self-awareness

The understanding of existential themes such as self-awareness has evolved through the excellent work of existential philosophers such as Soren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre (Danish, German and French Philosophers). They lived within a European culture where previous sources of meaning such as religion, family, and community were being eroded by modern life.

In existentialism, the focus is on the individual’s experience of being in the world alone and facing the anxiety of this isolation, facing questions such as, what does life mean? According to Yalom (Psychiatrist) “No relationship can eliminate existential isolation, but aloneness can be shared in such a way that love compensates for its pain.” Humans are in a constant state of transition, evolving in their lives, and continuously questioning ourselves, others, and the world.

An existential approach to life includes many dimensions, including the capacity for self-awareness. We obviously need to be aware of many things in order to develop ourselves, and among those are

·     Having a finite time in this life, and for those who believe in reincarnation having had    many previous lives and many more to come in possibly many different dimensions,

·     Knowing the potential to decide how best to live our lives,

·     Recognising the choices for our own actions and being responsible for the consequences of those choices,

·     Acknowledging that meaning is discovering where we find ourselves in this world (for example, this may include the time and place of birth, our language, the environment), and then through commitment, to live creatively,

·     Realising that we are subject to loneliness, meaninglessness, emptiness, guilt and   isolation, and

·     Admitting that we are basically alone but have the opportunity to relate to other beings.

Poor mental health and in particular, anxiety and depression, can result from a lack of awareness of any of the above. One of the aims of counselling and psychotherapy therefore is to help the client increase their own self-awareness about these matters and to help them move from their current comfort zone, thereby giving rise to greater fulfilment, but also greater risk.

In addition to self-awareness we all need to take responsibility for living our own lives. People are free to choose options for living and therefore play a large role in shaping their own destiny. Our task is to accept responsibility for directing our lives. We have to create our own life script, one in which stress and anger are minimised. It is possible to avoid this reality by making excuses. However, it is difficult to see how this can be done at a young age without adequate education and the tools to help. Jean-Paul Sartre refers to the inauthenticity of not accepting personal responsibility. A central concept is that even though we long for freedom, we often try to escape it by defining ourselves as a static entity, where inertia tends to take over. We have to keep moving and continue to rediscover and reinvent ourselves throughout our lives. This takes an enormous amount of energy and awareness about ourselves. In existentialism, authenticity is the degree to which an individual's actions are congruent with their beliefs and desires, despite external pressures. Know yourself and be yourself. Be a hero.

Freedom implies we are responsible for our lives, our actions and for our failures to take action. Existential guilt is a realisation that we are not what we might have become. This guilt also results from allowing others to define us or to make our choices for us. Authenticity implies that we are living by being true to our own evaluation of what is a valuable existence for ourselves. It is the courage to be who we are. People who refuse to accept responsibility by persistently blaming others for their problems are highly unlikely to grow as a person.

We resent it when we don’t have choices but we get anxious when we do. Existentialism is about broadening the vision of our choices. Individuals can be encouraged to weigh alternatives. According to Corey (American Psychologist), “Although our freedom to act is limited by external reality, our freedom to be relates to our internal reality”.

Simone de Beauvoir (French Philosopher) suggested several ways that people flee from the responsibilities of freedom. They are:

§  The “child”, who is “perfectly free only in unimportant matters and forced to submit in all others”. This way of being often includes the oppressed.

§  The “sub-human”, who “fears existence and minimizes his desires”. These individuals refuse all responsibility and become “cogs in the wheel” or soldiers “just following orders”.

§  The “serious” one, who “loses himself in some object in order to annihilate his subjectivity”. A person with this way of being puts an ideal or object above other concerns.

§  The fanatic “elevates one cause and militantly tries to impose it on others”.

§  The adventurer “grasps his freedom, enjoys its exercise, but is indifferent as to where and how he does it and the freedom of others”.

§  “The passionate man does not try to lose himself in an object as the serious man does but tries to possess the object”.

§  The lazy man who is “comfortable in obedience to custom and routine”.

If self-awareness, personal responsibility or existentialism is something you would like to explore further please contact us at www.holisticcounsellingireland.com.