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Season One
Demystifying existential psychotherapy and dialoguing about what it means to live an existentially attuned life
Ep. 16 - Grief: Turning Towards Loss
In this episode, the hosts engage in a dialogue about grief understood as a personal response of turning towards the losses that we experience. Grief is a quintessential human experience that reveals an experienced loss of the value of life- we may grieve over the loss of a person dear to us, a pet, a dream that we did not have the chance to fulfill, a valuable possibility, and even the loss of ourselves. Anything that we experience as personally valuable gives rise to grief once we lose it. Given the omnipresence of grief in our lives, this episode will focus on how to turn towards our losses intentionally, how to make space for grieving, and how to support those who are grieving. As painful as it feels, grief is, in fact, a way to reconnect with life and with the value of life in the aftermath of a loss..
Ep. 15 - Freedom & Responsibility: The Capacity to Respond
In this episode, the hosts discuss how freedom and responsibility are understood in existentialism and in Existential Analysis, the relationship between freedom and responsibility, the significance of these concepts in our lives, and how to cultivate freedom and responsibility in clinical practice. Freedom represents the human beings’ capacity to make a choice in a given situation, and, in so doing, to be responsible or able to respond to the demands of a particular situation. Understood this way, freedom and responsibility go hand in hand: we are responsible only to the degree that we are free. We are responsible only when and where we are free, and where we can give our free consent.
Ep. 14 - Inner Consent: Saying Yes to Your Life
In this episode, the hosts are discussing about what is inner consent and its significance in personal life and clinical practice. Inner consent means saying “yes” with a full, felt sense agreement to what we say yes to. The dialogue on this topic explores what is inner consent, how do we know that we live with inner consent, the importance of inner consent in everyday life, the experience and consequences of not giving our inner yes to various life experiences or possibilities, the risks of inner consent, and how to cultivate inner consent in our daily life as well as in our clinical practice.
Ep. 13 - Practicing the Phenomenological Attitude in Therapy: Personal Existential Analysis (PEA)
Personal Existential Analysis (PEA) is a phenomenological psychotherapeutic method developed by Alfried Laengle and is the primary method used within Existential Analysis. In this episode, co-hosts Mihaela Launeanu and Janelle Drisner demonstrate the PEA process by example, followed by an explanation of the PEA process. Through this process of understanding phenomenologically, Janelle and Mihaela deepen the experience cognitively, emotionally, and somatically. It is a rigorous process which requires openness, bracketing, trust, humility, and courage.
Ep. 12 - Seeing Beyond Appearances: Embodying a Phenomenological Attitude
In this episode, the hosts talk about what is phenomenology and how to cultivate a phenomenological attitude in our everyday life and within the therapeutic context. Phenomenology means to pay attention and attend carefully to what appears- the phenomenon-in order to understand it and allow its essence to be disclosed. Phenomenology is a form of seeing through appearances, which means that how something or somebody appears is intrinsically connected with its essence. This kind of phenomenological attitude is also very important in psychotherapy as it allows clients to be seen and understood as well as to reclaim their own experiential access to themselves and to the world.
Ep. 11 - Finding Meaning in Our Everyday Existence
In this episode, the hosts discuss meaning and meaninglessness. We look at our own personal lived experiences of this spectrum and what are required as the conditions for being able to find or receive meaning. The differences between making sense of experiences and finding meaning are discussed, as well as how to respond (and how not to respond!) in the face of tragedy and meaninglessness.
Ep. 10 - Becoming Who We Are - Authenticity & the Therapeutic Encounter
In this episode the hosts engage in a lively dialogue about authenticity, instantiated both in the everyday life and in the therapeutic encounter, and reflect on the ways in which we can live more authentically and becoming more ourselves. As therapists, it is important to nurture our own authentic presence with our clients by being open to be moved by them and responding openly and immediately. Equally important is how we live outside the therapeutic context. It is critical to discover the myriad ways in which we can be ourselves outside our therapist’s role in order to become more authentic therapists.
Ep. 9 - Who Are We, Really?
In this episode, the hosts engage with the question “who are we, really?” by sharing candidly and quite humorously their first impressions of each other when they first met. The aim of this sincere and at times vulnerable dialogue is to offer a live, uncensored illustration of how we can be real with each other, provide sincere feedback about how we perceive each other, and receive this feedback. This dialogue represents one way to cultivate authenticity and honesty in relationships, and provides an opportunity to reflect on how much congruency or discrepancy there is between how we experience ourselves inwardly and how we are perceived by others.
Ep. 8 - Emotional (Dis)Honesty & Relational Responsibility
In Existential Analysis, we recognize that telling the truth at all costs could be an act of violence, as it holds the power to be extremely wounding if the other person lacks the capacity to receive it and hold it. There is an ethical dilemma that presents itself as we assess what to reveal emotionally and what may be too overwhelming. This speaks to the importance of open dialogue with oneself, the other person, and the context to determine what would be the most relationally responsible emotional disclosure. The hosts offer practical ways of entering into authentic emotional engagement with self and the other.
Ep. 7 - Loneliness
In this episode, the hosts are dialoguing about loneliness as a fundamental existential experience, the difference between loneliness and solitude, the felt experience of loneliness, and how to deal with loneliness. We invite you to listen to a dialogue about how to turn towards and be with our loneliness rather than frantically seeking to eliminate it, how to create moments and spaces of solitude where we can be alone without feeling lonely, and how to understand loneliness as a state of being that represents an opportunity to encounter our existence and ourselves more deeply, and to live more gracefully in the tension between our existential separateness and aloneness, and the longing for being in relationships and belonging.
Ep. 6 - Ghosting: Projection, Withdrawal & Abandonment
In this lively episode, the hosts explore the phenomenon of ghosting and sister phenomena such as emotional dishonesty and relational betrayal that fall along the continuum of relational abandonment. A ghost in essence is para-normal, that which looks and appears to be true and real, but in actuality is not so genuinely authentic. There appears to be a lack of depth and vulnerability in the type of dating or friendship in which ghosting thrives—which begs the question of whether or not the relationships are really real in the first place, or if they manifest as real, and thus have a ghost-like or “as if” quality.
Ep. 5 - Boredom: From the Dread of Empty Time to the Fullness of Creativity
In this episode, the hosts explore the experience of boredom. It is most often experienced as very unpleasant as a person is left entirely with themselves. When boredom is present, life asks us how we show up to this and what possibilities there are. It is tempting to ease the discomfort of being thrown upon oneself by trying further self-distancing, but perhaps if we can stay with the experience of boredom we may also find possibilities to show up fully with ourselves and birth creative expression.
Episode 4 - Home: Belonging, Space, and The Freedom to Be
In this episode, we are invited by the COVID-19 quarantine to consider and reflect upon our perception, sense, and feelings of home. Through the pandemic, for many of us, our physical home has become a place where we are spending the majority of time. And yet, existentially, the idea and sense of being at home, homesickness, or even homelessness is far more expansive than a physical place. “What is home?” then becomes a question of where does one find belonging, resonance, and even nostalgia in the world and in oneself? And, how is it for me to be where I am? Existentially, home is where we belong and where we feel our existence comes into being.
Episode 3 - Illness Anxiety, Fear of Dying and Embodiment
In Episode 3, the hosts explore illness anxiety, which is a condition marked by preoccupation with acquiring a serious illness as well as hypersensitivity to physical sensations which are interpreted as indicative of an underlying illness. The relationship between illness anxiety and fear of death and dying is explored, as well as how embodiment—our relationship to our bodies and our experiences of being a body—helps us deal with illness anxiety.
Episode 2 - COVID-19, Pandemics and Dealing with Uncertainty
Episode 2 centres around the existential concerns which have arisen in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Questions of how we situate ourselves when facing uncertainty, and as well as our feelings and attitudes toward succumbing to illness and possibly death come to the fore. In this episode, the hosts use a phenomenological process called Personal Existential Analysis where we explore the reality of the situation, highlight automatic feelings and impulses which have arisen, identify how we can make sense and understand what it is happening, and then decide what we will choose to do.
Breathing & The Right to Exist.
Our podcast release for today is regarding the tragic death of George Floyd. We stand in solidarity with all of those who have have died, who have been discriminated against, trodden on, and marginalized in this long and violent history of racial oppression and disparity. Please find in the Show Notes, a list of resources on black existentialism and critical phenomenology that you might use to find your position and personal response with respect to racial oppression, discrimination and brutality. Our hearts are with you as we also endeavour in our own process of reckoning with what has happened and what that means for our continued allyship. Black Lives Matter.
Episode 1 -
Existential Psychotherapy, Inner Consent & Phenomenology
This episode discusses what existential psychotherapy is, what it is like to be an existential therapist, and what is Existential Analysis as a school of existential psychotherapy. Within this framework, we dialogue about what it means to live an existentially attuned life, with inner consent towards the fundamental conditions of our human existence, engaged in dialogue, and with phenomenological openness. We provide a snapshot of how to work with clients using phenomenology as the core method of existential psychotherapy.
The Existential Question
At the end of each episode, we will be offering an existential question to you for the purpose of inviting you into a phenomenological self-experience. The existential question will hint towards the next episode’s content.
Submit your answer on our Facebook Page The Existentialists Podcast, Instagram @existentialistspodcast or right here below!