Last month I ended my job in community mental health after five years of service, so I’ve been thinking a lot about transitions. Transitions can be exciting (getting married, welcoming a child into the family, starting your own business), but even the most exciting (and “self”-promoted) transitions can be daunting. Transitions bring us into direct contact with the quandary of human life: we are here one moment, and then we are not.
Existentialists call this quandary “thrownness”. We are thrown into the heart of our humanness, and find a vulnerable and anxious heart.
In existential traditions, anxiety is part of human nature, not an emotional state or a mental health disorder. It belongs to human life as the beat to the heart. Rollo May, one of the fathers of existential psychology, identified six principles of human existence (four of which I am listing here. If you want to read more, refer to his book “The Discovery of Being”):
- Every existing person is centered in herself, and an attack on this center is an attack on her existence itself.
- Every existing person has the need to preserve his centeredness.
- Every existing person has the need and possibility of going out from her centeredness to participate in other beings.
- The subjective side of centeredness is awareness.
Each of these principles features the word “center”. I like to think of this center as the “self” or what we may also call our truth. When a person’s center is being targeted or denied (whether by someone else or from within ourselves), anxiety can become overwhelming and overpower our ability to grow.
Transitions are opportunities to take heart and circumnavigate the gravitational field of your centeredness. Give me a call if you need a co-pilot.
With love, Tina