Blog
Freedom in Existential Therapy: The Burden of Choice
Freedom drives all other existential concepts. Existential psychology holds that we are all born into the world with the freedom to shape our path through life. Rather than handing over decisions to religion, family, cultural norms and expectations, or some other...
Existential Authenticity: The Project of Becoming Yourself
Existential authenticity is about being your truest self. To do this, you’ll need self-awareness about values, beliefs, desires, needs, and personality traits. You can then make choices to live with congruence between inner self and outer expression. Authentic being...
Existential Meaning: Creating Your Story
Meaning is at the heart of existential therapy: being born into the world without predetermined meaning, and creating (or failing to create) personal meaning as we go through life. A maxim of existential philosophy is “existence precedes essence,” from Jean-Paul...
What to Expect in a Brainspotting Therapy Session
A Brainspotting therapy session starts with identifying the issue you want to work on. It may be a long-ago memory or a recent experience, an emotion, a thought, an image, a physical sensation, or something else. You don’t need to focus on a distressing memory; any...
What Is Existential Therapy?
I became an existentialist in high school. I didn’t know that’s what I was doing, just that I was caught up in what the point of being alive was. That question and similar ones (“Why are humans the way we are?” “Am I real?”) drove me for the next 20 years. Then, when...
How Does Brainspotting work?
The neuroscientific foundation of Brainspotting is based on functions in areas of the brain below the prefrontal cortex, partly in the limbic system. This part of the brain is crucial in processing emotions, including ones related to difficult experiences and traumas....
What Is Brainspotting Therapy?
Brainspotting is a somatic (body-based) therapy based on concepts from neuroscience, mindfulness, and other body-based therapies. Brainspotting therapy uses eye position and bilateral stimulation to access and release memories, feelings, and sensations that are stuck...
Severance: An Internal Family Systems Adventure
Severance, on Apple TV, is a bizarre psychological thriller (and darkly comedic). It is also a fun way to explore Internal Family Systems (IFS), a therapeutic modality. Quick overview of the premise of the show: some people opt to be severed—to have their...
