protections Archives - Existential-Humanistic Institute

Existential Moment series

The Existential Moment: An E-H Understanding of Relational Distress and Healing

Last month’s Existential Moment suggested that Existential-Humanistic (E-H) therapy, though not a formal couple’s model, naturally extends into relational work. This month begins to give fuller shape to that frame. Watch this brief scene from The Break-Up. Notice how an argument about dishes quickly becomes a disconnected, polarized argument about feeling unseen and unsupported, criticized and unappreciated.

June 1, 2026

Existential Moment series

The Existential Moment: Toward an E-H Informed Couples Therapy

Unlike many contemporary approaches to couples therapy (e.g., Gottman), existential-humanistic work does not offer a defined, manualized model with specific techniques or stages for working with couples. Instead, it provides a way of understanding and engaging human experience that naturally extends into the relational space. This piece aims to make explicit what is often implicit in existential-humanistic practice as applied to couples, offering a brief, high-level framework that will be explored in greater depth in future Existential Moments.

May 1, 2026

Existential Moment series

The Existential Moment: Resistance and Self-World Constructs

To understand resistance in therapy, we must look beneath activity to the deep personal belief systems that the behavior expresses. These largely unconscious meanings about self, others, and world, which the Existential-Humanistic Institute (EHI) calls self-world constructs, influence our experience, understanding, and behavior, how we feel, think, and act. Protective activity expresses those meanings.

April 1, 2026

Existential Moment series

The Existential Moment: Working With Resistance

Haven’t we all pushed harder and harder on a door that would not open, only to pause, look at the handle, or see the sign “pull,” realizing then it was

February 1, 2026

Existential Moment series

The Existential Moment: Why “Resistance” Matters—The Existential Cost and the Therapeutic Aim

Seeing a line of windmills as ominous giants, Don Quixote lowers his lance and charges, unable to sense that the world long passed him by. Living in an age of

January 5, 2026

Existential Moment series

The Existential Moment: Working with the Cosmological Dimension

lato’s Allegory of the Cave describes people chained in darkness, mistaking shadows on the wall for the whole of reality. Only by turning toward the light—toward what casts the shadows—can they begin to see the world as it truly is. In therapy, we often work in the shadows: the protections, old narratives, and self-world constructs that shape experience. Yet each of these is influenced by something deeper and less visible. Turning toward that source can open the way to meaningful change.

November 1, 2025

Existential Moment series

The Existential Moment—Existential-Integrative: Cognitive Empiricism

Collaboration is central in both CBT and Existential-Humanistic therapy—whether as co-investigators (CBT) testing ideas or as “fellow travelers” (E-H) exploring lived experience and meanings. Openness and curiosity likewise are central to both. Integration builds on this shared spirit by reframing CBT’s empirical approach through an E-H lens.

September 1, 2025

Existential Moment series

The Existential-Moment–Existential-Integrative: Goal Setting and Problem Solving

Dante finds himself lost in a shadowed wood, fear pressing in on all sides. He cannot will himself forward—he doesn’t yet know where he is, or how he got there.

July 1, 2025

Existential Moment series

The Existential Moment–Existential-Integrative: Defenses

Holden Caulfield, the main character in the classic novel The Catcher in the Rye, imagines himself standing in a field of rye, catching children before they fall over the edge

March 1, 2025

Existential Moment series

The Existential Moment: New Year’s Resolutions

“Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky…” Tennyson’s words from In Memoriam call us to a reckoning with the old year and the birth of the new. His poem pulses with the longing to discard what weighs us down personally and socially—detachment, pride, regret, etc. — and to embrace a brighter beginning. But the transformation he invokes is not simply a celebration; it is a call to action, a challenge to confront ourselves honestly toward living differently.

What do we leave behind as the bells ring out, and what new commitments do we make as they ring in?

This moment of transition mirrors a deeper, ongoing question central to Existential-Humanistic therapy: “How am I presently living?” and “How am I willing to live?” These questions, like Tennyson’s appeal, invite us to envision change and engage with it courageously.

January 1, 2025

Existential Moment series

The Existential Moment is on a Mini Break

The Existential Moment, the series found here on EHI’s blog, is currently on a hiatus and will be back in the new year.

Here are some lists of of posts related to some topics in the series from the last couple of years.

October 31, 2024

Existential Moment series

The Existential Moment: Accepting Fear and Anxiety

It was a dark, windless night in upstate New York in 1790; the only sound was the pounding of hooves on the narrow path. A schoolteacher, heart racing, galloped through

October 1, 2024

Existential Moment series

The Existential Moment: Presence and Transformation

Just as the Pullman workers faced their harsh reality, we are often called to ask ourselves: “How am I presently living?” Often, this question arises from feelings of despair. In existential-humanistic therapy, awareness is the first step toward transformation . Presence means coming into contact with uncomfortable truths and recognizing patterns or conditions that no longer serve us. This awareness reveals what holds us back and opens the door to change. One key role as therapists is helping our clients come into this presence.

September 1, 2024

Existential Moment series

The Existential Moment: Presence

In Flanders FieldsBy John McCrae In Flanders fields the poppies blowBetween the crosses, row on row,That mark our place; and in the skyThe larks, still bravely singing, flyScarce heard amid

August 1, 2024

Existential Moment series

The Existential Moment: Micro-skills: Reflecting

Reflection is a bit like the work of the Spirits of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come. We mirror or reflect our client’s experience—the content presented, the process or experience in the moment (e.g., nonverbals, tone, pattern of speech, etc.), self and world constructs (e.g., “I am…”), protective patterns and inner tensions, and core vulnerabilities or wounds.

January 1, 2024

Tag: protections

The Existential Moment: An E-H Understanding of Relational Distress and Healing

The Existential Moment: Toward an E-H Informed Couples Therapy

The Existential Moment: Resistance and Self-World Constructs

The Existential Moment: Working With Resistance

The Existential Moment: Why “Resistance” Matters—The Existential Cost and the Therapeutic Aim

The Existential Moment: Working with the Cosmological Dimension

The Existential Moment—Existential-Integrative: Cognitive Empiricism

The Existential-Moment–Existential-Integrative: Goal Setting and Problem Solving

The Existential Moment–Existential-Integrative: Defenses

The Existential Moment: New Year’s Resolutions

The Existential Moment is on a Mini Break

The Existential Moment: Accepting Fear and Anxiety

The Existential Moment: Presence and Transformation

The Existential Moment: Presence

The Existential Moment: Micro-skills: Reflecting

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