Helping Clients Navigate Existential Distress

Existential distress often emerges during periods of loss, transition, illness, caregiving, uncertainty, or profound life questioning. Clients may struggle with concerns relating to identity, purpose, mortality, freedom, responsibility, meaning, and connection – and yet these experiences are not necessarily signs of psychopathology. Rather, they frequently reflect natural human responses to confronting the realities of existence. This course explores how existential concerns present across the lifespan and within contemporary social contexts, including grief, chronic illness, ecological anxiety, social fragmentation, and collective uncertainty. Participants will learn how existentially informed approaches can support meaning reconstruction, authenticity, resilience, values-based living, and deeper engagement with life. Emphasising practical application alongside theoretical understanding, the course equips therapists to accompany clients compassionately through some of the most challenging — and potentially transformative — experiences of being human. This course is a companion course to <a href="/catalogue/holding-the-human-condition-understanding-existential-distress-in-therapy"><i>Holding the Human Condition: Understanding Existential Distress in Therapy</i></a>.