I often hear in my therapeutic conversations questions about meaning. What does this event mean? After all these years of effort, what does it all amount to? Was it really worth it? Does it all add up?

Most of the the time, these questions are not asked directly, perhaps partly out of a fear of sounding pretentious or out of a fear generated by the questions themselves. So they are generally left hanging there in the air, unvoiced, like dark clouds threatening to break into a nasty thunder storm.

Emptiness

When the questions are voiced, the speaker is often confronted with a sudden blank and the discovery of a disquieting emptiness within. The temptation of course on the part of the therapist is to rush to the speaker’s rescue with a variety of readymade answers which inevitably fail to convince the speakers and dispel their growing sense of unease.

But such questioning is not limited to the therapy room. In fact it is an actie layer underlying all our daily actions and conversations and which breaks through the surface of awareness from time to time demanding attention. Have you not caught yourself engaged in some past event or experience and concluding that it finally made a lot of sense, or to the contrary, that it made no sense at all?

3 Ways to Meaning

Attributing meaning to our lives is a necessary and deeply human enterprise. Viktor Frankl, the creator of logotherapy and author of the best selling “Man’s Search for Meaning” maps three ways of how we generate meaning.

1. Action

The first way we generate meaning according to Frankl is by doing something. This can be quite simple like brushing your teeth or something more elaborate like painting a work of art. It is through the doing that the meaning emerges in the doer. For many people, their professional activity provides them with ample ground to exercise what Frankl refers to as creative action, action which fills people with a sense of meaning and purpose.

2. Experience

The second route to towards meaning is through experience. For example, being in a loving relationship is an experience which in and of itself is a source of meaning. This experience can become a source from which a person can draw and discover new meanings over time even when the relationship is over and in the past. Listening to a piece of music or looking out onto a landscape which moves or touches you is another experience which can give meaning to life.

3. Attitude

The third route towards meaning is through the attitude we have or develop when facing some kind of difficulty or suffering. No human life with without difficulty or suffering. So the question is what kind of attitude or posture do you take when faced with your own or someone else’s suffering. Suffering here implies some kind of limiting factor on one’s life or potentialities. The way in which a person accepts these constraints and develops courage, dignity or some other quality becomes a measure of their human fulfillment.

So how have you cultivated or restored meaning in your life? Have you followed one or other of these paths? Or have you found some other way?

It is one of the most powerful systems of personality I have yet encountered.  It is both simple and complex and has been life-changing both for myself personally and in how I relate and work with other people.  Once you begin to understand what it’s really about, then this kind of change can happen for and those you share your life with.

The Enneagramme describes nine different personality types and their interrelationships.  The system can help you recognise your own type and how to cope with your issues: understand your work associates, lovers, family and friends; and to appreciatae the predisposition that each type has for higher human capacities such as empathy, omiscience and love.

The workshop with take place on Thursday, June 11th at 20hoo at my office near Rond Point de Rennes in Nantes.  After the presentation, there will be plenty of time to chat so feel free to bring something along to nibble.  Tea, coffee and herbal teas will be provided.

So if you want to take part and bring friends along too, just sign up through the contact form below on this blog and include your email address so I can forward you details of how to get there.  Space is limited so I’d advise you to book your seat(s) quickly.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

A therapy space is like a glasshouse.

You arrive with some concern, some difficulty.  But as you share it, something else crops up, and then you remember something long forgotten.  A strangely familar sensation in your right shoulder appears and disappears but you can’t attach it to anything in particular.  Perhaps it’s not that important.  So you move on.

All of these are like seeds you start potting in the therapy room.  Some root and grow.  Others remain dormant in the soil.  Perhaps there’s not enough warmth.  Or too much light.  In a burst of enthusiasm, you rush home with your new plant and show it off.  But no one really knows what you are talking about.

So you bring it back and leave it in the glasshouse.

Therapy is about discovering those seeds forgotten in the bottom of pockets, at the back of drawers or on the top of shelves out of normal reach.  It’s about learning the best conditions for each seed to germ and root, and then about caring for the newly sprouted plant, watering and weeding it, until it is ready to be transplanted outside into the real world.

Therapy is about becoming the gardener of your own life.  In the end, it is about learning to build your own glasshouse so you can master the whole process on your own.

When people seek out therapy, it’s because they have exhausted all their known possibilities. They have reached a dead end and are at loggerheads with the question as to why they have a problem in the first place.

They believe if they really knew why they have the problem, it will  go away somehow. And when the problem persists, there is a tendency to say to oneself it is because I still don’t know why. So people carry on, trying to discover the why of it all.  For years maybe.

The whole thing is a little bit like baking a cake. If someone explains the why of baking a cake, you may become very learned about the history of cake baking.  But you are no better off than before about baking a better cake for yourself. And so, hunger sets in and frustration grows.

However, if someone explains how to bake a cake, then you can actually bake one yourself. With a bit of practice, you might actually become good at it, and perhaps with time, could even develop recipes of your own. And so what was previously perceived as a problem transforms into a creative challenge.

Psychotherapy is a little bit like this.  Understanding how you have a problem goes a long way to developing new solutions than wondering why you have the problem in the first place.

So if you have any bright ideas at all for posts to this blog and you  happen to have dropped by and are wondering what the hell is this guy trying to do here on the internet, well pop him a comment and it just might make the difference.  Tah-rah.