Existential-Humanistic Psychotherapy - EH Crash Course

🤔 What the hell is it, and why should I care?

Existential-Humanistic Psychotherapy isn’t easy work. It doesn’t offer a 10-step plan, a mindfulness app, or a tidy narrative where everything makes sense by the end. What it does offer is a relationship; real, alive, and unflinching.

• Where you can finally stop performing and start being. 

• Where your depression and anxiety aren’t treated like malfunction, but as normal reactions to abnormal circumstances.

• Where your shame isn’t validated as a virtue.

• Where your questions aren’t rushed toward answers.

🚛DATA-DUMP!

Existential-Humanistic Psychotherapy (EH) is what happens when philosophy and psychology meet you at your most human moments. It doesn’t ask, "How do we fix this symptom?" It asks, "What is this symptom trying to say about how you’re living?"

Rooted in Existential Philosophy, EH is built on the idea that our deepest suffering often stems from how we relate to freedom, death, uncertainty, isolation, and meaning. This isn’t abstract theorizing, it’s a part of the human experience – the ache of purposelessness, the paralysis of choice, the slow drip of anxiety from pretending everything’s fine when it isn’t. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, n.d.).

Humanistic Psychology, the other half of this model, emerged as a response to reductionist views of the human psyche. It rejects the idea that we're just bundles of behaviors or unconscious drives. Instead, it insists we are:

• Capable of growth and self-awareness

• Deserving of dignity, empathy, and presence

• Inherently creative, emotional, and meaning-making beings

EH therapy is a blending of extremes, it asks: "What are the very real limits of being human; and how can we still live in awe of the profound possibility inside those limits?"

This is not an easy thing to do. Holding both our fragility and our freedom, our pain and our potential, is uncomfortable. It’s also necessary. Most of us spend our lives trying to resolve that tension; EH asks us to lean into it instead.

In practice, this means:

• The focus isn’t on “fixing” you – it’s about understanding you, deeply.

• The therapist doesn’t stay behind a clinical wall – they show up as a real human being.

• There’s no quick solution – because real change isn’t about tricks or hacks, it’s about coming home to yourself.

EH isn’t for everyone. But if you’re tired of surface level coping tools, and you’re craving something real… Something that actually touches the places inside you that feel deadened, confused, or hollow; this is where that conversation begins.

📚Sources & Ancestors of Thought

Here’s the full list of sources that shaped this piece. From peer-reviewed studies to mentors who’ve shaped me.

🧔🏻‍♂️🪞Living Lineage

Because even though some teachers publish in journals, they sit with you, look you in the eye, and change your fucking life; even when they’ve gone before you come.

• Edelstein, B. (2014–present). Mentor, therapy dad, and existential compass.

• Bugental, J. F. T. (2014–present). Therapy grandad, and inventor of the therapeutic 2x4.

📖 References

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (n.d.). Existentialism. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Fall 2020 ed.). Stanford University. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existentialism/

Peer reviewed by Kerrins T. Conroy III at Bear Haven Counseling