What are existential questions?

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:40

Everyone has experienced anxiety at least once in their life. Absolutely everyone 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 is subject to 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, who have not been taught to defend their rights and express emotions. This category includes orphans or those who were left without parents early.

The Essence of Existentialism

Someone gains the meaning of being by believing in the existence of God. Someone finds another means to get beyond the limiting thoughts and factors. One way to alleviate human suffering is psychotherapy.

Existential questions, according to practitioners from the field of psychotherapy, exist in order to, being alone with his problem, a person thinks: “How can I help myself?”. So that, trying to find answers, the individual seeks means andfound ways to fill his life with meaning: he was engaged in creativity, cared for others, devoted himself to the struggle for what he considers 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 of 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 fear of losing life to be the main human fear. It was to this topic that he devoted most of his work, pursuing a noble goal: to help mere mortals survive their main fear.

Epicurus of Samos saw his task in helping his neighbors, striving to achieve the highest life goal - to be happy. Considering the main condition for finding happiness to receive pleasure, the great philosopher of antiquity put into this concept a completely unconventional meaning for a modern person. Pleasure in the understanding of Epicurus lies in the absence of bodily and mental suffering, that is, it has nothing to do with debauchery, gluttony and the satisfaction of ambitions.

The task of an existential psychologist

An ordinary person is unlikely to think about what the existential questions of human existence are. However, having felt that his life, figuratively speaking, “flowed along a distorted channel”, “stands onplace" or "sweeps past", sets 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, addresses the appropriate question to an existential psychologist. 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 the events that fill life are just a reflection of one's own way of being and have nothing to do with personal qualities does not come immediately. Thus, existential questions have to do with the life of the individual, and not with his personal qualities. An existential psychologist does not search for the only and real "I" of the client, but invites the latter to pay attention to the current life situation and do everything possible so that the way out of the confusing situation is found with the least losses.

Life's difficulties are natural

Life's difficulties are a natural phenomenon, and a person who does not know how to discern new opportunities behind the troubles that life throws at him, “marks time”, 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 own life. The task of a psychologist is to consider the existential questions of a person experiencing another life tragedy, to help her come closer to the realization that current events area consequence of past actions.

According to Professor, MD and practicing existential psychotherapist Emmy Van Dorzen, each person must decide for himself whether and how much he should change in order to feel happy and free. The woman scientist admits that some people who feel the importance of their own lives may be tempted to refuse change, and they will do the right thing, because it is their choice.

Proponent of group therapy Irvin David Yalom, like colleagues, expressed the belief that the 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 the key questions concerning birth and death, free choice and necessity, loneliness and dependence, meaning and emptiness. But due to the fact that a person cannot feel the fullness of life until he independently comes to the only correct conclusion, existential psychologists pay special attention to the study of universal human issues.

How to get rid of the sense of meaninglessness?

Existential topics have worried humanity at all times. The most common of them sounds something like this: “How to get rid of the sense of the meaninglessness of earthly existence?”. A visit to the psychotherapist's office is, firstly, an analysis of past life experience, secondly, a discussion of the current state of affairs, and, thirdly, discussions about the desired and possible future.

Awareness of the usefulness of experience gained in the past enhances the feeling of fullness of being, discussion of 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.

Specialist mission

Existential questions are a chance, taking advantage of which, a person understands what he is trying to do in his life, what he limits himself to and how he overcomes discomfort. The mission of an existential psychotherapist is considered completed when the client himself feels the benefits of this enterprise, when, in the course of a rigorous review of his life, he discovers new opportunities for interacting with the outside world and, embodying his own values, will experience inspiration.