Existential-Humanistic Orientation

The Existential-Humanistic orientation works to cultivate greater sense of personal freedom, choice and self-responsibility—seeing our lives as active agents rather than helpless victims.  By cultivating greater self-awareness we afford ourselves the opportunity to see the choices we face, and take greater responsibility (response-ability—the ability to respond) for our life and the fulfillment of our deepest aspirations and dreams.  Beyond choice, freedom, and self-responsibility, the existential-humanistic orientation also aims to address other ‘givens’ of the human condition: finitude—the fact that any experience and our life on earth is finite and eventually will come to an end; as well as our being a part of the human family/community and the universe, all of which are larger than us; and all the while and at the same time feeling apart from others, namely our individuality, autonomy, aloneness and loneliness.  These universal human ‘givens’, and how we relate to them, may need to be understood, transformed and integrated. And with a positive humanistic orientation, rather than only aiming to reduce pathology, we work on cultivating more love, ease, gratitude, creativity, and inner freedom in our life.