Part I - busting the myth of the 'untroubled therapist'*

Credit: Mart Production

As an existential therapist, I often get asked questions about meaninglessness and 'the point' of it all. In the last few months, I have had noticeably more conversations with people about a persistent sense of meaninglessness and hopelessness about the future. A few have asked how anything was worth doing in a world that was in such a dire state politically, and ecologically. They have spoken to me of their helplessness, hopelessness, and despair - all looming larger with every day of the advancing and now-rampant fascism, the rise of the impervious necro-techno conglomerates, and our heating planet. For a long time, I had nothing useful to say, so I tried to listen, while working hard to keep my own terror contained. A stubborn fact remains: I am human too, and I am as affected by the wanton destruction of life in all its forms around us. I sometimes lie awake at night, worrying about what is happening, and where it's all taking us.

We are in collective pain. Our dreams falter in the dark shadow of climate change, unprecedented concentration of wealth in the hands of a handful of men, and one peoples’ collective trauma projected as genocidal acts towards another peoples. There are those who seem to revel in it, gleeful and rabid in their bringing about of the destruction of this mindbogglingly improbable speck of the universe humans and other living creatures call home. For some of us, it has become much too overwhelming, much too painful, and truly impossible to see what difference an individual can make within it all. Yes, this therapist was troubled.

Despite all my beliefs in the essential goodness of humans, fear took over, doom scrolling became habit, and I became mired in the cynicism, borne of my own rage and despair. Self-care felt silly and indulgent, previously nurturing experiences were exhausting. I envied people who had energy to fight, to believe, to care, and was keenly aware of a helplessness before the fear I felt – we’re doomed, and there’s nothing I can do. The grief underneath it all – for our beautiful planet, our most loving and caring selves, the best of humanity – was too painful.

Oh how I doom scrolled: there was Elon espousing empathy as a ‘weakness’, there was Bezos hiring a city uniquely vulnerable to rising sea levels as a result of warming global temperatures for his wedding (estimates of the number of private jets landing for the wedding are between 90-152), there was the Chief Scientific Officer of the Children’s Health Defence catching measles and travelling to a vulnerable community (his own) without bothering to let anyone know he was ill with a highly contagious virus, there was Zuckerberg promising at every turn to transfer our reality to a permanent AI 'reality', there was Trump describing a destructive and deadly flood as a giant wave that the world’s best surfers would be afraid to surf. (Talk about failure of empathy.)

I became unable to hold any hope, before the relentless news about these people, utterly divorced from the physical universe, using their untold wealth to colonize Mars or build infrastructure embodying and promoting alienation and destruction, or add blast-proof doors to their bunkers.

These were the people seemingly with all the power and resources at their disposal, and they used both for selfish pursuits, or the persecution of others. They did not care about others, about life on the planet, or what was happening and would continue to happen to millions of people around the world because of their actions and choices. Gripped in a fever dream of self-serving ideas about success, wealth, competition, and convinced of their own genius, they poured resources into an active bet against the future. They did not care.

Around the same time I was despairing, Rebecca Solnit published a series of posts that, unbeknownst to her (of course), shamed me (healthily) and spurred a confrontation with my cynicism. She wrote: “cynicism is too often the aggrandizement of the self while abandoning the cause and therefore the impacted”. (In quick succession, thanks to the algorithm, I was treated to a quote by Raymond Williams, the socialist writer and academic, that went like this: “to be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing”.) For better or for worse, and no matter how hard, I had to find my way back into the world that is still here, confronted as I was with my ‘aggrandizement of the self’. Not to mention my belief, in true existential fashion, is that it is not what I say about myself that makes me who I am, but my choices, and my actions - they shape the world in which I live with others. If I want a cooperative, loving, supportive world, doom scrolling wasn’t going to create that. My cynical stance was protective, but also isolating, a ‘bad faith’ betrayal of all my values, and a betrayal of those I care about.

Rebecca’s post was a lifeline to me. For me, cynicism is a state of being cut off from others, isolated, alone with my worst fears, in despair. This, for social beings hardwired for connection, is a state of profound pain. (I know some hold 'cynicism' dearly as a life philosophy, but I do not subscribe to that. Neurology, anthropology, sociology, psychology - they all tell a different story that is about community, connectedness, and cooperation as central to our survival) There are many who care enough to send a beacon into the darkness with their words or their actions, taking the time to offer something for others, a call to remembrance of our connectedness and humanity. And it found me too, via Rebecca's words; I was not going to be left behind. I found belonging amongst those who care, and share my humanist and existential values. I offer this to you as my act of reaching out, my way of fighting for things you and I stand to lose, those things that make us feel human, and alive.

With that, let me introduce you to The Rebel.

*The title was borrowed from/inspired by the book title 'The myth of the untroubled therapist' by Marie Adams