In this episode, the hosts invite you, our listeners, to encounter the fundamental conditions of human existence by providing your own response to the challenges that these conditions bring to your own life. Specifically, we are discussing how we can encounter and personally respond to the basic fact that we are here in this world: “I am here but can I be?” Moreover, we are not just here but we are alive, we experience emotions and engage with life and relationships: “I am alive but do I like be...
Jun 21, 2021•1 hr•Season 2Ep. 10
In this episode, the hosts discuss encountering our own moral conscience understood as a personal capacity of sensing what is right in a given situation. In contrast with moralistic attitudes or a priori prescribed percepts about right or wrong, encountering our moral conscience means encountering ourselves as persons, and trusting our own capacity to sense what is right. Listening to and following our moral conscience requires courage and vulnerability to trust our inner moral compass and our c...
Jun 07, 2021•52 min•Ep. 17
Pain, either physical or psychological, is a fundamental, inescapable human experience that typically elicits a lot of suffering, resistance, sorrow, and hopelessness. In this episode, the hosts discuss about pain as a complex, challenging human experience that involves both our body and psyche, and, at times, our spiritual life. Concrete ways of encountering pain grounded in the experience of living with chronic pain provide listeners with a felt account and practical strategies of how to turn ...
May 24, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Season 2Ep. 8
In this episode, the hosts discuss about turning towards our body to encounter the myriad of ways in which our bodies support our existence and make possible our embodied being in the world. The engagement with the world in and through our body has been denoted by the term “embodiment”, wherein the mind and body are inextricably linked and reciprocally influence one another. In Existential Analysis, the body is understood as the primordial physical structure the provides us with space, support, ...
May 10, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Season 2Ep. 7
In this episode, the hosts discuss about how we encounter change in our lives, our responses to change, and how we could deal with change in a more personal, intentional way. Whereas change is omnipresent in our lives and it can take many forms, some people tend to be worried about change and try to avoid it out of fear of unpredictability, of the unpleasant or painful consequences or of the destabilizing effect of change. Notwithstanding these possible outcomes that may accompany change, as hum...
Apr 26, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Season 2Ep. 6
In this episode, the hosts discuss about encountering the transcendent broadly understood as that which is experienced as beyond oneself, greater than oneself and which usually yields an intense emotional experience ranging from awe to terror. Rudolf Otto called this “the numinosum” and coined the name “mysterium tremendum” to denote this unique experience could be marked not only by awe and joy but also by inner trembling and fear. Various cultures, spiritual practices or philosophies refer to ...
Apr 12, 2021•58 min•Season 2Ep. 5
In this episode the hosts talked about desire, how we encounter desire in our lives, the existential significance of desire, various issues that surround experiencing desire such as the fear of desire, unfulfilled desires, or lack of desire, and how to honour and live our desires authentically and responsibly. Desire is a fundamental human capacity to be attracted or drawn by something or somebody (the object of desire), or to experience yearnings for something or somebody that sometimes we migh...
Mar 28, 2021•1 hr 6 min•Season 2Ep. 4
In this episode, the hosts discuss about death and encountering the possibility of death amid the ordinariness of our everyday life. Even when we are feeling protected or in control, safe and stable, the possibility of death is always present in our lives in myriad ways, and nothing can fully protect us from it. At any time, at any moment, we could die, and we know for sure that such a moment will arrive for each of us within a limited span of time. The breath of death is omnipresent in ourselve...
Mar 14, 2021•1 hr 7 min•Season 2Ep. 3
In this episode, the hosts turn their attention from dialoguing about encountering others in and through love towards discussing how to encounter oneself. Simply put, encountering oneself means turning towards oneself the way one would turn towards someone one cherishes or loves and whom one would like to know more deeply and spend time with. Very much like encountering a dear friend or our beloved. Encountering oneself is a lifetime long pursuit. As Carl Gustav Jung wrote, “we meet ourselves ag...
Feb 28, 2021•1 hr•Season 2Ep. 2
In the first episode of this second season, the hosts explore the theme of encountering love.
Feb 14, 2021•1 hr 11 min•Season 2Ep. 1
In this episode, the hosts engage in a dialogue about grief understood as a personal response of turning towards the losses that we experience. Grief is a quintessential human experience that reveals an experienced loss of the value of life- we may grieve over the loss of a person dear to us, a pet, a dream that we did not have the chance to fulfill, a valuable possibility, and even the loss of ourselves. Anything that we experience as personally valuable gives rise to grief once we lose it. Giv...
Dec 27, 2020•1 hr 22 min•Season 1Ep. 16
In this episode, the hosts discuss how freedom and responsibility are understood in existentialism and in Existential Analysis, the relationship between freedom and responsibility, the significance of these concepts in our lives, and how to cultivate freedom and responsibility in clinical practice. Freedom represents the human beings’ capacity to make a choice in a given situation, and, in so doing, to be responsible or able to respond to the demands of a particular situation. Understood this wa...
Dec 13, 2020•54 min•Season 1Ep. 16
In this episode, the hosts are discussing about what is inner consent and its significance in personal life and clinical practice. Inner consent means saying “yes” with a full, felt sense agreement to what we say yes to. The dialogue on this topic explores what is inner consent, how do we know that we live with inner consent, the importance of inner consent in everyday life, the experience and consequences of not giving our inner yes to various life experiences or possibilities, the risks of inn...
Nov 29, 2020•51 min•Ep. 15
Personal Existential Analysis (PEA) is a phenomenological psychotherapeutic method developed by Alfried Laengle and is the primary method used within Existential Analysis. In this episode, co-hosts Mihaela Launeanu and Janelle Drisner demonstrate the PEA process by example, followed by an explanation of the PEA process. Through this process of understanding phenomenologically, Janelle and Mihaela deepen the experience cognitively, emotionally, and somatically. It is a rigorous process which requ...
Nov 15, 2020•49 min•Season 1Ep. 13
In this episode, the hosts talk about what is phenomenology and how to cultivate a phenomenological attitude in our everyday life and within the therapeutic context. Phenomenology means to pay attention and attend carefully to what appears- the phenomenon-in order to understand it and allow its essence to be disclosed. Phenomenology is a form of seeing through appearances, which means that how something or somebody appears is intrinsically connected with its essence. There are many instances in ...
Nov 01, 2020•49 min•Ep. 14
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Oct 18, 2020•54 min•Season 1Ep. 11
In this episode the hosts engage in a lively dialogue about authenticity, instantiated both in the everyday life and in the therapeutic encounter, and reflect on the ways in which we can live more authentically and becoming more ourselves. As therapists, it is important to nurture our own authentic presence with our clients by being open to be moved by them and responding openly and immediately. Equally important is how we live outside the therapeutic context. It is critical to discover the myri...
Oct 04, 2020•55 min•Season 1Ep. 10
In this episode, the hosts engage with the question “who are we, really?” by sharing candidly and quite humorously their first impressions of each other when they first met. The aim of this sincere and at times vulnerable dialogue is to offer a live, uncensored illustration of how we can be real with each other, provide sincere feedback about how we perceive each other, and receive this feedback. This dialogue represents one way to cultivate authenticity and honesty in relationships, and provide...
Sep 20, 2020•52 min•Season 1Ep. 9
In Existential Analysis, we recognize that telling the truth at all costs could be an act of violence, as it holds the power to be extremely wounding if the other person lacks the capacity to receive it and hold it. There is an ethical dilemma that presents itself as we assess what to reveal emotionally and what may be too overwhelming. This speaks to the importance of open dialogue with oneself, the other person, and the context to determine what would be the most relationally responsible emoti...
Sep 06, 2020•49 min•Season 1Ep. 8
In this episode, the hosts are dialoguing about loneliness as a fundamental existential experience, the difference between loneliness and solitude, the felt experience of loneliness, and how to deal with loneliness. We invite you to listen to a dialogue about how to turn towards and be with our loneliness rather than frantically seeking to eliminate it, how to create moments and spaces of solitude where we can be alone without feeling lonely, and how to understand loneliness as a state of being ...
Aug 23, 2020•49 min•Ep. 13
In this lively episode, the hosts explore the phenomenon of ghosting and sister phenomena such as emotional dishonesty and relational betrayal that fall along the continuum of relational abandonment. A ghost in essence is para-normal, that which looks and appears to be true and real, but in actuality is not so genuinely authentic. There appears to be a lack of depth and vulnerability in the type of dating or friendship in which ghosting thrives—which begs the question of whether or not the relat...
Aug 09, 2020•55 min•Season 1Ep. 6
In this episode, the hosts explore the experience of boredom. It is most often experienced as very unpleasant as a person is left entirely with themselves. When boredom is present, life asks us how we show up to this and what possibilities there are. It is tempting to ease the discomfort of being thrown upon oneself by trying further self-distancing, but perhaps if we can stay with the experience of boredom we may also find possibilities to show up fully with ourselves and birth creative express...
Jul 26, 2020•52 min•Season 1Ep. 5
In this episode, we are invited by the COVID-19 quarantine to consider and reflect upon our perception, sense, and feelings of home. Through the pandemic, for many of us, our physical home has become a place where we are spending the majority of time. And yet, existentially, the idea and sense of being at home, homesickness, or even homelessness is far more expansive than a physical place. “What is home?” then becomes a question of where does one find belonging, resonance, and even nostalgia in ...
Jul 12, 2020•54 min•Season 1Ep. 4
In Episode 3, the hosts explore illness anxiety, which is a condition marked by preoccupation with acquiring a serious illness as well as hypersensitivity to physical sensations which are interpreted as indicative of an underlying illness. The relationship between illness anxiety and fear of death and dying is explored, as well as how embodiment—our relationship to our bodies and our experiences of being a body—helps us deal with illness anxiety.
Jun 28, 2020•47 min•Season 1Ep. 3
Episode 2 centers around the existential concerns which have arisen in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Questions of how we situate ourselves when facing uncertainty, and as well as our feelings and attitudes toward succumbing to illness and possibly death come to the fore. In this episode, the hosts use a phenomenological process called Personal Existential Analysis where we explore the reality of the situation, highlight automatic feelings and impulses which have arisen, identify how we can mak...
Jun 14, 2020•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 6
Our podcast release for today is regarding the tragic death of George Floyd. We stand in solidarity with all of those who have have died, who have been discriminated against, trodden on, and marginalized in this long and violent history of racial oppression and disparity. Please find in the Show Notes, a list of resources on black existentialism and critical phenomenology that you might use to find your position and personal response with respect to racial oppression, discrimination and brutalit...
Jun 07, 2020•7 min•Ep. 4
In this episode we discuss existential psychotherapy and what it is like to be an existential therapist. We also explore living an existentially attuned life and openness towards the fundamental conditions of our human existence.
May 24, 2020•1 hr 10 min•Season 1Ep. 1
