't going to go Okay that's the question you know tell
me what being grown up means to you well just that sense i guess that you could make decisions about your own life that you weren't just waiting for people to tell you um what came next and then you would go okay although i mean even as i say that i Know with the kids that i just really like give me those kids and that was kind of primal and just in my bones but um and in every other area it was really like that sense of not being able to ask for things that was always
pretty strong in fact just seems like recently since since i've been coming to counseling that i've had that feeling like boy i could ask for things that i want And i think even in kind of little practical ways like to say you know i know you feel un easy around my kids but you think you could just come stay with them for an afternoon even something like that or yeah i don't want to do that and so something that i really want like this i really really want to go to school and i am actually
saying to my husband I really want to do this and and he and my son too they go are you sure do you really see yourself doing this because it would sort of be pushing out into where i haven't really been before i've done some training with parents had groups for fostering adoptive parents but to act to be a professional person now that's sometimes You have to stop thinking that you would just be play acting and think it's like applying to the program we think they'll never take me that's ridiculous and then going well why
wouldn't they and that's next thing is to say you'll never make it in the professional world and to start saying well why not why wouldn't i that questioner there's always a Questionnaire there and it's not just a questioner and kind of a doubter there's always a doubter there okay or is it to prove something okay or the not grown up here i think it's the the um the baby me that says too scary too hard the the gifted child me that learned pretty quick well maybe not quick enough but certainly by sixth grade if you
Stand out if you excel if you put your head up where people can see you somebody is going to chop that off they're going to send you to the principal's office every day during art so that you can learn to type or they're going to push you out of this grade into the next grade you leave all your friends behind and meet a lot of people who think you have no business being There or you know whatever that thing is don't stick out and so it just makes you kind of want to not rock the
boat some wondering i'm just wondering this makes me curious about whether there's part of that um gifted sixth grade you that knows knows that If you keep being gifted and you keep being outstanding eventually someone's gonna ask something of you you cannot accomplish and then you're busted no i don't think it's like that at all because it's thinking i can do something that keeps me moving it's like now when you just go hey okay i've achieved anonymity every there's nobody around me my kids are gone so They're not drawing in adverse attention and i just
have a you know it's not a great job but i just you know i have a job and i have good benefits and i could just disappear in that thing i could but there's this thing inside that goes you who want more you want more you want more and i think that's what struggles with that long ago voice it says and you know if you reach for more there's going to be penalties and really by seventh Grade they're going you have such a great potential because you're scoring 99 all the way across on the achievement
test that you know and why aren't you doing better in school and by then inside you really are saying are you kidding i know better than that no way am i going to just kind of stay down in the middle of the pack but when life just gets routine and ordinary boy this thing comes out and goes You could have more than this nilda tries an explanation that peggy says no to in this session which i really like i liked how that worked i could feel peggy's strengths in the relationship and nilda rolled with it
was yeah that's fine you know i think that flows from the existential concept of presence and sort of being present in the room and nilda is able to be accepting of Peggy having a different perspective than her which is a really valuable thing i also really like the moments in the session where peggy says you want more you want more because i think it was exciting and fun but also it's a preview of what's coming next so let's watch for nelda and peggy working on some of those existential issues of delight and excitement [Music] Listening
to talk about school and i understand that when you were with those kids raising kids that was feeding you and now you've moved into a different place because at a certain point those kids are now going to be doing something different they're on their own path yeah so here you are and school is the next leg Of your journey it seems like that is the leg of the journey you're on and when i hear you when i see you i just sense in you as you talk about what school means to you i sense that
you are so delighted and so comfortable and and you really have a sense inside you that this is the right Thing for you right now yeah i'm like psyched i am psyched well although you know that thing and says you really think you can do this i'm not sure if i can but you know semester by semester by semester i am having a blast i just like you know like people go what you're taking nine credits this summer i go yes oh yeah dog can't wait yeah yeah so here's what i out of curiosity i
would like you to try this just sitting With that delight and excitement that you feel there's both there's a delight and an excitement and just sit with that for a little while and see what you get from that and maybe if you could if you would like to scan your body from head to foot and from you know down your don't forget your shoulders and arms and tell me where where do you hold that in your body where do you hold that absolutely Absolutely right here better cheesecake better than jesus oh yeah it's just right
there what does it feel like there it just feels full like full and satisfying like instead of like what what do i need what do i need what do i need let's go hot diggity awesome yeah that's good that's lovely you don't feel that when you talk about work but work is the purpose of work is to support perhaps Well right it helps me go to school and that gives it some meaning and that gives you the meaning so i'm getting people other people into school that's something so i'm involved with a lot of people
that part is good it's not like just total bust but it's a frustrating setup and it's not very energizing it could be but the parts that could be seem like they're always getting chopped off at the knees so So if we when we talk about your experience in school being about delight and excitement see if you can give me some words for your experience at work well you talked about me taking care of people that's certainly one thing it just seems like my co-workers are all kind of falling apart at the seams for various reasons
and and i that it's very Important that i just be the person that shows up every day that's reliable and that is not having crises although you know i have to run off for this kid or that kid but not very often anymore and um and when i first went i was crying all the time what we've been through with my youngest boy but but now that hardly ever happens i'm usually just pretty together i resent it sometimes because sometimes i Just need to not be the person that's holding everything together but um so so
if school is excitement and delight work is uh it's hygiene i guess i don't know what's like hygiene yeah it's like what shaving your legs or something you have to do it but yeah actually that's not a good example but Just something like that that you know it's just one of those things who likes flossing their teeth but you just do it and that's sort of like that so it's not like a complete waste of time it's got an important function but it's just not very fun and don't look forward to it and i don't
um i just i think put on facebook somebody said when i when i die i'm going to be sorry i didn't spend more time just Flossing my teeth right it's that kind of thing so it's not a waste of time no it's not a waste and it's something worthwhile i you know i feel good about what i'm doing i have good connections with other clerical staff that need me to give them support and to help do some training for them and be there and answer questions and and getting people into school is good and i
have really you know Enjoyable contacts with students so it's not like the job from hell it's just that does the gifted little girl come into that job at all okay so she would she could they could let me write a lot more web pages and let me have my own login so i don't have to do everything give it to somebody else and hope it turns up sometime in the next three months and Revise the letters so that they really know and they always sort of say yes you can do this but in reality it
turns out that you can't so that's frustrating i mean there are times when i think this could be a pretty interesting job and you could go out and do some training and develop some materials and but the university is i'm giving Creative is not one of the adjectives you would use to describe this job and you kind of i like to my my feeling is that you really need for things to be very creative in your life yeah solutions you know my dad was an engineer and sometimes i thought if i had known it was
going to take me 20 years to get married i would go back do that part and be an engineer of some kind either industrial or a civil engineer and Design things and build things and but i thought at the time i wasn't very good at math and i i thought i'm going to have kids that was like my goal and i got that goal and you know and i was telling you before that sometimes i thought boy doing that just chopped a hole in the middle of my life and now i'll never get to do
these things i'm really starting to Love because i took 20 years of my life and didn't was out of the workforce but but i'm not sorry i did that that was what i wanted to do and i did it and it pushed me harder your choice you made that very deliberate choice if i had birthed those kids that would have been you know a different picture a whole different picture but as it was they needed me i needed them it was a good symbiotic Relationship and i i think it's put me on the path to
where i am now i think it's brought things out of me that i didn't know i had so when i didn't feel like i'd grown up when i felt like i have to hide from every scary thing i could not hide from their scary things because they were my kids so that was a different way of Approaching life than i had had before it was like you can disappear disappear you know i led me to pile on all this weight because that makes you invisible in this culture and but with my kids i couldn't afford
to disappear because they needed to have somebody advocate for them and so they pulled me back to life in a way i mean i always thought i just want a boring simple life i would think that but It wasn't true and they're the ones that really you know just called my bluff i didn't want life to be boring and simple and challenging kind of struck as you talk about that the word that kind of stayed with me in all of that i'm concept stay with me but the word that stayed with me through that is
this symbiotic because it seems a really important part of your life it seems when i look at these rocks Pretty much it's all every everything you do is kind of symbiotic everything is supporting everything in your life it's kind of the integrative force so they all just pull together sort of that's the worst same kind of the work doesn't want to rita in that preceding segment i really like the part where they're using the metaphor and um and peggy talks about really feeding Herself feeding herself with school with something that gives her delight and it's
obviously very positive in her life yeah and of course as professors how could we not love that she pats her stomach and says it feels as good as cheesecake it even tastes better than cheesecake and i think this is consistent with what kirk schneider who's a famous existential writer talks about when he says embracing the awe of life kind of rediscovering the awe or The excitement the deep excitement of life yeah obviously for peggy and her stage of life and her issues existential work is a great avenue for her all right so yeah that's i
actually like that video on on many fronts because it highlights how one's purpose in life can shift across the Lifespan it highlights how different aspects of who we are can inform other aspects of who we are it um you know it highlights the responsibility factor uh peggy did not like to go to work but she recognized that is one of her responsibilities of life and it it serves a a function A productive function but it's like flossing or shaving things like that that you know are necessary but not as enjoyable i also thought that uh
peggy was very insightful like you you could see that she spent a lot of time thinking about who she is and you know her various roles in life uh and then you know one thing that If i were in the room i might have probed is sort of like you know taking the metaphor making it more tangible um not overly intellectualizing her experience uh but overall i mean uh the the therapy session was a good one i think that the clinician did a Fantastic job getting peggy to talk and reflect on her experience so let's
go back in to the powerpoint and uh talk about how we do treatment planning and assessment uh if we are going to determine what you know one's character and try and help them understand who they are uh we can do uh many instruments there's a life Regard index there's a purpose in life tests i use that a lot actually uh there's the noetic goals test um spiritual meaning scale mindfulness together a bunch of these that we could use to help a person uh better gain clarity of who they are so um when we talk about
this um let's evaluate it so uh you know it's really cool Uh that it's very theoretical in nature and it's very pragmatic in nature but here are some views of existential therapy how can a renewed sense of the humility and wonder indeed amazement before the whole life be measured right so um i think kirk schneider is saying here You know it's it's hard to pin the theory down a bit because it's so broad and overarching rallo may talk about the essential movement in psychiatry arose out of a passion to be not less but more empirical
so there is uh empirical research on this so we see that um existential group therapy works we see that existential integrative therapy works and wampled which is a famous Research on the various therapeutic models describes existential integrative therapy as scientific now in terms of the multicultural and feminist point of view um there is a critique that it still remains too narrowly focused um on the purpose in life but doesn't really emphasize how that meaning making shifts Across um various identities such as cultural identity gender-based identity financial uh uh status and so forth so just to
highlight this prochastic and norcross who wrote a book on counseling uh talked about only in existentialism and in the movies do people possess unlimited freedom Construct their own meanings and execute boundless choices save it for the wealthy worried well so um highlighting that perhaps it really it's out of touch with the experience of lower income communities and whatnot whereas other people think that you know um because this model is very respectful in nature And gentle in nature it can be divert uh diversity sensitive now gender and sexuality so uh an early affirmation of sexual identity
is viewed as making uh counseling and psychotherapy more accessible right so declaring um one's either self-identity or allies status could be useful Encouraging questioning and forming meaning and identity can also be useful and so forth now in terms of spirituality and writings uh schneider talks about rediscovery of all um franklin wong talked about the pursuit of meaning and so forth so a long story short is um If we were to critique it it is empirical the science is there uh it has in its writing not enough about gender and multicultural differences but can be applied
um and then one nice thing is it uses religion spirituality to its benefit right so let's conclude with some final thoughts Existential therapy is all about finding meaning it's about recognizing that we die and oftentimes uh we're very much alone but at the same time we're responsible for our choices so with that i'm going to stop and we'll continue with the next uh lecture in a series all right Well take care everybody see you next time
