What is Existential Distress?

Existentialism, existential therapy, existential distress, and existential anxiety are all terms that often evade common psychotherapy discourse. Indeed, a search engine search of the term “existential therapy” may yield many different results depending on the sources chosen. Indeed, a challenge in existential approaches is the difficulty of agreeing on a concise definition as well as a unanimous agreement regarding its underlying or common principles. For some, existentialism refers to a specific movement in the 19th century of enlightenment philosophy. For others, existentialism refers to a collection of philosophical and psychological issues that arise from the conditions of the human experience: namely, experiences of grief, meaning, values, morality, authenticity, congruence, shame, dread, potential, spirituality, and ontology.

Existential distress and existential therapy, when described within the context of psychotherapy and counselling, can refer to the type of distress one can experience when faced with the challenges of human existence as well as the therapeutic approaches used when exploring such issues.

These issues can occur due to the human capacity to reflect on these issues, and some people find themselves experiencing significant distress as a result of such reflections or concerns. Existential therapy can provide a setting where clients can feel able to share such concerns as well as collaborate with their therapist to explore ways to integrate such reflections towards developing a meaningful, authentic, and fulfilling life.