Notes on Existential Psychotherapy, Part II: What does it mean to live Authentically?

Living an authentic life is the ultimate goal of existential therapy. It involves aligning our actions with our true values and desires, creating a life that feels meaningful and genuine to us. In contrast, inauthentic living emerges when we conform to external expectations, societal norms, or imposed roles rather than embracing our unique selves. This way of living often leads to feelings of emptiness, anxiety, or disconnection.

Inauthenticity can show up in various ways. For instance, someone might pursue a career to meet parental expectations or societal standards, even if it doesn’t align with their passions. Others may suppress their personal beliefs or stay in unfulfilling relationships out of fear of judgment or loneliness. Many people adopt behaviors or lifestyles that feel disconnected from their true selves, neglect personal aspirations due to fear of failure, or prioritize material achievements as substitutes for genuine fulfillment. These patterns are often driven by a reluctance to face and confront difficult existential truths—such as freedom, responsibility, or mortality.

The Symptoms of Inauthentic Living

Living inauthentically often creates a deep sense of disconnection from oneself, others, and the world. This disconnection manifests in several ways, such as persistent feelings of emptiness or a lack of purpose. When life choices fail to align with one’s values, it becomes increasingly difficult to find meaning, drive, or fulfillment. Clients often describe it as feeling depressed, fatigued, demotivated, lazy, lost, anxious, and disconnected.

A common consequence of inauthentic living is inner conflict. Individuals may feel torn between their true selves and the roles they feel obliged to play. This tension often leads to confusion, guilt, or self-doubt. Over time, the misalignment can cause a loss of identity, making it challenging to understand or connect with the real "you." Anxiety and restlessness may also arise from the subconscious awareness of this misalignment, while the emotional toll of maintaining a façade often results in chronic stress or burnout.

Relationships, too, can suffer. When connections are built on an inauthentic version of oneself, they often lack depth and become unfulfilling. Over time, this disconnect can exacerbate feelings of isolation and loneliness, contributing to depression or hopelessness.

Therapy as a Journey Toward Authenticity

Existential therapy helps individuals confront and uncover these patterns of inauthenticity. The process is deeply introspective and involves exploring your values, beliefs, and the factors that contribute to your sense of "stuckness." First, we need to understand your subjective experience of stuckness: how do you experience it, and how does it feel to you? As a therapist, I approach my client's subjective world with genuine compassion and curiosity, making it my priority to help them mirror this stance toward themselves. We cannot overcome our stuckness or look deeper into our selves, desires, and hopes with feelings of anger, shame, guilt, and frustration—these are the exact feelings that have been holding us back from facing the truth all along.

Your therapist may ask probing and sometimes challenging questions, not to judge you, but to understand your experience and the barriers you face. For example:

Why are you staying in a career that makes you unhappy?

Is it to avoid disappointing your parents?

What does that fear of disappointment mean, and where does it come from?

What would happen if you chose your own career path?

Are the potential consequences tolerable or manageable? (Often, clients’ fear response assumes that choosing their own way of being will lead to some unimaginable catastrophe they wouldn’t be able to survive.)

Through these inquiries, layers of avoidance and self-deception are gently unraveled. It takes time, frustration, and a lot of difficult feelings to fully get to the bottom of these questions. It needs to make sense on a very deep, profound level—not just an intellectual one—for us to move from realization to being ready to make a choice.

Making Difficult Choices

Once you’ve identified and fully accepted what holds you back, therapy presents a critical question: “What do you want to do next?” This moment is both liberating and daunting. Realizing that we have a choice comes with the weight of responsibility—and the inevitable experience of loss.

The question I always ask my clients when we reach that stage is not, “What are you prepared to gain?” but rather, “What are you prepared to lose?” because the real difficulty lies in loss. Every choice requires letting go of something—whether it’s the life you’ve been living, relationships that no longer serve you, or the comfort of familiar patterns. Sitting with the uncertainty and anxiety of being is about grieving those losses: grieving the life not lived, the people you might disappoint, and the possibilities left behind. It’s not about finding instant happiness or living happily ever after, but about taking responsibility for your life.

Embracing a New Way of Being

The final stage of therapy involves embracing your choices on a practical and emotional level. I often encourage clients to treat these choices as experiments. There is no "right" or "wrong" decision—only opportunities to learn and grow. Mistakes are an inevitable and necessary part of this process, helping you refine your path and better understand yourself.

Living authentically means accepting the contradictions and anxieties that come with freedom. It’s about letting go of old patterns and stepping into a life aligned with your true values and desires. While the journey can be challenging, it ultimately leads to a life that feels meaningful, fulfilling, and genuinely yours.