Myths of Life – Identifying and Removing the Myth of Limitation

How can existential philosophy be of relevance in how you choose to live your life?  What are oyur choices and how can you live with the anxeity of challenging the status quo or questioning the rightness of your decisions?  You have to live in the social world, consider others and the rules that enable you to realise our choices.  The issue is not one of rejecting all that is expected of you – the issue that you DO have a chocie.  It’s about challenging the unquestioned assumptions, expanding your choices and living with the anxiety that meaningful living entails.

The validity of our choices is often questioned when we become disillusioned with our lives, despite achieving many of the things we dreamed of.  We long to have it all but find it increasingly difficult to juggle  jobs, children, homes and sanity! We believe that if only a balance could be struck between the different areas of our lives, we could relax.  Invariably, this balance is never achieved and we become observers in our own lives, wishing for the day when it would all improve.

Bombarded with choices about how to live and be happy, what do we really want to do with our lives? Society’s myths often result in us choosing from a limited array of available options – it is assumed that ‘having it all but in balance’ is the way forward.  Maybe not.  Maybe the parts that make up the balance have never been questioned.  Maybe we have never taken time out of our busy schedules to examine the full range of options facing us.  We choose from a narrow range of choices on offer and never stop to thnk ‘outside the square’ and create the life we want.

As a psychotherapist, I passionately believe you are each the best judge of what is right for you.  By examining the role of Myths in your lives, you can expand our options, reconnet with your choices and judge the rightness of them.  Existential philosophy offers an opportunity to develop a vision of what your ideal life would be like, a yardstick against which you choose – the question, ‘Does this contribute to realising my vision?’ will keep you on track.

However, accepting anxiety is an inevitable part of committing to our choices is an existential realtiy.  Rollo May (1975:21) says, ‘Commitment is the healthiest when it is not without doubt, but in spite of doubt.  To believe fully and at the same time to have doubts is not at all a contradiction: it presupposes a greater respect for the truth, an awareness that truth always goes beyond anything that can be said or done at any given moment’.

Existential psychotherapy, like all therapy is about reflecting on our life choices and choosing in order to have a well lived life. It takes place within the therapeutic relationship and is underpinned by the following philosophical beliefs:

We have choice and free will.
We are doomed to choose and yet often deny this, never tapping into the wide array of options available to us. We say ‘’I can’t do this’’ Ï shouldn’t do this’’ – all examples of denying the freedom we have – ultimately to be who
we really want to be.

Human nature is intrinsically flexible
We create our reality and ourselves by ‘being-in-relation’ to other people and other things. It is possible to make sense of life by engaging with this reality. We create our reality and ourselves by ‘being -in-relation’. We are not fixed but beings-in-relation who experience the world and co-create through Intentional Acts. ‘Intentionality’ means ‘moving towards’.  For example, we do not love, like, want anything in isolation – we love, like and want (or any other adverb), something or somebody. See the co-creation?

There are limitations to our freedom.
We do not have unlimited freedom to choose but are bounded by our social, physical and cultural circumstances.

Existential psychotherapy is a philosophical endeavour.
Van Deurzen says ‘existential psychotherapy is a tutorial in the art of living’ – not about pathologising and considering people to be sick; instead  struggling with the very problem of living and making sense of their particular circumstances.

Existential psychotherapy focuses on problems of living and not personality problems.

A individual’s challenges are not seen within a framework of personality differences, nor are people explained in terms of personality type or trait.  This would be seen as inauthentic, inasmuch as it presupposes a fixed entity called ‘personality’.

The goal of existential psychotherapy is Authenticity.

This is Heideggerian concept, not to do with being genuine or truthful but embracing the concept of Dasein or ‘’being there’’. Dasein embraces the infinite possibilities of being, against the backcloth of the limits of our existence.

Individuals are unique and their way of seeing the world is valuable

Regardless of how different a client’s beliefs or behaviours are, their subjective experience is real and significant.  The psychotherapist will always encourage a client to consider all their choices and their consequences, although they are not there to judge or condemn – their job is to throw light on the extent to which their choice serves them.  We often have a tendency to deny we have choice or do not see the choices inherent in everything.  Psychotherapy thus open up possibilities we may not have considered before – often a much in ‘ways of seeing’ as in ‘doing’.

Psychotherapists face the same challenges of living as their clients

These challenges are known as ontological i.e. we are born, we die, we relate, we are alone, we have to choose, experience anxiety due to there being no external yardstick to judge the rightness of our choices etc. Our ontic experience is how we encounter and experience these ontological givens.  Problems and challenges, from an existential perspective, are seen as encounters with these givens.  Existential psychotherapy assists a client to both experience and become the witness of one’s experiences.

Psychotherapists, as well as clients, are changed in the therapeutic process

If every human existent is co-creating and experiencing ontological givens, then whether therapist or client, they are each ‘in relation’. Although focus is in the client’s story and clients may never hear of the therapist’s life, both changed because they have ‘encountered’ each other.

In choosing, we must take responsibility for those choices

By choosing or ‘choosing not to choose’ by allowing others, social myths or circumstances to dictate the direction of our lives, we assume responsibility for what we experience.  Once we fully grasp this, we can no longer blame anything outside of ourselves for what we are or experience.  We are always ‘in relation’, even if the only choice we experience in a moment is how we think about something in our minds.
Existential psychotherapy is an opportunity to encounter yourself in a way that enrich your life, helps you assume full responsibility for your life in order to leave with meaning and purpose.

Are you denying your freedom when you succumb to group pressures in making decisions for yourself?

Example
Imagine an person who takes a job in an organisation because they believe this will further their career growth. It soon becomes apparent that they are expected to work long hours on a regular basis. On occasions when they leave before the expected late hour, they may feel enormous anxiety – either as a result of others’ disapproval, verbal remarks or internal discomfort.
They find themselves in a dilemma. They could work less hours and learn to live with others’ criticisms. Alternatively, They could conform to the group pressures to work longer hours but feel resentful. In order to accommodate the resultant anxiety, they are most likely to deny they have any choice, instead pointing to the organisational culture or power of the management. However, the resultant cost of denying they have choice is to act, what existential theorists call, Inauthentically – denying our true freedom to act.

The person in the example is subject to the Group Myth – the unquestioned assumption that happiness or ease arises out of conforming to a known or fictitious group of which we are or believe ourselves to be a member. Often the pressure appears to come a presumed collective belief of social norms or mores. On the face of it, the above example leaves the individual without little choice – to not conform means his job prospects could be in jeopardy. However, this and related examples, indicate how the anxiety of non-conforming often results in us denying we have any choice at all when in fact we always have a choice – even if only attitudinally.

Martin Heidegger, the existential philosopher calls this faceless group to which we attribute many of these pressures as the ‘They Self’ which influence our own choices of how to be. The They-Self are not a group of people but a presumed set of values and social conventions which presumably everyone agrees with. He says that we can either collude with the demands of the They-Self i.e. the world of others and our perception of their expectations and social conventions, or heed what he calls the Call of Conscience and become aware of our choice of how to be against the backcloth of our temporal existence.

Self-Reflection Exercise

Think of examples from your own life where you have become subject to the pressures of the They-Self. Write down as much information as possible and try to get in touch with how you deal with your anxiety that arises, either as a result of you colluding with the They-Self or trying to break free of it.