Anxiety

There is a nameless dread that is named in therapy, and in the naming, tamed. Palpable relief comes because your intelligence is now free to help solve realistic problems.

Bust of a Woman - drawing, Picasso Anxiety eats up the pleasure in living.

Bust of a Woman – drawing, Picasso
Anxiety eats up the pleasure in living.

Existential anxiety:

You find yourself on this planet puzzling out the complications and mysteries of being alive. The only given is the exit looming from which there is no escape.

  • What is my purpose? Is there a purpose? What do I want to do so as not to waste my brief time here?
  • How did I get where I am? What has already happened? What is worth doing? Where am I headed? Toward what end? Who do I want to become?
  • After all the successes, all the betrayals and disappointments in love and belongingness, what is real happiness?
  • Is there someone who will help me discover my own answers to these questions?

As the hands of the Picasso painting attack their owner, you feel in your bones how confusion, inertia and self-doubt will eat your future. You come to therapy because you also sense that real, unique happiness is there for you, a future that fits you like a pair of custom sandals.