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Set Recovery Goals
Published in Sandra Rasmussen, Developing Competencies for Recovery, 2023
Note: existential therapy is adaptable and often used with other approaches to addiction treatment and recovery work. While existential therapy addresses broad goals like purpose and meaning for life, cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) can focus on immediate craving for a fix. Combining approaches can help maximize the effectiveness of treatment and promote greater recovery.
Facilitating Gay Men’s Coming Out: An Existential-Phenomenological Exploration
Published in Elizabeth Peel, Victoria Clarke, Jack Drescher, British Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Psychologies, 2020
Existential therapy is understood and accepted “as a dialogic approach to therapy in which clients are encouraged to find their own answers to their own questions through an honest, empathic, challenging, supportive and individual relationship” (Cooper, 2004, p. 4). Rather than defining E-P practice as a technique, it is better understood as a working method. The E-P working method dispenses with any concerns about diagnostic frameworks. Instead, the therapist starts by considering the basic dimensions of human existence, and by attempting to clarify the client’s personal worldview (Van Deurzen, 1988). May (1983) describes the three dimensions of the client’s worldview: First, there is Umwelt, literally meaning “world around”; this is the biological world, generally called in our day the environment. There is, second, the Mitwelt, literally the “with world,” the world of beings of one’s own kind, the world of one’s fellow men [sic]. The third [dimension] is Eigenwelt, the “own world,” the world of relationship to oneself. (p. 126)
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
Published in Judy Z. Koenigsberg, Anxiety Disorders, 2020
How can integrated existential therapy approaches benefit individuals with OCD? Reliance on cognitive processes in reaction to the existential recognition of one’s eventual death is related to higher phobic and obsessive-compulsive symptoms (Strachan et al., 2007). Wolfe (2008) developed an existential integrated approach to the anxiety disorders that demonstrates how obsessive-compulsive disorder can be explained from the vantage point of the theme of death anxiety. The primary diagnostic tool for uncovering the implicit underpinnings of anxiety symptoms is Wolfe’s Focusing Technique, a type of exposure that is imaginal (Wolfe, 2003; Wolfe & Sigl, 1998). This technique is a method for discovering the meaning of obsessive and compulsive symptoms, and for patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder, it involves a meticulous attention on the obsessive thought (Wolfe, 2003).
Posttraumatic growth following cancer: The influence of emotional intelligence, management of intrusive rumination, and goal disengagement as mediated by deliberate rumination
Published in Journal of Psychosocial Oncology, 2019
Katie Rider Mundey, Donald Nicholas, Theresa Kruczek, Molly Tschopp, Jocelyn Bolin
From the clinical perspective, findings suggest that clinical efforts to promote PTG among cancer survivors should focus on facilitation of survivors’ deliberate rumination about their cancer experience. Unfortunately, exactly how clinicians should go about doing this remains somewhat unclear given that the factors responsible for promoting deliberate rumination have yet to be identified. Nevertheless, considering that deliberate rumination is indeed a cognitive process, it seems reasonable to presume that cognitively oriented therapies (e.g. CBT) would likely prove helpful,25 particularly considering that both cognitive and cognitive-behavioral therapy have been identified as empirically supported interventions for the cancer population.31–33 Clinicians might also consider drawing on existential theory and techniques. As discussed previously, at its core, deliberate rumination involves cognitively contemplating a traumatic experience in an effort to extract meaning and value from it.25 In this regard, existential therapy has much to offer with its emphasis on meaning, significance, and purpose, as well as its basic presupposition that humans possess the capacity to transform suffering and tragedy into achievement through direct confrontation of anxiety, pain, and despair,34 and has been found beneficial for cancer patients.35–36
The Existential Sensibility: Self and Psychotherapy in an Uncertain World
Published in Psychiatry, 2018
How can an existential sensibility inform psychotherapy? Different therapists answer that question individually, which is why the conference used the term existential sensibility rather than existential therapy. It has been said that there are probably as many different existential therapies as there are existential therapists. Two illustrative definitions of existential therapy are Van Deurzen’s (2010) and Yalom’s (1980): [Existential therapy] forcefully confronts clients with their set mode of living and their current ways of being in the world… . It also holds out the promise that it is possible to live a worthwhile and meaningful life … if one is willing to face up to one’s share of human misery and eager to relish one’s share of joy. (Van Deurzen, 2010, p. 255)A dynamic approach to psychotherapy which focuses on concerns that are rooted in the individual’s existence. (Yalom, 1980, p. 5)