"Some time ago, a client came to me facing what seemed like a thousand decisions: where to live, which job to take, whom to love. As we worked together, those many paths narrowed to one persistent question: Am I loving the right person? Or, more precisely: Do I want to love this man, even if facts suggest I take other routes?"
"We often imagine our lives in terms of clear either/or choices-as if we are standing between two equally viable futures. But as Søren Kierkegaard argued, the Either/Or is rarely about external options. It is about how we choose, not what we choose. The tension of the Either/Or reveals our anxiety about commitment and identity. The more existential the decision, the fewer true options we have. There is, often, only one path that fully aligns with our becoming. Everything else is a distraction."
"Distraction from what? Usually, it is a distraction from our most authentic sense of self. When a choice is vital to who we are, the right path is already there-waiting for us to reconnect with ourselves and feel that alignment. The presence of enticing alternatives often signals our fear of fully inhabiting our identity and embracing what we feel, and what, deep down, we know to be right."
A client faced numerous life decisions about residence, career, and love, which coalesced into the question of whether to love a particular man despite contrary facts. The therapist invoked Kierkegaard's Either/Or to reframe choices as about how one chooses rather than external options, linking the tension to anxiety about commitment and identity. Authentic choices emerge when one reconnects with one's true self; attractive alternatives often signal fear of inhabiting that identity. The central risk lies not choosing wrongly but never choosing fully. The therapist then asked the client to feel rather than reason, shifting focus to present desire.
Read at Psychology Today
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]