What the Four Givens of Existence can Teach Us About Mental Health
The architects of Existentialism did not succumb to the idea of human beings existing as the center point of the universe, with dominion above and beyond all else. Nor did they conceive of humans as being in a state of perpetual progress that was preordained and inevitable. Man is neither a being made in the image of God, with its implied superiority in comparison to all others nor is man destined for greatness in any field. Humankind is in all likelihood the result of an evolutionary process that if not completely random, is certainly a dispassionate one that curries no favor for any one particular group.
Rather than take a medical perspective, one can consider the issue from a philosophical perspective, which is what Existentialism aims to do. Life is a series of ongoing exchanges of meaning and profundity with human beings serving as the transmitters of these messages, but amidst the rabble there exists certain limitations. Humankind as it is constituted in the past, present, or future is never an inevitability, but certain conditions of life are constituted as such and exist outside of time. Irvin Yalom has dealt with and written about And then some a morning these conditions, calling them the givens of existence; I will restate and reappraise them here.
These givens of existence are matters of ultimate concern for human beings and in many ways affect how we choose to live our lives. Freedom is the first given, and I speak about it in terms that extend beyond an individual’s ability to act out their wishes. Freedom refers to a lack of solidity in all of the structures that human beings create and are thrown into. Lack of structure points to a world without external laws or moral codes to govern our behavior and dictate to us how we should think, feel, and behave. Every system is constructed, and consequently is untenable in the final calculation. The very laws that govern the universe have been revealed to be open to clarification and re-interpretation as the scientific process continues on.
Recognizing the groundlessness of existence turns out to be a dizzying experience rather than one that brings relief. To understand that there are no external rules that govern life and that the rules one follows are arbitrary is to acknowledge that one is free to choose whether or not to continue to follow those rules. The consequences of either choice fall squarely on the shoulders of each man or woman and cannot be handed over to fate or social forces, however large a shadow they cast. Stress and anxiety often accompany this realization, and maladaptive behaviors can arise in an attempt to cope.
One also deals with isolation as a given of existence, not in the sense of being lonely without the company of others or having to endure punishments such as exile or solitary confinement. Existential isolation cuts to the core of what it means to be isolated; no matter how close we get to others there is still a final unbridgeable gap that we can never close. No matter how badly we want to know and understand someone, and despite all the energy and effort we may devote to this endeavor, we can never get at the heart of another human being. Worse than that, we cannot fully understand ourselves, and if we fail at this then we cannot help but fail at the task of understanding the other. We seek merger with someone or something greater than ourselves as a means of achieving wholeness, but we shrink from this same merger out of fear of being overwhelmed and obliterated by the other. Successfully relating to others is a process of continuously finding healthy ways to balance this tension.
Though life is a process of becoming it is also a process of unbecoming and death is the biggest step in the latter process. Death is something that every individual must contend with and as such is an obvious given of existence. Every single person who lives will one day cease to be in a physical sense and eventually in a psychological sense as well. The difficulty is not the end result, but in knowing what one would rather not know, and having to find a way to live with a force that is indifferent to us, that for centuries we have imbued with layer upon layer of meaning.
Each of these givens of existence build upon and inform the final given which is meaninglessness. Because there are no external structures that exist outside of time or human invention and because humans are capable of and free to constitute the world in numerous ways, there can be no inherent meaning which applies to everyone in the same way. Tension lies in the fact that human beings are creatures obsessed with making meaning out of their experiences. We derive meanings where there are none and create them if we have to and this is a task we take up repeatedly throughout our lives as a way of making sense of things so that we can live effectively.
It is important to approach these givens of existence carefully, absorbing and understanding them slowly, little by little until one is strong enough to bear the burden of these conditions. They are each in their own right difficult to comprehend, and doing so can lead to radical shifts in the way one engages with life. But understanding one’s terrain is much more useful than having no real grasp of the lay of the land.
Why I Am an Existential Therapist
Life, it seems to me, lends itself to certain possibilities. Possibilities which themselves take on an air of inevitability - that perceptive persistent state in which choice and free will are at first subsumed and at last obliterated. I was born and just as quickly as I began to bloom I also began to be pruned and peppered for ends neither freely chosen nor wholly my own, if at all, barreling towards them until I would finally reach some unsatisfying conclusion.
Existentialism, a philosophy dealing with freedom, authenticity, meaning, and even the inevitability of death, the ultimate human concerns.
Having arrived, and realizing how little of my life was of my own choosing, I started to examine the whole affair in order to understand where I was, and if necessary to uproot myself. Some things have been said about what it feels like, this unshackling, this untethering, but very little about how frightening and arduous a task it is to really do it; to really choose for yourself. At times you wonder if you've gone crazy, a word I am less and less convinced describes anything substantial, least of all what one is actually going through. But if empty words are the cost of breaking with some old way of life that is ordered but agonizingly dull and predictable, then so be it.
I’m told I was born without a heartbeat or a pulse, by way of unforeseen complications during my mother’s pregnancy. That the first thing to wrap itself around me was not a warm blanket given by some nurse or orderly reeling from a night of dealing with birth and death and all of the excrements of life, and it was not the weary arms of my mother. Death covered me, prematurely yes, but it covered me all the same. I assume I lay quiet and breathless as seconds stretched into the ether, serving out a death sentence that at best would be reduced to a charge of brain damage and a lifetime of silent “if onlys.” I’d be incredulous if I had not seen faded pictures of the whole ordeal pressed into the yellowed pages of my family’s photo albums, themselves remnants of the past.
Somehow, I survived all of that, and the irreversible damage that was predicted never did set in. Eventually my lungs filled with the sweetness of air as I began to breathe, my heart started to beat, the cascading wires attached to my body were removed, and I was not plucked away too soon. This story has always stayed with me.
My interest in existentialism paired with my choice to become a clinical social worker led me to existential psychotherapy
As a child I wondered if I was special for surviving: I wanted to believe it, though I truly did nothing to accomplish the feat. My body wanted to live so it did; the rest is a mystery to me. Perhaps others knew it better and could explain it best back then, but all of those faces and most of those memories are lost now. More meaningful than the mystery or the facts involved was how the experience affected me, by which I mean it provided me with an early sense of my situation, which gradually grew into an awareness of the situation for us all. I was alive, but this did not have to be the case; it was not a guarantee, or a promise, or the fulfillment of some far off prophecy; it was the outcome of incalculable events, more innumerable than I could begin to understand.
Awareness being no guarantor of anything, least of all progress or change; I was not well equipped to deal with the conditions of my life that at times practically begged to be faced, and I was not well equipped precisely because no language that is given and not freely chosen can contain within it the power a man or woman needs to work out life’s problems in their own way. So I began, earnestly, to find my way through the use of philosophy and the deep introspection that accompanies it, and ultimately through existentialism, a philosophy dealing with freedom, authenticity, meaning, and even the inevitability of death, the ultimate human concerns. It did not ask me to shrink in the face of my responsibilities or to abdicate them to some force outside myself, but to accept them as my own, and more strangely than that, to accept myself as my own and value myself accordingly. It readied me for the challenge of trying to find answers to the questions about life that have perplexed humans for as long as our ancestors have walked under the warmth of African suns. It allowed me to meet, on neutral terms, the pervasive loneliness that ached inside of me and was reflected back in the eyes of the men and women in my community. It heightened my senses, and at the risk of romanticizing, brought to life, for the first time in a long time, a necessary intensity, an urgency to live while I can. It opened me up to the world and all the beauty and terror that lie therein.
My interest in existentialism paired with my choice to become a clinical social worker led me to existential psychotherapy - a dynamic method of therapy that was created out of the core principles of existential philosophy and fashioned to meet the needs of clients suffering with mental disorders. It provided a framework that aligned with me personally and professionally and connected me to a lived tradition that includes clinicians, writers, philosophers, activists, artists, and more.
I choose to work existentially because those same aches and pains that have plagued me have plagued us all. Because for the deeper problems of life there is no manualized method or simple solution that will banish from our sight for forever and ever, the pain and confusion and awe of living. We each must contend with our fair share of struggle and strife as we try to meet life on its own terms, and try we must, since the only way out is through (I’ve yet to find another). If somehow, in trying, I can sit with others compassionately, and bear witness to the fineness and the folly of the journey each human must undertake, then perhaps some growth and healing can be had for us all.
Why I Write
The simplest answer is that I have to, but that’s no answer at all, so an explanation might be helpful to anyone reading.
Writing has always been important to me, even before I understood it as an art form. Whether shared or not, it’s something that has been necessary for me to do in order to understand myself and the world I am living in, and to communicate my thoughts and feelings to others.
All of which is now an important part of the work I do as a therapist.
Apart from the necessity of self-expression, I write because I want to help people understand themselves and the world they live in. I want to illuminate for others the opportunities they have for happiness, meaning, creativity, growth, and re-invention.
I write to explore and discover and share my perspective on the things that matter to me including existentialism, science, philosophy, art, culture, history, and my own lived experience.