Understanding Existential Therapy: Finding Meaning in Life’s Challenges
/Existential Therapy
Life can often feel like a series of questions without clear answers. Why am I here? What truly matters? How do I cope when life feels uncertain or painful?
These are deeply human questions — and they lie at the heart of existential therapy.
Unlike traditional therapy approaches that focus primarily on symptoms or diagnoses, existential therapy explores the broader human experience. It helps individuals confront life’s inherent uncertainties, take responsibility for their choices, and ultimately, discover meaning and purpose — even in the face of suffering.
What Is Existential Therapy?
Existential therapy is a philosophically grounded approach to psychotherapy that draws from existentialist thinkers like Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Viktor Frankl. It focuses on the human condition — our freedom, our limitations, and our search for meaning.
Rather than trying to “fix” a person, existential therapy aims to help clients explore their own values, beliefs, and choices. It recognizes that feelings of anxiety, despair, or emptiness often arise when we struggle to find meaning or avoid the realities of existence — such as death, freedom, isolation, and responsibility.
Core Themes in Existential Therapy
Freedom and Responsibility
With freedom comes the responsibility to choose — and that can be terrifying. Existential therapy helps clients recognize that while we can’t control everything that happens to us, we can control how we respond.
Meaning and Purpose
A central goal of existential therapy is to help individuals discover or create meaning in their lives, even during pain or uncertainty. Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, emphasized that finding meaning in suffering can be the key to survival and growth.
Isolation and Connection
Every person ultimately faces the reality of being alone — yet we also crave connection. Existential therapy explores how to build authentic relationships while accepting the limits of human closeness.
Death and Mortality
Acknowledging mortality can be uncomfortable, but it can also motivate us to live more fully. Existential therapy invites clients to see death not as a source of fear, but as a reminder to live with purpose and presence.
What to Expect in Existential Therapy
An existential therapist won’t simply analyze your past or assign homework. Instead, therapy sessions often feel like deep, reflective conversations — exploring your experiences, values, and sense of meaning.
Common techniques include:
Open-ended dialogue: Exploring existential questions and personal beliefs.
Self-reflection: Examining one’s authentic desires and choices.
Mindfulness and awareness: Staying present with emotions rather than avoiding them.
Reframing challenges: Seeing pain or uncertainty as opportunities for growth and understanding.
The therapist acts as a companion and guide, helping you face life’s realities honestly while supporting your search for fulfillment.
Finding Meaning Amid Life’s Challenges
Existential therapy doesn’t promise to eliminate life’s hardships — instead, it helps us face them with courage and clarity. By confronting fear, loss, and uncertainty, we learn to embrace the beauty of being human: our ability to choose, to connect, and to create meaning in even the darkest times.
As Viktor Frankl wrote in Man’s Search for Meaning:
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
Existential therapy reminds us that even in suffering, there is room for growth, transformation, and profound self-discovery.
Life’s challenges may never completely disappear — but through existential therapy, we can learn to meet them with openness, authenticity, and purpose.
By understanding ourselves more deeply and embracing our freedom to choose meaning, we begin to live not in fear of existence, but in awe of it.
