The 5 existential limits that any human contemplates
Through thousands of sessions, we’ve found that while people come in with different struggles, our conversations often reveal the same core themes.
🔍 Diagnostic: Distraction, Disconnection, and the Inner Void
Today’s mental health crisis is rooted in a “crisis of distraction” that manifests in three ways:
1. Distraction: Frequent task-switching erodes focus and increases chronic stress【1】.
2. Disconnection: Digital connectivity leaves people more isolated, detaching them from meaningful connections【2】.
3. The Inner Void: Beneath surface issues like stress and burnout is a deeper need for purpose and introspection, often left unaddressed【3】.
Across over 3,000 client sessions, we’ve seen that people arrive with specific issues—anxiety, stress, or relationship challenges—but our work typically touches on five universal questions:
- Life
- Death
- Self
- Connection
- Love
💡These themes – also explored by Yalom【4】, Heidegger【5】as well as by existentialists – go beyond surface-level mental health concerns. They are the elements that truly shape us. Beneath anxieties and stress are these five core themes that guide each person’s journey and challenges:
- Life :What does it mean to live fully? How to find meaning?
- Death: How do we face mortality and loss? How to cope with finitude?
- Self: Who am I beyond my roles and titles? How can I be “just” me? What is my purpose?
- Connection: What does it mean to feel truly connected to others? How can I overcome isolation?
- Love: What does love ask of us, and how do we give and receive it?
Insights from a Year of Exploration
In the past years, our team members have immersed themselves in a wide array of practices, to be able to extract strategic and impactful methods, that deeply serve our clients.
We’ve also witnessed the limits of conventional therapeutic language. When working with direct and indirect victims of war and oppression, we found that standard advice like “breathe deeply” and “use cardiac coherence” simply falls flat.
🟠 Today, our vision is firmly set in the belief that when approaching humans’ most profound questions, presence and connection often matter more than any advice or technique.
Sources
[1]. American Psychological Association, Task-Switching and Mental Clarity, 2020
[2]. McKinsey, Digital Isolation in the Workplace, 2022
[3]. Deloitte, Purpose and Mental Health, 2023
[4]. Irvin Yalom, Existential Psychotherapy, 1980
[5]. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, 1927
