Therapy for Existential Fitness, by Jon Dickson, MA

     You find yourself here in the world existing with all the conditions and multiple intelligences at hand, moods and perceptions, capacities and limits, possibilities and relationships, informed by your evolutionary and ancestral inheritance. What makes you resilient, adaptable, flexible and fit for your existence in meeting this event you call your Life? The notion of Existential Fitness conjures a big picture view of all that comprises our wholeness of Being with our embeddedness in the world and all the contexts and roles we inhabit that demand our attention and call us to show up. The notion of therapy makes us think of healing, wholeness, care and wellbeing. Taken together, with the idea of fitness in mind, we consider how we are living presently, and how we are willing and able to live, as well as where we might be challenged and better supported to learn and grow. We are questioned by Life, and it beckons and behooves us to respond in accordance with the values we hold dear. Perhaps it is a matter of re-discovery of our values that orient us in times of crisis. When we are out of alignment and out of touch, we experience those various symptoms and their behavioural patterns that contribute to feeling anxious, depressed, stuck, withdrawn, judgemental, frustrated, angry, cynical, fearful, confused, disconnected, excessive consumption, so the cycle goes. We might call it a formidable “Existential Crisis”, or crisis of meaning. We are being called in – the hazard lights are flashing indicating “service overdue” - it is time for an existential tune up.

                  So where do you go? Where is the nearest “shop”? A well trained and existentially attuned therapist is usually a great place to support our existential fitness. A therapeutic approach to our existence entails undertaking an honest inventory and appreciative inquiry of the conditions, patterns, traumas, identities, inequalities, actualities and potentials available to us. This lens promotes a strength-based, non-pathologizing, trauma-informed view and it invites us to open our eyes and hearts to find deeper wellsprings of courage and compassion to face the Truth of our Lives with dignity and self-respect. 

Many people can sense a subtle or not-so-subtle feeling of incongruence in living out an old, outworn pattern with our desire to live in a more authentic way – but we just might not yet know how or what that looks like – and we experience fear or overwhelm and deal with it through various understandable defensive strategies. We can be supported by a therapist in interrupting maladaptive patterns, which can be unfamiliar and naturally uncomfortable at times. The process can also be energizing, empowering, and restoring to our motivation, and at times even properly humorous. Things are far too serious right now for us to lose our humour. When the conditions are right, we discover new ways of being and responding that make us more ‘fit’ for the given situation. We can answer the call in a way that feels consistent and in touch with our orienting values and deeper knowing. 

Sometimes participating in the therapeutic counselling process helps people come to a deeper self-understanding. For example, a person may come to recognize that their depression is stemming from a repression of healthy anger and a silencing of their voice in key relationships where they may have been side-stepping their responsibility to communicate their needs and boundaries. They may connect some of the dots from their biography and realize that the depression they are presently experiencing as an adult is actually a memory from the past being re-experienced now. By turning toward oneself with curiosity encouraged by the compassionate support of a counsellor, they may develop a new relationship with their emotional interior and find a more mature and resourced voice. As such, good therapy can help us develop cognitive flexibility, emotional dexterity, and somatic fluency – we become more malleable and self-literate in how we function with our nervous systems, our vulnerabilities and personality’s propensities and therefore better able to apply our own well-earned wisdom with greater capacity and efficiency. 

This note on existential fitness wouldn’t be well rounded if it didn’t mention the integral piece about Trust. Research indicates that about 50% of successful therapeutic outcomes are dependent on the quality of a trusting therapeutic alliance – meaning, the relationship we have with our therapist and the environmental conditions that affords seem to be a key factor that supports us in learning new skills, taking healthy risks, making decisions that contradict our former scripts, and living more satisfying lives. Also, at times in a person’s life, especially when developmental trauma is part of a person’s biography, “not trusting” may have been a very intelligent response – and this must be honored and cared for. A therapeutic relationship can be a restorative relationship – it can help a person restore trust in another (and oneself) where it may have been sorely lacking, thereby bolstering a sense of healthy self-esteem and self-worth.

Not only is trust in the therapeutic relationship essential – as it tends to generalize outward in our other relationships – but we also may be challenged to encounter our trust (or mistrust) in Life and the world. To be existential is to acknowledge the facts of life, such as mortality, loss, finitude, impermanence, meaning, freedom and responsibility. Certain seasons of Life tend to call us to encounter and grapple with these themes in varying degrees of intensity, and a therapeutic container that acknowledges the relevance and magnitude of them is one that promotes and fortifies our existential fitness. We may break a cycle of anxiety and avoidance by confronting these in a safe-enough way in therapy, which may give us new ground to stand on and rest into. A robust quality of acceptance can take the place of former resistances, and often a health promoting grief process can free up a lot of life force energy that was held in various psycho-somatic patterns. A greater sense of harmony can arise and take root when the key ingredients of trust, acceptance, non-judgment, unconditional positive regard, curiosity and compassion are shared.

After all, we are being called to transform, to learn, to shed, to grow, to evolve – our heart’s break, open, and our minds are stretched beyond known terrain. We experience growing pains. We might be growing a whole new Self which could feel like labour pains as we birth a new identity. Familiar, implicitly learned, habitual approaches to life which have served their purposes throughout the early and adolescent lifespan have their limitations in view and effect in adulthood and require an “existential”, psychological and behavioural upgrade. These familiar approaches are familial – so stepping into therapy to address, process and resolve issues surrounding them will be an unfamiliar and at times conflictive experience as former loyalties are challenged to shift allegiance to new norms. The proposal for this self-investigation may be radical to the innocent, vulnerable and possibly fearful parts of us that feel a need to maintain a hidden, avoidant, or deflated posture to life. Engaging in a progressive therapeutic endeavour will essentially be like “growing up again”. 

Think back to what it took for you to be born – all hands-on deck, family, friends, various supports – we were born into a social context with many human beings. As the saying goes, “I am because we are”, and “it takes a village to raise a human”. The point is that we are inherently social beings and to have explicit guidance, accurate mirroring, and support in developing our character and potential is essential. To have an ally on your side such as a trained therapist who specializes in psychology and behavioural health can be a life changing relationship. In the process of therapy, we begin to internalize the atmosphere of the therapist and consonant “emotional nutrients” cultivated within and between oneself and the relationship. Effectively, we become our own therapist. The therapist acts as a birth doula or shepherd of Being, helping us see and connect with our newly forming Wise Self.

A careful analysis of our existence has been likened to a metaphorical “inner body building”. If we stretch the metaphor of fitness, borrowing from the industry that promotes athleticism and physical fitness and its associated goals of developing strength, flexibility, endurance, agility and so forth, we might be reminded of ideas such as “performance” and “optimization”. In a similar way, the living moment-to-moment embodiment of existential fitness calls for a certain kind of broadened optimization – a sort of ‘soft-vigilance’ – a quality of mindful attunement that is present, alert, receptive and available. In athletics and competition, there is an ideal state of arousal which is optimal for performance. Likewise, as we exist in the arena of our life, qualities and attitudes such as humility, honesty, sincerity, integrity, generosity and other virtuous aspirations tend to ‘optimize’ us for participating in more authentic and life affirming ways. We become better able to meet and greet life and its consistent inconsistencies as it discloses itself through our many states, moods and interactions. By caring for our existential fitness, we may find our capacity for bearing intensity and ambiguity coinciding with a greater ‘window of tolerance’, and a decrease in reactivity allows us to be more ‘response-able’, and even playful. When we are response-able, we are conscious of the way we shape and are reciprocally shaped by Life through being aware of how we attend and what we attend to. This is good news, especially in times of heightened existential distress and its associated moments of disorientation, disillusionment or derangement.

It would be fair if one had reservations about the word and idea of ‘fitness’ in its application to our life situations, relationships, and mental-emotional health. However, if we think of our humanity being comprised of multiple intelligences (Cognitive, Emotional, Social, Linguistic, Moral, Kinesthetic, Spiritual, Existential, Sexual, Mathematical, Volitional, Musical, etc.) as well as our life being animated by a general intelligent force that sustains and organizes itself within individuals, collectives and cultures – then fitness in the broadest sense would include all of these, and invite us to consider and hone our fittedness to reality in a way that we might live more effectively with greater insight and harmony. If the word ‘fitness’ doesn’t work for you, we can easily substitute words like ‘development’, ‘growth’, or ‘maturation’. Evolutionary and developmental psychology examine factors that hinder or foster the processes of growth, adaptivity and resiliency. 

What we are talking about here is your Being, that which is with you your whole life – and your character, your personhood, your heart, your stance, your dignity, your outlook and approach to Life. This may be inclusive of but certainly well beyond mere “physical fitness”. A person’s body can be injured, sick, unwell, or even dying, but they as a person can be well, whole, and healed. Importantly, this all should be held in a way that we aren’t overwhelmed with a crippling sense of inadequacy, or not-enoughness, as if we have one more thing to add to the list of things for us to do to finally be enough. Some people, especially in the western patriarchal dominant culture are often wired to think, assume, and expect to have to struggle – and while we are not naive to think that life does come with its difficulties, this mindset can be challenged by complimentarily considering the question, “How can I make this easier on myself?”. This is a matter of right effort and working with ourselves, not against. Suffering can take a lot of effort, and as many have seen, over-efforting can lead to all sorts of problems – burnout, compassion fatigue, chronic grief, illness and injury, to name a few.  

An existential view holds space for but does not limit or confine us to feelings and narratives of incompleteness or insufficiency. Instead, by taking a receptive, curious, non-judgmental attitude to our being and existence, a therapist can help us learn how to adopt and internalize this attitude which can often serve as an antidote to hardened and constricted perspectives and their associated psychosomatic stories. As such, therapy properly understood is education – it is philosophy, the love of wisdom, applied.

Modern psychotherapy in the ‘west’ has been informed by many traditions. One foundational tradition goes back to the ancient philosophers of Greece such as Socrates and Plato where there was inscribed on the Apollo Temple at Delphi the maxim “Know Thyself”. We can take this pointer as a provocation to actually ‘unknow’ narrowed habitual modes of being and uncover the more real, more true, more beautiful Self that is often hidden from the aggregates and adhesive qualities of prior conditioning. To know thyself is to answer your calling to circle, the unique motivations and ‘symptoms’ that call you into wise council to listen and find out the common-unity (community) within and without. It is a call to open to the discovery of self-realization, awakening to a self-transcendent, embodied guidance that heals unresolved trauma and lifts the fog of existential malaise.   

                  If you take anything away from this read, my hope is that it comes with a moment of self-reflection and appreciation for all the qualities and attributes that have made you adaptive and able to be, while also acknowledging your possibilities, gifts, creativity and various potentials. If you have read this far, perhaps this offered a nudge in your awareness for considering connecting with a therapist / counsellor to engage in a process of turning toward and attending to your existential fitness – which absolutely includes your mental-emotional and social health, but as noted, also goes beyond to encompass a deeper and wider vision of what it means to be you as a human in this life at this time, in this context with all of its intelligences and interconnected relationships.  

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Author: Jon Dickson, MA Counselling Psychology, Certified Canadian Counsellor (CCC), 500 HR YT.

Jon is a registered counsellor based out of Squamish, B.C. He is trained in Existential Therapy, Body-Based Psychotherapy, Integral Psychotherapy and Psychedelic Therapy. He teaches Vinyassa yoga and meditation and had a former career as a Kinesiologist (Exercise Therapist) which continues to inform his work with individuals and groups in a holistic way. Jon works psychotherapeutically with adults in individual and group contexts to support healing through developmental trauma and growing through arrested development, encouraging a dynamic awakening and reconnection process.   

If you would like to contact Jon, he can be reached at:

www.jondicksoncounselling.com

Email: [email protected]