Logotherapy and existential analysis
What logotherapy is and what it is actually for.
Viktor Frankl’s school of thought, explained without academic jargon and brought down to questions from real life: what matters to you, which possibilities are still open and how you want to respond to what you are living through.
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The short answer
Logotherapy and Existential Analysis is a school of thought developed by the Viennese neurologist and psychiatrist Viktor E. Frankl. It offers a way of understanding the human being and the world, and it has clinical and non-clinical applications. Its central idea is that a person is oriented toward meaning: toward something or someone of value that calls to her beyond herself.
It does not offer a universal answer about “the meaning of life”. It invites each person to discover what a concrete situation is asking for and what response she can give from her own values, possibilities and limits. In a psychotherapeutic setting it is applied by a professional licensed to practice psychotherapy who has also trained in Logotherapy and Existential Analysis. In my work, logotherapy supports non-clinical existential coaching centered on values, freedom, responsibility, decisions, relationships and possibilities of meaning.
One thing I want to be clear about: I am an existential coach trained in logotherapy, not a psychologist and not a psychotherapist. My work does not diagnose or treat mental health conditions and does not replace medical, psychological or psychiatric care.
Existential analysis and logotherapy: how they relate
You will often see the two expressions together, and there is a reason for that: they belong to the same school and share the same understanding of the human being and the world. What differs is the place each one approaches the person from.
Existential analysis sets out to understand the concrete person deeply, in everything that makes her unique and unrepeatable: how she thinks, how she feels, what hurts her, what threatens her, how her sensitivities were formed and why she has come to respond the way she does. It starts from whatever restricts her freedom and works toward self-distancing: so that she can understand herself, take a step back and widen her margin of freedom from there.
Logotherapy starts precisely from the space of freedom that remains open. It looks toward the possibilities a person still has to take a position, to turn toward something or someone of value, to respond to her situation and to discover possibilities of meaning.
Put briefly: existential analysis moves from what is restricted toward what is free; logotherapy starts from what is free in order to widen a person’s margin of freedom. They are two different movements within one understanding of the human being.
Over time, other authors developed existential analysis in directions of their own, with schools and emphases different from Frankl’s. When I speak of existential analysis on this page, I mean Franklian existential analysis.
Where logotherapy comes from
A school of thought that began before the war
Viktor E. Frankl was born in Vienna in 1905, and from a young age he was drawn to the large questions about the human being and the meaning of life. While he was still a student he corresponded with Sigmund Freud and came close to psychoanalysis, though he soon began to move away from what he considered a reductionist view of the human being.
He later became involved with Alfred Adler’s Individual Psychology, which he would also end up leaving. Against the will to pleasure associated with Freud and Adler’s will to power, Frankl proposed that the human being is fundamentally moved by a will to meaning: the search for something or someone of value to turn toward. Those ideas, together with his training in neurology and psychiatry and his clinical work, gave logotherapy its shape before the Second World War.
In 1942 he was deported by the Nazi regime and passed through several concentration camps. Much of his family was murdered. That experience marked his life and his later work deeply, but it is worth saying precisely: logotherapy was not born in the camps, and it cannot be reduced to a lesson drawn from extreme suffering.
Frankl never claimed that suffering is necessary in order to find meaning. For logotherapy, meaning can be discovered through what we give to the world, in what we do, create or contribute; through what we receive and experience from it, above all in encounter and in love; and, when we face suffering that is unavoidable and cannot be escaped, through the stance we take toward what we cannot change.
So when a painful situation can be changed, the responsible response may well be to act, to ask for help, to protect yourself or to get out of it. The path of the stance you take matters above all in front of what, at least for now, is not in your hands to change.
Logotherapy does not offer a pretty explanation for pain. It asks what concrete freedom a person keeps inside circumstances that also constrain her. Sometimes that freedom allows a wide decision; other times it barely allows you to ask for help, put off an answer or choose the next possible gesture. A small margin of freedom is still a margin.
Four ideas for understanding this way of looking
1. A person is oriented toward meaning
From this perspective, we do not live only in search of well-being, pleasure, happiness, recognition or control. We are also oriented toward something or someone of value beyond ourselves: toward what we can do, love, contribute or live with meaning.
That does not mean feeling on purpose around the clock or living happily all the time. There are stretches that are routine, confusing or painful. It does not mean that every event has a hidden reason either. Talking about meaning is talking about the possibility of discovering what meaning a concrete situation offers and responding to it, not about justifying everything that happens.
2. Meaning is not manufactured with a formula
There is no list that can tell you what ought to give your life meaning. Meaning is concrete: it changes from one person to another, from one situation to another, and it can change for the same person over the course of a life. A job, a relationship or a way of caring that once brought something valuable about can change, and new possibilities of meaning can appear.
Meaning is not something you simply come across. It cannot be imposed, and it does not show up just because you want to find it. It is discovered: we can perceive it through what we feel, through what we understand and, above all, in recognizing that a concrete situation is inviting us to bring something valuable about.
Discovering meaning asks you to look at reality rather than escape it: what is happening, what is important here, who needs a response from me and which of my possibilities I can bring to life.
3. Human freedom is real, but it is not unlimited
Freedom holds a central place in logotherapy. Not a magical freedom that erases the body, your history, money, the care of your children or social conditions, but the capacity, always situated and sometimes very narrow, to take a position and choose a response.
That precision matters. Saying “you choose how you live it” without acknowledging the limits can turn into one more demand, or into a way of laying blame. Working from freedom means recognizing at the same time what you did not choose, what you cannot do today and what is in fact in your hands.
4. Responsibility: the ability to respond
Responsibility is not carrying everything or blaming yourself for everything. It is recognizing what a concrete situation asks of you, telling apart which part is yours and which response you can take on without appropriating what belongs to other people or to circumstances you do not control.
Frankl defined responsibility as the ability to respond. Respond to what? To whom? How? For Frankl, we are not the ones putting questions to life: life is the one questioning us, and we are the ones called to answer with our actions. Becoming free means becoming responsible: we widen our freedom to the extent that we exercise our ability to respond.
Sometimes responding will mean repairing. Sometimes setting a limit. Sometimes giving up something you can no longer hold. And sometimes accepting that you do not yet know what to do, and giving yourself the time or the support you need to see it more clearly.
When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. — Viktor Frankl
Logotherapy and the meaning of life
“The meaning of life” is probably the expression most associated with logotherapy, and also the one most often misunderstood.
Frankl held, deeply, that human life has meaning. But that meaning does not come down to a universal, abstract answer to the question “what do I exist for?”. Every person is unique and unrepeatable, and so is the meaning of her life: there are possibilities of meaning only she can discover and bring about, answers nobody can give in her place in front of a concrete situation. If that person did not exist, something unique would go unrealized. That is also where the singular worth of every human life comes from.
That meaning is realized in the different meanings we discover along the way, in situations that are themselves unique and concrete. So not finding one great answer does not mean your life has no meaning. Often the question can be brought down to something more concrete, and more uncomfortable: what is this situation asking of me? What is valuable here? What response can I give?
The possibilities of meaning that appear at thirty can be different from the ones that appear at forty, and that is not necessarily a failure. Life changes, priorities change, situations change and new possibilities of meaning appear. Recognizing them can be the start of looking at where you are heading now.
If you want to explore this in your own situation, the Compass of Meaning is a five-minute exercise, meant as orientation.
Three ways of realizing values described by Frankl
Frankl distinguished three general categories of values through which a person can realize meaning: creative values, experiential values and attitudinal values. That distinction belongs to his own work. It is not an exhaustive formula, a required sequence or a test for sorting a life. Here I bring it down to everyday examples to make it easier to follow.
What you contribute, do or create
We can realize meaning through a piece of work, a job, a task, a decision or an act of care that we give to the world. It does not have to be extraordinary. Preparing a conversation you have been putting off, making a space where people can say what they feel, or doing a task that matters well, can all be valuable responses.
The question is not only “how much have I done?” but “what am I putting my time and my abilities at the service of?”.
What you receive, experience or love
We can also realize meaning in an encounter: with a person, with nature, with art, with a conversation, with beauty. Here it is not about doing or creating, but about being present to receive something life is offering.
In motherhood that can be a moment of real encounter with a child. But it can also be something that has nothing to do with taking care of anyone: listening to music again, walking, learning, or getting back a relationship of your own with the world.
The stance you take toward what you cannot change
When a reality cannot be changed, what can remain is the possibility of choosing the stance you take toward it. It does not always arrive soon, it does not remove the pain and it does not turn an unjust situation into a good one. It does not require you to find a lesson either.
It is about asking, with respect for where each person is: now that this has happened and I cannot change it today, how do I want to stand in front of it? What do I want to take care of? How do I want to respond?
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None of this is answered in the abstract.
If you would rather look at your own situation than read about the frame, we can talk for half an hour and see what it is asking of you.
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How this is carried into everyday life
Logotherapy is not about repeating “everything happens for a reason”. In a coaching process, the conversation can move through steps like these:
- Look at what is happening without reducing yourself to it. You are not “a disaster” or “a bad mom”. You are a person who reacted in a particular way, who is holding a particular set of circumstances and who can look at them.
- Give the experience room. Emotions like guilt, anger, fear or sadness do not disappear by decree. We can let them be there and understand what they show us, though they do not always hold a literal truth or an automatic instruction.
- Tell apart facts, interpretations and demands. What happened, what you are telling yourself about it, what you expected of yourself and which part was really in your hands.
- Recognize what is valuable. What is at stake, and which relationship, value, commitment or possibility deserves care in this situation.
- Discover options. Even when you cannot choose what happened, you may be able to choose a conversation, a limit, a repair, something to give up or a request for help.
- Put a response into practice. The process does not end when you understand. What you discover needs to meet real life and turn into concrete decisions and actions.
There is no identical sequence for every person. The method is the frame of the path; the path is unique to each person.
What feeling points at
Logotherapy, emotions and values: a relationship that needs nuance.
The way we feel is not separate from what we value and from what has meaning for us. Emotions appear in front of situations that matter to us in one way or another: something we value may be at stake, under threat, lost or newly present. Understanding what we feel can therefore help us recognize what is valuable to us and what may be asking for our attention.
In the way I work, emotions are listened to because they can point at something relevant. Guilt can appear when you have acted against a value, but also because of impossible expectations or because you have taken on a responsibility that is not yours. Anger can warn you about a limit, and it can also be amplified by tiredness, fear or accumulation. Emptiness can be an invitation to look again at the direction of your life, but on its own it cannot rule out a mental health difficulty.
So we do not “read” an emotion as if it had a single translation. We take it in, place it in the concrete situation and in the circumstances of the person, and ask what it may be pointing at and what deserves attention. Feeling informs you; it does not decide for you.
If you want to bring this way of looking to a concrete situation, you can start with the audio guide on emotional overwhelm.
How this differs from other kinds of support
Logotherapy and psychotherapy
Logotherapy and Existential Analysis has clinical and non-clinical applications. In the clinical field, logotherapy can be part of a psychotherapeutic process when it is applied by a professional licensed to practice psychotherapy who has also trained in Logotherapy and Existential Analysis, within the competence of that professional and the legal framework that applies.
My case is different. I am a logotherapist and I work from logotherapy in the non-clinical field, through existential coaching. I work with people who want to understand a situation, get their bearings back and take an active part in their decisions about how to live and how to act. This work does not replace a health assessment when one is needed.
If what you are living through calls for psychological, medical or psychiatric assessment, diagnosis or treatment, that work belongs to health professionals. The two fields can be distinct and, at times, complementary; one does not replace the other.
Logotherapy and goal-oriented coaching
Coaching is a process oriented toward goals. Sometimes the goal is concrete: making a decision, facing a change or moving toward something specific. Other times it can be widening your self-knowledge, understanding a situation better or living in a way that is more connected to life.
From an existential point of view, we can also stop at other questions: why does that goal matter to you? Is it truly yours? Which value are you bringing about? What price are you paying to chase it? What happens if reaching it no longer gives your life a direction?
The point is not to drop your goals, but to put them at the service of something valuable and meaningful, rather than the other way around.
Logotherapy and self-help
A book or a resource can open a useful question. The difference appears when a generic answer claims to work for anyone, or turns well-being and happiness into an obligation. Logotherapy does not ask you to think positive and does not hold that everything depends on your attitude. It acknowledges circumstances, suffering and limits, and walks with each person as she discovers the singular response she can give from there.
Logotherapy and psychology: differences of scope
Logotherapy was born as a school of psychotherapy and is known as the third Viennese school of psychotherapy, after Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis and Alfred Adler’s individual psychology. But reducing it to a school of psychology, or to a psychotherapeutic method, would leave out a fundamental part of what it proposes.
Viktor Frankl was a physician, a neurologist and a psychiatrist, but logotherapy did not come only out of his professional practice. His interest in the meaning of life was there from a young age, and his thinking was also fed by a deep dialogue with existential philosophy and phenomenology. Out of that comes a particular understanding of the human being and the world: the person as a being open to a reality beyond herself, able to turn toward values, people, tasks and possibilities of meaning.
So although logotherapy has an important psychotherapeutic application, it is not limited to it. Its foundations can also be brought into education, prevention, organizations, coaching, existential support, and even into the way a person understands and lives her own life. Logotherapy is also a way of standing in front of our existence, our relationships, our decisions and whatever life puts before us.
This does not mean that all of its fields of application are equivalent, or that any professional can work in any of them.
- A professional licensed to practice psychotherapy who has trained in logotherapy can apply it within a psychotherapeutic process, with the competence and the responsibilities that field carries. A license to practice psychotherapy does not, on its own, imply training in logotherapy.
- In my case, I am a logotherapist and an existential coach trained in logotherapy, and I apply logotherapy in a non-clinical field. I work with processes that have to do with values, freedom, responsibility, decisions, relationships and possibilities of meaning. I do not assess, diagnose or treat mental health conditions.
The anthropological frame of logotherapy can be present in different fields; what changes is the purpose, the competence and the limits of each kind of work. That is why “logotherapy” and “psychology” are not interchangeable words: logotherapy is in dialogue with psychology and has an important psychotherapeutic application, but its understanding of the human being and the world, and the ways it can be applied, reach beyond psychotherapy.
Existential therapy, existential therapist and existential coaching
Three expressions that sound alike and mean different things. They are worth separating.
Existential therapy brings together different psychotherapeutic approaches that address fundamental questions of human existence: freedom, responsibility, finitude, relationships, meaning. Logotherapy and Existential Analysis belongs to that tradition, but what it proposes is not limited to the psychotherapeutic field: as we have seen, it starts from an understanding of the human being and the world that has clinical and non-clinical applications.
An existential therapist is a professional licensed to practice psychotherapy who has trained in the existential approach she works from. If we are talking specifically about psychotherapy from Logotherapy and Existential Analysis, the professional needs training in this school on top of the corresponding license.
Existential coaching is non-clinical, goal-oriented work that brings the questions proper to human existence into a coaching process. Those goals can have to do with a decision or a particular transition, but also with widening your self-knowledge, looking again at your own direction, or living in a way that is more connected to life.
In my case I am an existential coach trained in logotherapy; that is, I am a logotherapist. My work starts specifically from the understanding of the human being and the world proposed by Logotherapy and Existential Analysis, and it works with values, freedom, responsibility, relationships and possibilities of meaning. I am not a psychologist and I am not a psychotherapist.
I say this plainly here because these expressions are easily confused, and because knowing what kind of support you are looking for and what you can expect from each professional is part of this going well for you.
What a logotherapist is and what training one can have
A logotherapist is someone trained in Logotherapy and Existential Analysis. That sentence looks complete and is not, because the same word covers different professional profiles and different training paths.
Training in logotherapy can complement a range of professions and fields of work:
- Professionals licensed to practice psychotherapy who have also trained in Logotherapy and Existential Analysis. They can apply logotherapy within a psychotherapeutic process, according to their competence and the professional framework that applies.
- Professionals from other fields, such as coaching, education, support work, leadership and organizations, who have trained in Logotherapy and Existential Analysis. They can apply its foundations within the scope and the limits proper to their own field.
Training programs also vary in length, depth and reach. So rather than stopping at the word “logotherapist”, it is worth finding out about the person’s training and the specific field she works in.
If you are considering working with someone, you can ask: what training do you have in Logotherapy and Existential Analysis, and where did you do it? Which professional field do you work in? What is the scope of your work? What do you do when a situation goes beyond your competence?
In my case, I trained in Existential Logotherapeutic Coaching with SAPS (Sociedad para el Avance de la Psicoterapia centrada en el Sentido) and in Logotherapy and Existential Analysis with AESLO (Asociación Española de Logoterapia), and I work as an existential coach trained in logotherapy in a non-clinical field. When a situation goes beyond the scope of my work, I say so clearly and point you toward the kind of professional help I think may be needed.
Online sessions
Logotherapy online and logotherapy at a distance.
If you have searched for “logotherapy online”, “logotherapy at a distance” or “online logotherapist”, it is worth telling apart what kind of support you are looking for and which professional field it is offered from.
Logotherapy applied as psychotherapy can also take place at a distance. In that case it has to be practiced by a professional licensed to practice psychotherapy who has trained in Logotherapy and Existential Analysis, with the competence and the guarantees that field requires.
What I offer online is non-clinical existential support: existential coaching grounded in logotherapy. All my sessions are online, and this format works well for this kind of work. Being able to talk from your own home, with no travel and without setting aside a whole afternoon, makes things a great deal easier for many moms.
What you will not find here is treatment. If what you are looking for is logotherapy as psychotherapy, you need a professional licensed to practice it who has trained in Logotherapy and Existential Analysis. I would rather tell you that before you book anything.
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You can also start by putting it into words.
A first conversation, online, to tell me what brought you here and to look together at whether this way of working fits what you are looking for.
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Logotherapy and grief: what it can offer and where it stops
Logotherapy and grief come up together often, because loss, death and finitude are among the large questions of human existence that logotherapy addresses. That is exactly why it is worth speaking about carefully.
What a logotherapeutic way of looking can offer in the face of a loss is company for the questions grief tends to open. At the start, the “why” usually comes first: why did it happen? Why him? Why me? Why now? In time another question can open: “what for?”. Not to find an explanation for the death, but to discover what is still valuable when someone is no longer there, what I do with what life has put in my hands, and how I want to respond to a reality I can no longer change.
Logotherapy does not need to assign a reason to someone’s death, or turn a loss into a lesson, for meaning to exist. Just as life has meaning, possibilities of meaning can also be discovered in the face of suffering and death, above all in the response a person gives to what is unavoidable, with respect for her pain, her timing and her possibilities.
What it does not do: it does not avoid or remove the pain, and it does not impose a schedule for moving through it. It can accompany the passage of grief toward accepting a reality that can no longer be changed and, from there, toward discovering possibilities of meaning that may not have been visible before.
My own road has also been marked by a loss: the death of my son’s father. From my own experience and my training, I know that logotherapy does not change what happened and does not take away the pain, but that it can walk with us as we discover how to respond to a reality we can no longer change. If you are going through a recent or especially intense grief, we will first look at whether my work is right for you or whether you need another kind of help.
Logotherapy and resilience: related concepts, but not the same
They are often used as synonyms, and they are not.
Resilience refers, broadly, to the capacity to face adverse situations, adapt and recover from them. It is a widely developed concept and it can help us understand how we respond to difficulty.
Logotherapy starts from a wider understanding of the human being and the world. In the face of adversity it does not only ask how to withstand it or recover from it, but also what is valuable in that situation, which possibilities of meaning remain open and what response the person can give from the margin of freedom she keeps. Meaning is not a technique for holding out better, and it does not appear only in suffering. The will to meaning is a fundamental motivation of the human being, and whether it is frustrated or fulfilled runs deep through the way we live.
The difference matters for a very concrete reason: the word “resilience” has sometimes turned into a demand in disguise, along the lines of “you have to be strong” or “look on the bright side”. A logotherapeutic way of looking does not ask you for strength. It acknowledges the pain, it acknowledges the limits, and it asks what concrete freedom is left to you inside them, however small. Strength is not in refusing to feel; it is also in allowing what we feel, moving through it and coming out the other side of the pain. In front of what we cannot change, possibilities can open to realize values that only that situation puts before us. That is also where real resilience can be found.
Logotherapy and motherhood
Motherhood can hold love, tiredness, loss, joy, ambivalence, fear, guilt and questions of identity all at once. Not every mom lives the same thing, and no single emotion defines her relationship with her children.
A logotherapeutic way of looking does not start by telling you how to raise your kids. It starts by understanding what you are living through, what matters to you and how you want to respond. Then very concrete questions can appear:
- Which value am I taking care of when I set this limit?
- Which part of this guilt is inviting me to repair something, and which part comes from an impossible ideal?
- What am I trying to control because I am afraid to accept a limit?
- What does my relationship with my children need, and what do I need as a person?
- Which decisions best reflect the mom and the woman I want to be, inside the reality I actually have?
The aim is not to become a mom who never gets it wrong. It is to be able to look at yourself, take on what is yours, repair when repair is needed, and choose each time with more awareness of what the situation is asking for and of the values at stake.
When understanding the frame is no longer enough
Returning to Meaning, when the question has been with you a while.
Reading can help you put words to it. Sometimes that opens enough clarity to take a step on your own. Other times the question comes back, something important has changed, or your life works from the outside but has stopped feeling like yours.
Returning to Meaning is a one-to-one process to understand disorientation, emptiness, or the change in whatever used to give your life its direction. It does not hand you ready-made answers and it does not promise to resolve everything in an exact number of sessions. It offers a frame, questions and support, so that you can discover which possibilities of meaning are there in what you are living through and how to bring them into your life.
Without starting a process: open the Compass of Meaning at /en/resources/compass-of-meaning/
Frequently asked questions about logotherapy
Frequently asked questions about logotherapy
Is logotherapy a therapy or a kind of coaching?
Logotherapy was born as a school of psychotherapy, but its understanding of the human being and the world has applications that reach beyond the clinical field. In psychotherapy it can be applied by a professional licensed to practice psychotherapy who has trained in Logotherapy and Existential Analysis. It can also be applied in non-clinical fields, such as coaching, education or organizations, within the competence proper to each professional.
Is logotherapy psychology?
Not exactly. Logotherapy was born as a school of psychotherapy, but it proposes an understanding of the human being and the world that reaches beyond the clinical field and has applications in other areas.
What is the difference between a logotherapist and a psychologist?
A psychologist holds a degree in psychology, although that degree does not on its own mean being licensed to work in the clinical or health field. A logotherapist is someone trained in Logotherapy and Existential Analysis, and can come from different professional backgrounds. Applying logotherapy as psychotherapy requires both the specific training in Logotherapy and Existential Analysis and the professional credentials that field demands in each country. So it is worth finding out about each professional’s training and the field they work in.
Can logotherapy be done online?
Yes. Logotherapy can be applied online, both in psychotherapy and in non-clinical work, always within the competence and the training of each professional. My sessions are online.
Is logotherapy religious?
It does not impose a religious belief and it does not reject one either. When logotherapy speaks of the spiritual or noetic dimension, it refers to specifically human capacities: self-awareness, as the capacity to take a step back and see oneself; conscience, as the capacity to perceive values and possibilities of meaning; freedom, which allows a person to take a position toward her own limits and circumstances; and responsibility, understood as the ability to respond to them.
A person with faith can bring it into the process if it matters to her; a person without faith does not need to adopt any belief. Religious experience, when it is part of someone’s life, can be welcomed in the work with respect for her freedom, her beliefs and her dignity.
Is logotherapy humanistic?
It is usually placed among the humanistic and existential currents, because it shares with them an understanding of the human being that recognizes freedom and responsibility. Frankl, though, marked his own distance from humanism, above all from the currents that put self-realization as the final end. For him, a person realizes herself precisely when she turns toward something or someone beyond herself.
What is existential logotherapy?
It is not a separate school. The expression “existential logotherapy” is usually used to underline the existential character of Frankl’s work, or as a way of referring to Logotherapy and Existential Analysis. It is not a different name from logotherapy and it does not have a single established meaning.
What can logotherapeutic support be useful for?
It can help you explore questions of meaning, difficult decisions, changes of identity, losses, conflicts of values, disorientation or the sense of living on autopilot. “It can help” does not mean it is right for every situation, or that it replaces a clinical assessment or treatment when one is needed.
Does logotherapy say that all suffering has meaning?
Logotherapy does not hold that suffering is necessary in order to find meaning, or that avoidable suffering should be sought out. If a situation can be changed or treated, or if we can protect ourselves from it, acting may be the most responsible response. But suffering is also an unavoidable part of human existence and, when we stand in front of what we cannot change, one last freedom always remains: to take a position toward our limits and choose the attitude with which we respond to them. Possibilities of meaning can be discovered there too.
Is logotherapy useful in grief?
It can accompany the passage of grief and the questions grief opens: what is still valuable, which possibilities remain and how to respond to a reality we can no longer change. It does not remove the pain and it does not impose a schedule, but it can support a road toward acceptance, which is not the same as simple resignation, and from there toward discovering possibilities that had not been visible before.
What does “existential vacuum” mean?
It is an expression used in logotherapy to describe an experience of missing meaning, which can show up as emptiness, boredom, apathy or the sense of not knowing which way to point your life. On its own it is not a diagnosis or a pathology. It is a deeply human experience: we can ask ourselves about the meaning of our life and not find answers. That emptiness brings our will to meaning into the open, in the same way that hunger signals a need asking to be met. There is nothing sick about experiencing an existential vacuum; there is a deep humanity looking to connect with life again.
How long does an existential coaching process last?
It depends on the process and on each person’s situation. My one-to-one processes start with six sessions, usually every 8–15 days, and they have a beginning and an end. That does not make it possible to promise that a question will be settled in an exact number of meetings.
Can we work online?
Yes. My processes are online. If you are in another country, we check the time zone, availability and the applicable terms before confirming. The first conversation lets us look at whether what you are after fits the kind of support I offer.
What next
You can carry on from here.
Returning to Meaning
When something has changed, when you have lost your bearings, or when your life works but no longer quite feels like yours.
Compass of Meaning
A first exploration, meant as orientation, about direction, coherence and sources of meaning.
About Alexandra
The story, the training and the professional limits of the person who signs this page.