In the past, philosophy and therapy were closely related fields. Psychotherapists received formal training in philosophy and used it to inform how they support people through emotional distress, trauma, and identity exploration. But in the past several decades, the therapy field has increasingly moved away from philosophical exploration and dialogue and more toward manualized (literally taught out of a standardized manual) treatments focused on skill-building and emotion regulation. Philosophical exploration is often dismissed as “intellectualization” that gets in the way of feeling one’s feelings or healing from trauma.
While skill-building and structured therapy approaches can be quite useful in many contexts, I think it is a mistake for therapists to distance themselves too much from our philosophical roots. Below are some of the benefits of bringing philosophy into therapy, and reasons that philosophy is a core part of my therapeutic approach.
It’s important to me to work collaboratively with my clients in therapy and ensure we are working toward shared goals. In our culture, we are bombarded with messages about what good mental health looks like - what emotions are acceptable or not to feel, what coping skills are healthy or unhealthy, how long we should or shouldn’t be affected by a particular trauma or loss, and what milestones or achievements are or aren’t considered markers of being “high-functioning” or “well-adjusted.” I don’t believe that you as a client are truly consenting to therapy if you are setting goals based on “should”s you’ve been told by others rather than your own values, needs, and vision for a fulfilling and enjoyable life. Together, we can unpack assumptions about what mental health or a good life is “supposed” to look like, various systemic biases and family messages that have influenced those assumptions, and work toward figuring out what your actual values are apart from that.
As an example, so many clients who have experienced perinatal loss seek out therapy from a place of being completely sure that because their miscarriages happened “early,” it should not affect them so much. Many of these clients initially expressed goals to cope better with their pregnancy loss so that their grief does not affect them on a day-to-day basis. I’ve heard people express a lot of shame and self-criticism around being so impacted by early pregnancy loss, wondering if they are being “attention-seeking” or “self-pitying.” Together, we’ve explored the assumptions, cultural biases, and media and family messages that contribute to the idea that perinatal loss should be “gotten over” - patriarchy, dismissal of women/AFAB people’s health experiences, and toxic positivity to name a few. We’ve worked on arriving at more realistic, values-aligned goals for navigating and co-existing with grief, and approaching those goals with self-compassion rather than shame.
The mental health struggles we have are often connected to existential questions about the nature of life, suffering, morality, and the self. My concern about therapy modalities that are completely disconnected from philosophy discount the depth and gravity behind many distressing struggles and symptoms. Many concerns that lead people to seek out therapy are connected to complex layers surrounding their identity and upbringing that can’t be “solved” solely with worksheets or coping skills.
I find this particularly true for my areas of specialization, perinatal loss and other complex reproductive experiences as well as eating disorders. Existential questions that might come up around perinatal loss include:
Exploring existential questions can be especially relevant for people navigating reproductive ambivalence - i.e., conflicting feelings around whether to have a child and/or different pathways to becoming a parent. Some questions that might be important to explore include:
While often misconstrued as stemming from vanity, eating disorders are highly complex conditions that can also bring up philosophical questions including:
Philosophy rarely offers easy, simple answers to these questions. But it offers us the opportunity to sit with the complexity of them and give ourselves permission to think about them and feel through them without pressure to come up with a definitive conclusion.
A lot of philosophers have extensively studied and dialogued about our responsibilities to ourselves and others and how we can approach morality. When intense self-blame, shame, guilt, and hyperresponsibility are at the root of or an effect of so many traumas and mental health concerns, it would feel remiss not to borrow some wisdom from scholars who have spent their lives thinking about these issues.
After any kind of trauma, so many people struggle with the question of whether it was their fault and whether they are a bad or unworthy person. Of course, therapy is a space where it’s important to explore the shame, guilt, and sense of brokenness that so often drive these questions. But I think it can also be important to explore what we actually think constitutes a “bad person” or being “at fault,” and what societal and familial messages have influenced the way we understand this. What have we been told about who is deserving of kindness and compassion vs. who is deserving of punishment and rejection that might unconsciously be influencing how we treat ourselves and others?
On my own journey, I struggled quite a bit with self-blame, guilt, and shame. One thing I kept coming back to as a guidepost was my deep-rooted philosophical belief that no one is irredeemably, irrevocably, permanently “bad.” Just to be clear, I do believe people can do very terrible things that need to have consequences. But I also believe there is always the possibility for growth and change, and that even people who have done terrible things deserve compassion. Even if I could not always feel compassion for myself during times of intense distress, reminding myself of this belief helped me find the strength to act in self-compassionate ways despite feeling the opposite.
So often, philosophical thought and discussion is seen as something that keeps us “stuck in our heads” and disconnects us from our feelings. For some people, it can serve this function and of course, that’s important to be aware of. But this can also be a misconception stemming from the idea that philosophical thought is “rational” and “intellectual” while emotions are “irrational” and entirely separate from logic.
But the reality is that our emotions often come from a very valid, logical place. Experiences of deep hurt and distress often signify that a core value has been transgressed. Exploring these painful experiences from that lens can help us more deeply understand our values, principles, and the needs and goals we have that result from them.
As an example, many people with eating disorders have been deeply hurt by being told, “You don’t look like you have an eating disorder.” Exploring the values and principles violated by this statement, and naming the roots of just what about this statement causes so much harm, can be illuminating. When I explored this in my own therapy, I realized that what was hurtful to me in particular about it was the idea that my suffering and pain didn’t “count” and wasn’t really serious because it didn’t look like what someone else was told eating disorders look like. It felt violating that someone was asserting their own expertise based on stereotypes about eating disorders over my own lived experience and knowledge of my body. Through this exploration, I realized that it’s a central, guiding value of mine to trust people’s expertise around their own experience and bodies, and that this is something I both need from others and to provide to others. I have supported clients in arriving at similar self-discoveries around their own core values and beliefs. These discoveries can deepen our connection to our emotions and wounds, giving us permission to feel them more fully and recognize what is needed to heal.
Integrating philosophy into therapy isn’t about staying “stuck in your head” or detaching from your feelings. It’s about engaging with the full depth and complexity of your experience - your thoughts, feelings, questions, values, your grief, your identity, and your humanity. It’s about creating space for difficult, sometimes painful questions. You may not always arrive at an answer, but just knowing that you aren’t alone in exploring them can be therapeutic. If you’re looking for a therapeutic space where your complexity is welcomed, I invite you to reach out via my website to learn more about working together.