How Phenomenal

Whenever I start working with a client, as well as throughout our work together, I try to bring myself back to the same starting point: What is this person’s subjective experience of their life?

My aim is not at first to explain anything or to too quickly conceptualize, but is instead inspired by a philosophy called “phenomenology”, a philosophy that inspired and became an aspect of existentialism.

As intimidating as the name can sound, phenomenology is really rooted in something quite simple, which is describing phenomena. Phenomena here means the way things are experienced by us, not so much what they are objectively or conceptually.

In other words, a phenomenologist is not interested in understanding the forces at play behind an experience so much as describing the experience itself.

So rather than explaining something like a rainstorm in terms of moisture, atmospheric pressure, wind speed, temperature, etc, to a phenomenologist a rainstorm is the experience of a rainstorm, and getting to the thing-in-itself is about describing that experience. A rainstorm is the cold rush of wind across my cheek, the tug at my coat, the tapping sounds of the rain against my jacket, the darkening light, etc. 

In the realm of mental health, this same approach can be brought to something like anxiety. Rather than jumping to conceptual explanations of anxiety, there must first be an exploration and description of how a client with anxiety experiences that anxiety. What does it mean to that individual person when they say “anxiety”? How do they experience it? Let’s first describe that experience.

Phenomenologically, anxiety may be for one person the pressure in their chest, the knotted feeling in their stomach, the buzzing sensation in their hands, the biting of their gums, the intruding thought of “what if they don’t like me” or “what if I look bad”, the impulse to run or move, etc. 

Conceptualizing anxiety in terms of its potential causes can be useful, but will always be a step removed from what anxiety is in itself for the client, what their lived, embodied experience of it is. And so, it is in this lived experience that I first seek to connect and to find the understanding of relationship before explanation. 

First, we get phenomenological. We simply describe the experience. Concepts can come later as needed and as helpful.

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