Have you be trained to recognize the critical differences between just and unjust authority? Is all authority fair, moral and legal? Just leadership deserves respect and the amount of obedience that you feel is appropriate to the manner in which you are being led. You may not want to question this type of authority. On the other hand, unjust authority should arouse suspicion, may cause distress, defiance and challenge and you may not feel like following based on the manner in which you are being managed.
Do the commands being given to you make sense? Do you have moral courage to resist them if they don’t, or are you among the failure of most people to resist unjust aithority when commands no longer make sense?
When Ireland lost it’s way during the credit crisis, many people had failed in this regard. As a result many had just enough to live by, but not a lot to live for. Today, post recession, do you have a lot to live for, but not enough to live by? Or even if you have both, do you worry about the meaning of it all?
Some prisoners in second world war concentration camps used to think, if they didn’t escape or get out of the camps to survive, all of their suffering will have had no meaning. On the other hand, if there was no meaning to be discovered in the suffering, then ultimately, was there any meaning to survival? Especially if it only relied on escape or getting out.
Frankl said “Despair is suffering without meaning”. The same thought applies today. If people are struggling with their purpose in life, overwhelmed by debt, strained relationships, inter personal conflict and the pace and complexity of life in general, if they can find meaning in suffering, then they will survive, by becoming able to suffer, willing and able, as Frankl experienced that “to live is to suffer, but to survive, is to find meaning in the suffering”.
As a result, many people post recession are interested to know more about the phenomenon of why despair is so compatible with success and fulfillment with failure?
I design one to one mentoring and small group discussions around this thinking along with:
- Recognizing the critical differences between just and unjust authority.
- What is behind attitudinal change?
- Exploring if people’s immune system depends on emotional states and that emotional states depend on motivation, that leads to attitudes determining behavior?
- Understanding Instinct – Tradition – values – responsibility today.
- Exploring the existential vacuum?
- What really is our motivation in life?
- Do we directly intend job satisfaction, money and pleasure?
- The ‘pursuit’ of happiness, wealth & power?
- What is moral courage and when is it required?
- Are we really conditioned and determined by our role?
- Why is it natural to resist self discipline?
- D = S-M?
You are a miracle.
You are also unique and completely irreplaceable.
But you are also human and therefore must be realistic about living with the tragic triad of human existence, existential pain, guilt & death. This makes life hard.
‘Hard’ is not the same as sick. ‘Hard’ is not a disease or a mental illness, yet many problems are taken to the GP when in fact they are ‘human’ problems not medical problems.
I help people to understand, cope with and survive the human response to a hard life and loss. Whether it is loss of a goal not achieved, an aspiration hoped for, loss of health, livelihood through sport, loss of confidence, achievement, loss of a loved one or loss of friends and social identities, it is understandable and can be very natural to be anxious, upset and fall in to despair. So it’s not only about symptom, cause & effect, more, reasons, meanings & values.
It can also, simply be the most honest and authentic expression of one’s humanness to suffer in this way.
We as human beings exist for many reasons, yet to understand the primary reason can help you gain access to the abundance of resources within you, the capacities that can help you to cope and survive a crisis of conscience, personal loss or an inoperable disease.
As you have the unique human capacity to ‘detach’ and ‘transcend’ beyond these events and experiences, it pre supposes access, or the creation of a uniquely human dimension within you, integrated with your body (somatic) and mind (psychic) dimensions. In this human dimension (noetic) you gain access to attitude, conscience, judgement, intuition, love, hate, forgiveness, humour and heroism, to name but a few.
Contrary to some philosophies and world views that underlie psychotherapy, you are not a victim or a pawn of external conditions or internal biology. You are not ‘nothing but’ a mechanism to repair. For sure you are ‘no-thing’, as things determine themselves like mobile phones, tablets and social media apps, beautifully designed but lifeless. You are self determining, free to choose and take a stand as a responsible human being.
This suggests that you are free and responsible to shape your future, to determine who you are today and who you become, particularly if you have a hard life, a challenging life.
I cannot tell you what the meaning of your life is, but I can help you discover for yourself that life harbours unconditional meaning, to the very last breadth.
Logotherapy and existential analysis is both a therapy and an analysis that dares to start in the human dimension and helps you discover how to care for your soul, provide mental first aid and find the courage to create healthy tension as you gain access to the abundance of capacities that are part of you and can help you to survive.
I offer help to, access personal power that can be proven to be more influential than positional power, overcome phobias, compulsions and existential agony, feelings of emptiness and meaninglessness and I can help to facilitate the forming of social identities.
Treatment engagements are with people for 1 hour in the healing rooms with the choice to repeat that process, or choose a philosophical & logotherapeutic walk as treatment.