Key Moment: Make Your Life a Work of Art (w/ Emmy Van Deurzen)

This is an excerpt from E172 of the Thinking Mind Podcast.

Emmy van Deurzen, one of the leading figures in existential therapy in the UK and internationally. Emmy has over fifty years’ experience as a psychotherapist, has published more than thirty books, and was the first chair of the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy when it was created in 1993.

In this conversation, we discuss existential therapy, what it means to be truly free, how to face life’s difficulties without turning away from them, and how we might begin to live more courageously.

Interviewed by Dr. Alex Curmi. Dr. Alex is a consultant psychiatrist and a UKCP registered psychotherapist.
Website: alexcurmitherapy.com

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Alex is not currently taking on new psychotherapy clients, if you are interested in working with Alex for focused behaviour change coaching , you can email - alexcurmitherapy@gmail.com with "Coaching" in the subject line.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I think people have a tendency, even if you don't have a mental health condition, people t have a tendency to stagnate and become more rigid in their thinking. This is a classic trope of getting older. But in my mind, it's not an inevitability. I think people just need to be taught, just like you need you need to do something like yoga to keep your body flexible. You need to do some things to keep your mind flexible, and mental flexibility is very conducive to good mental health.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

And of course, life is about being in movement. Life is to be aware of that movement and to go with that movement. And what people tend to do is to be afraid of life and to stop it moving and to keep it stable and steady because they don't trust themselves being able to be in the flow. But to learn to be in the flow is an amazing thing to do. It's literally like learning to surf on the waves rather than go under in them and to not be afraid of the waves of the ocean, but to know that you are capable of going with them and that they will actually carry you and to trust life. People just don't trust life at all. They equate life with what other people do to you or what is required of you, instead of with this openness and this freedom and this movement that is for each of us to make something of that is valuable and enjoyable.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

Why do you think this is a widespread phenomenon? Because I agree with you. This sense of being in a victim position is very common, the sense of life is what's done to you, and you have no authorship over that, and this uh lack of introspection is very common. Why why do you think it is so common in modern times?

SPEAKER_00 2:06

Because our worldview is a materialistic worldview, and we think about ourselves as if we are objects, and so we think about ourselves as having been made out of clay and been fashioned in a particular shape, and as if we're kind of stuck with that. We completely not allowing ourselves to see the freedom that human existence actually provides you with, which is the capacity for free thinking and for changing and for making all sorts of different choices. I mean, philosophers are even trying to make people believe that there is no such thing as free will, which is quite an extraordinary thing to do, and for anyone who has worked in this field, that is a completely ridiculous idea, because we know from our everyday observations that if we don't engage in conversation with our clients and patients, they stay stagnant and they get worse and worse and worse. But when they are engaged in this exploration and they begin to see that there is another way, everything comes to life again, and they begin to act and relate in a different way, and life starts to look different to them, and they begin to realize that they do actually have options, and they are not condemned to act out what their parents did to them or what society did to them or what they are afraid of, they can make it different, they are like an artist, they can make their life into a work of art. Now, if that is not free will, then what is?

SPEAKER_01 4:08

And what would you say? Just getting to your point about like modern life and people having freedom, what would you say to a critic who might say something like, Oh, but modern life is so difficult, and economically times are so hard, and it's so difficult to buy a house, and there's so much so many bad things happening geopolitically, and you know, there's many arguments you can make about why life is terrible. And what what would you say to that kind of criticism?

SPEAKER_00 4:36

I would say they're right. Modern life is incredibly complicated and difficult and impossible, but so was life 50 years ago. You know, try living in the 50s as I did as a girl, and was confronted with parents who were traumatized by the Second World War and who had been through a famine and in a house that was tiny because all the houses had been bombed to the ground and you didn't know where your food was going to come from, and you still had coupons. And try living in that environment for goodness sakes. Or try living two centuries ago, or try living in the Middle Ages when your life was probably 30 years in life is difficult, life is challenging, and every day is a challenge for you to do something with these challenges on your path, and that's the good bit of it. That it's not a given that stays the same, it changes all the time, and you can learn the rules of the games and you can get good at them, you can start enjoying them, you can start figuring out how you get around the obstacles or how you avoid the obstacles. There are many things you can do to make this work for you. You can also engage with making the world a better place. You can also say, yes, it is difficult and horrible and I don't like it, and then you get really engaged and then you begin to realize that it doesn't have to be like that. You're part of this world and you can make a difference. So get going with it, and you'll start to see your view of it changes dramatically.

SPEAKER_01 6:33

Yeah, I mean that when whenever someone whenever I'm talking with someone and they're bringing up, oh, life is so difficult because of X, Y, Z reasons. Yeah, I totally agree. And you wouldn't want to underplay the difficulties of our time. Um, but I always bring up the world wars, you know. Remember that that time less than a hundred years ago where our civilizations went to almost annihilated each other and remember the Holocaust and remember all of these things that happened. Uh, and I think it's so helpful because it's I I mean when people criticize modern times, again, many things to criticize, but we'll obviously cherry pick information which suits our narrative. If we have a pre-existing feeling and narrative that life is terrible now, we'll choose the things that that complement that feeling, like geopolitical instability or it's difficult to buy a house, but they won't emphasize, for example, oh, I have the in access to the entirety of human knowledge in a supercomputer that they didn't even have a computer as good as this on the rockets that went to the moon, but now I have it basically for no cost or low cost. I now have AI technology that can help me answer any question. You know, people are very uh selective in their evidence for this.

SPEAKER_00 7:47

They are, they are, and they're not counting their blessings at all. I think all the things you mentioned are absolutely true. And more than that, one of the things I deeply value living in the twenties is that I am connected to so many good people via the internet. And you know, all these ways we now have of figuring out who are like-minded and who are willing to put energy into a new project or it is absolutely extraordinary the way we can be linked in and the way we can meet the right kind of people for the things that are important to us that simply wasn't possible. People forget this. We lived in very isolated worlds that were often very, very boring and where there was very little information, you know. People take it so for granted. As a kid, I used to have to bicycle to the library and search down the shelves to find information and you know carry books home and figure things out and then think, oh well, I don't know what this means. It was complicated, it was really hard work to acquire knowledge and understanding. It's so easy now. So there's no excuse. We improve the world in the ways it doesn't work.

SPEAKER_01 9:25

Do you worry that the ease is part of the problem? That's uh part of why we might be regressing psychologically as a culture is because things are way too easy and therefore we're not developing any kind of uh resilience, ability to tolerate discomfort, delay gratification.

SPEAKER_00 9:46

Yeah, absolutely. Spot on. That's extremely important. I see it all the time. People are incredibly adverse to making effort and to figuring things out, or to learn to do the hard work so that they can trust themselves, and so they end up living in a victimized way. A lot of people live in a victimized way. It's not that they have been victimized, it's that they believe that that is what's been done to them, and that's how they hold themselves. Instead of thinking, how can I find my little path out of here? They're thinking, Oh, why am I in this place? And they don't see all the many different paths ahead of them that they can take, and they have an amazing array of possibilities to get out of their stuck positions, but they just don't try because there is something about the culture that says you are a consumer and therefore a patient or a victim, somebody who has things being done to them rather than an actor and a person who can make a difference and who can change things. But actually, you are all of those things, you are the navigator of your little life, the only person who is in control of what's gonna happen to you in your life, and you forget that.

SPEAKER_01 11:29

I feel like I'm being coached now, I feel like I'm your client and I feel inspired. And uh, I'd like to underline something you said, which is the hard work that's required to trust yourself. I think a lot of people feel despondent because they because and I think this might be out of awareness for those people, they don't really trust themselves. So you might feel anxious. How am I gonna get this all done? How am I gonna meet my work deadlines? How am I gonna be a good wife or a good husband or what have you? It's because they don't necessarily trust themselves, and what you're saying is crucial that trusting yourself requires work because you kind of need to test yourself in life and see what you're made of, and that helps people calm down because you say, Okay, actually, when I was in this stressful situation, I did fine, it wasn't perfect, but I did fine, and that builds a library of evidence and reference experiences that actually, yeah, I can handle myself when things are tough.

SPEAKER_00 12:29

Exactly. Confidence is built and earned, and it's never given. And people expect to be a confident person, and they say, Oh, so-and-so is confident, I'm not confident, I can't do that. The point is, that person gained their confidence in their own way, it doesn't matter how, that was their path, but for you right now to get that confidence means to strike out, face your anxiety, engage, learn by trial and error, and discover what is interesting to you, what you want to put your energy into, and discover, as with physical exercise, that the more you practice your life and the more you try out new things, and the more you discover what you're good at, and b that you can probably do almost anything you try. If you just do it for long enough and you're careful enough, you amaze yourself. Most people can do many more things than they think. They're very selective, they only want the things they think are nice, but actually, doing lots of different things creates that self-confidence and makes you aware that your anxiety is not an obstacle. Anxiety is the bloody energy that your body is giving you for free as soon as you start opening your eyes and think I have to do something about this, or oh, there's a possibility there, that raises your anxiety straight away, and instead of retreating in fear and saying, Oh, I'm anxious, oh, that must be dangerous, I'm not doing it, feel that, feel that sense of energy that is building and get going and do it, and then your confidence builds and your capacity for thriving on anxiety builds too.

SPEAKER_01 14:47

And I guess it's it's that's why it's so important to pay attention to the ways we dispel things like anxiety and other negative emotions, because you're saying anxiety and other negative emotions are this important signal, this almost calling to say, okay, this is something worth looking into. Uh, but many people might dispel their anxiety by complaining, venting, you know, gossiping, using drugs or alcohol, using Netflix or pornography. And these these things obviously bring our levels of negative emotion down, but then they're a missed opportunity because now you don't have that energy, that that frustration, if you like, that if attended to directly, you could use to do something interesting or useful.

SPEAKER_00 15:33

Well, you're saying it very clearly. All the mechanisms people use are mechanisms of consumption. They turn themselves back into a passive consumer to calm themselves down and not have to feel their aliveness. That's what they do. Is it any wonder that in our world large percentage of people complain of anxiety and even larger percentage of depression? These are the two basic emotions we all feel every day, and we have to learn to work with them. We feel anxiety to engage with the world and to do new things and to learn, and we feel depression or sadness every time we have a loss, and we have losses every day, all the time. Every minute somebody says something to you and you think, oh god, that wasn't good enough or that wasn't right, and you feel a little bit of you know, depressed, disappointed feeling in yourself. If you let all that accumulate and get to you, you will start talking about yourself as in that low place. And if you don't allow yourself to go with the anxiety upwards to explore new things, anxiety becomes terrifying too. Both those things are inevitable experiences every day of your life, and we have completely forgotten that.