Existential Psychotherapy connects the client's symptom with existential concerns.
The basic facts of existence are death, freedom, loneliness and the meaning of life.
Life and death are intertwined. Recognizing the ephemeral gives another quality to life. In addition to the loss caused by death, there are other losses such as a divorce, an illness, a financial disaster.
Freedom is intertwined with terror, as there are many choices and each choice excludes all others.
Knowledge of existence is freedom and therefore also uncertainty, as the realization of freedom does not allow complacency.
Loneliness is divided into creative solitude, where one is at peace with oneself and others, and isolation.
There is intrapersonal isolation, where someone rejects and denies some personal difficult feelings, there is interpersonal isolation, which concerns the inability to create relationships with others, and existential isolation, that is, the awareness of human destiny and the distance that separates us from others.
The most important shield against isolation is the creation of authentic interpersonal relationships, not desperate fusion, but love in freedom.
Freedom is the highest good.
It is also important in the psychotherapeutic process, as the Healer is asked to free the patient in the following way:
It brings the unconscious into the conscious. It connects the history of the patient over time, thus explaining the past and liberating the present and the future.
Meaning in life is self-realization, creativity and love for other people.
Creativity takes courage. Courage is not the absence of despair, but the ability to move forward in spite of despair.
Creativity is the process of bringing something new into existence.
We are called to value life itself. To love life and happiness, without embellishing things and without ignoring the harshness of existence.
Even when we struggle to give answers, the very act of participating in the miracle of life gives us answers.
There are no good and bad experiences, only processed and raw. The uncultivated lose the wealth of experience they reap.