Existential Therapy Activity

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Introduction to Psychotherapy
Existential Therapy
FINDING PURPOSE OF LIFE

“Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power as Alfred Adler
taught, but a quest for meaning.”
~Viktor Frankl
I. Fill in the pie above with words or phrases answering the following questions in
relation to how you perceive or understand the meaning of your life:
A. What motivates you in life? What motivates me in life is being able to have extra
time and travel to places with my family.
B. What do you do when you are at your best? When I am at my best I am motivated
and happy in whatever I am doing and I get too excited about cooking.
C. What do you long for in your life? I want to travel.
D. What makes you happy? I am happy when I don’t to do work and just have my
time to relax and enjoy with my family at the beach.
E. What makes you stay in a relationship that you have? Being respected and loved.
F. What makes you grow in life? I grow when I am being supervised and when given
the chance to do things on my own.
II. Another thing to ponder, keep your mind and self at ease, and answer this question:
(at least 2-3 sentences)
“What makes my life worth living? In terms of
A. Helping
What makes may life worth living is i was able to help my students when they
have problems. Also, I can be a shoulder to lean on to my family and friends.
B. Realizing
What makes my life worth living, I realize that I can be of help to other people, I
realize that I can do so much out of my profession. Realizing my potential helped
me gain confidence.
C. Growing
What makes my life worth living is growing into a person that I never imagined to
be. I realized that I had a crazy experience as a child, I remember being excited to
be adult and leave home, but today I think completely. I realized that I have
grown and matured lot. I figured I’ve created good choices.
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Existential Therapy
Thought Paper
Existential therapy is an approach that focuses on the person’s way of thinking and
decision making. According to Yalom and Josselson (2011), it is human’s attitude toward
suffering. It asks about the depth of the nature of human being and focus with the questions
of meaning, creativity and love. As for me based from my own point of view this therapy
has certain techniques that helps the clients explore their own life.
In the present time existential therapy can work in our busy lives because it aims to
assists in processing our day to day choices and how it affects our life as a whole. We often
forgot how to live meaningfully and to reflect on our existence and experiences, which for
me is very important. Using existential therapy, clients who are suffering from loss of a
loved one, life crisis or loss of meaning in life are all encourage to reflect and go into the
deeper level of what they are feeling, they are not discourage to shove their feelings away. I
recalled that this is similar to what our philosophers experienced before, according to
Sharp and Bugental (2001), the existential therapy arises during the World War II, where
they struggled with existential issues, feelings of isolation, alienation and meaningless.
Through that experience they were able to use it as their source of motivation and meaning
in life. Similarly, the therapeutic process of the existential therapy is aiming to encourage
individuals not to be afraid to face and recognize their sufferings, love or work instead use
it as a source of meaning and reason to move forward in their lives.
The existential therapy techniques help in finding our own will to live our lives
through our day to day experiences. The goal of the therapy is to help every person to
create and determine their own choices and be the person who they want to be. Although
this might sound similar to other techniques what separates the existential therapy among
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all of them is that it let a person experience all the dilemma and problem that they have and
encourages them to seek balance and possibilities in their experiences. The therapy is not
going to teach us how to stop the problems but how to approach and face these problems at
the person’s own phase and time.
A lot of people are suffering and experiencing crisis on their own, the existential
perspective will let the clients reflect on their own experiences and address to them the
freedom that they have to choose how to respond to these current events. Every individual
is different on their own way, however, I learned that once an individual in the process of
therapy was able to recognize their roles in their lives, they will be able to address the
uncertainties in their lives.
References
Sharp, J. & Bugental, J.F.T, (2001). Existential-Humanistic psychotherapy, Handbook
of innovative therapies 2, 206-201. New York
Yalom, I., & Josselson R. (2011). Existensial Psychotherapy. Current Psychotherapies
9, 310-341.

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1

FINDING PURPOSE OF LIFE

“What makes my life worth living? In terms of

it as a source of meaning and reason to move forward in their lives.

the person’s own phase and time.

uncertainties in their lives.

Sharp, J. & Bugental, J.F.T, (2001). Existential-Humanistic psychotherapy, Handbook

of innovative therapies 2, 206-201. New York

Yalom, I., & Josselson R. (2011). Existensial Psychotherapy. Current Psychotherapies

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