Before this post, you may need to take a look at this one: Looking into a Case through Existential Psychotherapy
Even though Existential therapy is non-manualized and flexible, it can follow a loose structure to maintain depth and flow. You need to think of it as a spiral process rather than a step-by-step one.
1: A Common Structure (adaptable over time)
- Initial Sessions (1–3): Establishing Context
- Explore the client’s presenting issues and life situation.
- Begin asking existential questions (e.g., “What does this symptom say about your way of being?”).
- Build trust through presence and attunement.
- Middle Phase: Deepening the Inquiry
- Move from symptoms to meaning.
- Identify existential themes: freedom, isolation, meaning, death, embodiment, temporality.
- Look at contradictions, avoidance patterns, and inauthenticity (without judgment).
- Explore values and possibilities.
- Later Phase: Re-authoring and Choice
- Support the client in reclaiming agency, making value-aligned choices, and taking responsibility for their way of being.
- Explore how they might live more authentically and meaningfully.
- Reinforce existential courage.
2: How to Start a Session
You want to invite the client to drop into themselves, not just report symptoms. So you need to be present to establish a relational and dialogic connection.
Sample Openings:
“Where are you in your life right now?”
“How are you existing in the world today?”
“What feels alive in you today?”
“Since we last met, what has been on your mind, your body, your soul?”
“What meaning has been emerging in your experience lately?”
3: How to End a Session
Existential therapy often raises more questions than answers, so it doesn’t end with resolution.
Sample Closings:
“What are you taking away from today’s conversation?”
“What felt meaningful or challenging for you in our talk?”
“What will you carry with you into the days ahead?”
“If anything stayed unresolved, let’s stay with it next time.”
4: How to keep going
Even though therapist is not the leader in this kind of therapy, you need stay tunned to existential markers.
For example, following the themes like avoidance, mortality, identity, dreams, language patterns, body signals, and ambivalence often reveal meaning.
5: Let’s summarize the therapeutic frame:
| Element | Existential Approach |
| Goal | Deepen awareness, reclaim responsibility, live more authentically |
| Symptom focus | Look for meaning beneath the symptom |
| Role of therapist | Co-explorer; presence > technique |
| Session structure | Open, reflective, deepening inquiry |
| Core tools | Dialogue, presence, meaning, silence, embodiment |
| Outcome | Client gains courage to live with clarity, choice, and responsibility |
