This week, I’ve been sitting with the ideas of existential therapy, and it stirred a deep reflection in me about timing, identity, and the moments when it becomes necessary to shed inherited expectations. Existential therapy isn’t just another treatment modality. It’s a worldview. It asks us to take full ownership of our lives, to wake up to our freedom, and to make choices from the raw material of our own being, not someone else’s blueprint.

But when is someone truly ready for that?

From the moment we’re born, we’re shaped by parents, community, school, and culture. As children, we are mostly guided by external forces. We learn how to survive, behave, and belong. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. It’s part of being human. But at some point, for growth to continue, there’s a reckoning. A moment when we must ask: Whose beliefs am I living by? Are they mine?

Existential therapy lives in that moment.

It doesn’t provide a rigid roadmap or symptom checklist. Instead, it brings a client face to face with the responsibility of being alive. That can be exhilarating, or it can be deeply unsettling. And that’s why I believe existential therapy is not for everyone, at least not at the beginning. It is a type of therapy best used when someone has already begun to question their life in meaningful ways. It is most effective when someone has hit an inner wall and is ready to ask deeper questions.

I know this intimately. I’ve been there.

There was a point in my own life when I realized I wasn’t living in alignment with what I truly valued. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. I had simply internalized expectations that were never mine to begin with. Shedding that inherited identity wasn’t easy. It was a process of deconstruction, grief, and eventual reclamation. But on the other side of that unraveling was clarity, purpose, and peace. That’s why this approach speaks so powerfully to me. And why I want to offer it to others in a conscious and respectful way.

That said, existential therapy requires timing and discernment. For younger clients or those still forming a sense of identity, this process must be handled with great care. Identity exploration is crucial in adolescence and young adulthood. But diving too soon into existential themes like death, freedom, isolation, or meaninglessness could unsettle a psyche that is not yet prepared to hold those truths. Instead, existential concepts can be introduced gradually through questions like: What do you care about? What feels true for you? What choices are really yours?

With children and teens, the approach needs to be reframed. It should focus more on nurturing authentic selfhood and ownership over small, meaningful choices rather than confronting death or existential anxiety directly.

And then, there’s mortality.

Existential therapy does not shy away from death. It invites us to face it. As the text reminds us, part of being human is understanding that our time is limited. That awareness can be terrifying or liberating. Personally, my spiritual beliefs complicate this framework. I don’t believe life ends at death. I was raised with the understanding that we return again and again, each time learning, growing, and becoming. But that doesn’t make this moment any less sacred. It doesn’t make this version of me, this life, or this body any less meaningful.

I may believe the soul continues beyond this lifetime. Still, I also know that I will never be this exact person again. This body, this name, and this story exist only once. So while I don’t fully subscribe to the existential view of death as the end, I align with its insistence on presence. Mortality, whether symbolic or literal, reminds us that authenticity cannot wait. It tells us not to defer the real work of living until we feel more ready. It tells us to live now.

That is the paradox of existential therapy. It invites both discomfort and liberation. It challenges and it illuminates. Not for the sake of shaking someone up, but so they can come into contact with the truth of who they are. That is what I hope to offer in my future practice. A place where clients can begin to gently and courageously peel back the layers and ask, Who am I, really? And what would it mean to live as that person, starting now?