The sense of meaning and purpose is, in various forms, one of the most common themes in psychotherapy. For many, it is present as they endeavour on the therapeutic journey. For others, it comes up as part of the journey.
Experiences of meaninglessness and purposelessness are often underpinned by other emotions or beliefs. These include a sense of internal confusion, directionlessness, incompleteness, subjective experience of emptiness, despair, boredom or mediocrity, or just a feeling that something is missing. They may also manifest as general dissatisfaction or resignation with life. Whilst these experiences may be conscious, some of them lie completely outside of awareness.
The search for meaning and purpose is often accompanied by the misapprehension that meaning is to be found in one thing—something that lies outside ourselves, or something we need to find or attain. For instance, some believe meaning will come from finding the ideal partner, starting a family, or having children. Others may think that moving far away to live a peaceful life, achieving professional success, or gathering wealth will bring meaning by enabling them to experience freedom, peace, or contentment by stepping out of the rat race.
Through the psychotherapeutic process we often uncover and observe how our perception of finding meaning and purpose was largely based on unconscious fantasies whereby a person needs to ‘achieve something for it all to get better’.
How Fantasies Destroy Lives or How the Search for Meaning Takes One Away from Reality
The most common fantasies are those connected to the perception that achieving a particular goal in life will bring the kind of life that one has always strived for. While the awareness of these fantasies may vary, they are most often driven by a belief that a person will find their meaning and begin their life once they 'find the right partner', or once their partner 'changes', 'understands', or 'sees' them, once they 'have children', once their 'children grow up', once they 'find what is fulfilling in life', or once they attain 'a level of financial security'.
Unconsciously, the quests for meaning and purpose are mostly led by the search for identity and escaping the experience of feeling lost, directionless, or confused. The realisation of this often comes up in therapy, and is usually a painful one.
For instance, a person may be led by a belief that purpose and meaning lie in a successful career—such that will bring a sense of independence, freedom, and security. What, unconsciously, they may be chasing is a fantasy of no longer needing to meet other people’s needs or be in any way dependent on others or controlled by them.
Similarly, someone may feel that purpose and meaning can be found in eliminating mediocrity, boredom, or suffering from their lives. Often, the most intuitive solutions are the attainment of wealth, comfort, social or professional status, a fulfilling career, or simply the perfect partner who can save them. Unfortunately, all this is a mirage that keeps their hopes up. Hope prevents them from falling into despair as they continue to experience life as hardship.
Chasing the Fantasy in Search of a Meaningful Life
The fallacies of meaning and purpose are fuelled by fantasies. Unfortunately, these fantasies deceive a person into believing that they are a perfectly legitimate reality—a life goal that needs to be attained.
Through psychotherapy, one may realise that they not only believed in a fantasy, but also that the fantasy was largely based on unconscious beliefs and experiences. The purpose of the fantasy is to maintain hope that one's unmet needs will someday be met, that past injustices will be mended, and that wounds will be healed—so that the person will someday get what they have always been waiting for.
Unfortunately, the fantasy keeps the wound open. And here lies the paradox: The wound needs to remain open for the fantasy to exist and the pursuit of the fantasy provides purpose. The loss of fantasy, in turn, evokes despair. However, chasing the fantasy keeps a person in the past and prevents them from seeing reality and living a fulfilling life in the present.
Meaning and Purpose Are Not Found in the World, They Are Experienced Within
As one explores purposelessness and meaninglessness in psychotherapy, the process slowly exposes the actual source of this experience. The sense of internal emptiness, lifelessness or boredom renders life mediocre and purposeless. The person may find no meaning in the things they do, the lives they lead or the relationships they have. Nothing will give them 'that feeling' or bring them the solution.
This quickly exposes that the way one went about searching for meaning was false. There is a false belief that meaning can be found in a particular thing, in something fulfilling—a meaningful discussion, a meaningful relationship, a meaningful career, a meaningful life, etc. So, an illusion remains that as long as a person keeps searching, they will eventually find it. But that is a fantasy.
Because the sense of meaning comes from an integrated sense of self and identity, it will only emerge once one deals with the unconscious internal conflicts that often cause a sense of internal emptiness, boredom and mediocrity. Through psychotherapy, one may realise that meaning will not come from the external world. It will not emerge from 'doing something meaningful'. Nor can meaning be consumed through 'meaningful experiences’, such as travelling.
Meaning and purpose are internal experiences that we attribute to the external world. So, for instance, a relationship is not in itself meaningful, and it cannot ‘make’ one’s life meaningful. Rather, a relationship is attributed with meaning when meaning is experienced within. Similarly, a conversation is not meaningful on its own, but is experienced as meaningful when one attributes meaning to it. This is why, often, a person that struggles with meaninglessness, will tend to have meaningless conversations also in therapy.
A sense of meaning is an internal experience that stems from a lack of meaninglessness rather than an experience of meaningfulness. This is why people who experience meaning often struggle to convey what they find meaningful. They will, however, be able to tell you that they do not experience meaninglessness. Conversely, a person searching for meaning, purpose and fulfilment by trying out different things in the hope that one of them resonates is merely searching externally for something they lack internally.
A sense of meaning and purpose is part of a functioning personality. It increases with the integration of one's sense of self. Psychotherapy, as such, is not a process of finding meaning; it is a process of developing the capacity to experience it.
Ales Zivkovic, MSc (TA Psych), CTA(P), PTSTA(P), Psychotherapist, Counsellor, Supervisor
Ales Zivkovic is a psychotherapist, counsellor, and clinical supervisor. He holds an MSc in Transactional Analysis Psychotherapy awarded by Middlesex University in London. He is also a Provisional Teaching and Supervising Transactional Analyst (PTSTA-P) and a Certified Transactional Analyst in the field of Psychotherapy (CTA-P). Ales gained extensive experience during his work with individuals and groups in the UK National Health Service (NHS) and his private psychotherapy, counselling, and clinical supervision practice in central London, UK. He was also a member of the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP). Ales works with individuals, couples, and groups. In clinical setting, he especially focuses on the treatment of issues of childhood trauma, personality disorders, and relationship issues. A large proportion of his practice involves online psychotherapy as he works with clients from all over the world. Ales developed a distinct psychotherapeutic approach called interpretive dynamic transactional analysis psychotherapy (IDTAP). More about Ales, as well as how to reach him, can be found here.
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