Why I Am an Existential Therapist
Image via Greg Rakozy
Life, it seems to me, lends itself to certain possibilities. Possibilities which themselves take on an air of inevitability - that perceptive persistent state in which choice and free will are at first subsumed and at last obliterated. I was born and just as quickly as I began to bloom I also began to be pruned and peppered for ends neither freely chosen nor wholly my own, if at all, barreling towards them until I would finally reach some unsatisfying conclusion. Having arrived, and realizing how little of my life was of my own choosing, I started to examine the whole affair in order to understand where I was, and if necessary to uproot myself. Some things have been said about what it feels like, this unshackling, this untethering, but very little about how frightening and arduous a task it is to really do it; to really choose for yourself. At times you wonder if you've gone crazy, a word I am less and less convinced describes anything substantial, least of all what one is actually going through. But if empty words are the cost of breaking with some old way of life that is ordered but agonizingly dull and predictable, then so be it.
I’m told I was born without a heartbeat or a pulse, by way of unforeseen complications during my mother’s pregnancy. That the first thing to wrap itself around me was not a warm blanket given by some nurse or orderly reeling from a night of dealing with birth and death and all of the excrements of life, and it was not the weary arms of my mother. Death covered me, prematurely yes, but it covered me all the same. I assume I lay quiet and breathless as seconds stretched into the ether, serving out a death sentence that at best would be reduced to a charge of brain damage and a lifetime of silent “if onlys.” I’d be incredulous if I had not seen faded pictures of the whole ordeal pressed into the yellowed pages of my family’s photo albums, themselves remnants of the past.
Somehow, I survived all of that, and the irreversible damage that was predicted never did set in. Eventually my lungs filled with the sweetness of air as I began to breathe, my heart started to beat, the cascading wires attached to my body were removed, and I was not plucked away too soon. This story has always stayed with me.
As a child I wondered if I was special for surviving: I wanted to believe it, though I truly did nothing to accomplish the feat. My body wanted to live so it did; the rest is a mystery to me. Perhaps others knew it better and could explain it best back then, but all of those faces and most of those memories are lost now. More meaningful than the mystery or the facts involved was how the experience affected me, by which I mean it provided me with an early sense of my situation, which gradually grew into an awareness of the situation for us all. I was alive, but this did not have to be the case; it was not a guarantee, or a promise, or the fulfillment of some far off prophecy; it was the outcome of incalculable events, more innumerable than I could begin to understand.
Awareness being no guarantor of anything, least of all progress or change; I was not well equipped to deal with the conditions of my life that at times practically begged to be faced, and I was not well equipped precisely because no language that is given and not freely chosen can contain within it the power a man or woman needs to work out life’s problems in their own way. So I began, earnestly, to find my way through the use of philosophy and the deep introspection that accompanies it, and ultimately through existentialism, a philosophy dealing with freedom, authenticity, meaning, and even the inevitability of death, the ultimate human concerns. It did not ask me to shrink in the face of my responsibilities or to abdicate them to some force outside myself, but to accept them as my own, and more strangely than that, to accept myself as my own and value myself accordingly. It readied me for the challenge of trying to find answers to the questions about life that have perplexed humans for as long as our ancestors have walked under the warmth of African suns. It allowed me to meet, on neutral terms, the pervasive loneliness that ached inside of me and was reflected back in the eyes of the men and women in my community. It heightened my senses, and at the risk of romanticizing, brought to life, for the first time in a long time, a necessary intensity, an urgency to live while I can. It opened me up to the world and all the beauty and terror that lie therein.
My interest in existentialism paired with my choice to become a clinical social worker led me to existential psychotherapy - a dynamic method of therapy that was created out of the core principles of existential philosophy and fashioned to meet the needs of clients suffering with mental disorders. It provided a framework that aligned with me personally and professionally and connected me to a lived tradition that includes clinicians, writers, philosophers, activists, artists, and more.
I choose to work existentially because those same aches and pains that have plagued me have plagued us all. Because for the deeper problems of life there is no manualized method or simple solution that will banish from our sight for forever and ever, the pain and confusion and awe of living. We each must contend with our fair share of struggle and strife as we try to meet life on its own terms, and try we must, since the only way out is through (I’ve yet to find another). If somehow, in trying, I can sit with others compassionately, and bear witness to the fineness and the folly of the journey each human must undertake, then perhaps some growth and healing can be had for us all.