Naming Your Limits As a Tool For Hope: Anxious Times, Part 4 (#391)

Summary

Podcast Summary: Religion on the Mind – "Naming Your Limits As a Tool For Hope: Anxious Times, Part 4" (#391)

Host: Dr. Dan Koch
Guest: Kristen Tiedman
Date: April 2, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode, the fourth in the "Anxious Times" miniseries, explores how existential psychology—specifically the concepts of "the necessary," "the impossible," and "the desirable" (from Emmy van Deurzen)—can help individuals navigate collective and personal anxiety during tumultuous periods. Dr. Dan Koch and collaborator Kristen Tiedman provide a practical framework for understanding and naming the limits of reality, moving from existential frustration to value-driven hope and actionable goals.

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Key Themes & Discussion Points

1. Review of the Existential Triad

• [03:00–05:01] Dan recaps last week's discussion of the "necessary"—the unchangeable limits of reality (mortality, time, embodiment, etc.).
  • Quote (Dan, 03:04): “These are unchangeable limits of reality... things like mortality, time, embodiment, political and psychological difference.”
• The focus of today: moving from "the impossible" (desirable but unattainable) to "the desirable" (rooted in values and aligned with reality).

2. The Four Step Existential Process

• [05:01] Dan outlines the four steps:

  1. Identify the hard limits of reality (the necessary)
  2. Name what is desired but impossible under current constraints
  3. Extract the underlying values from these impossible desires
  4. Set specific, realistic actions that reflect those values without contradicting reality
  • Quote (Dan, 05:32):

  “So now we've also brought in the values and priorities that we have extracted from the pain of the stuff we wish could be true… That's really where we're honing in, I think, on the anxious times aspect.”

3. Naming the Impossible

• Dr. Dan offers collective anxieties as examples of “impossibles” that many wish for:

  • [07:08] A shared informational reality across socio-political divides

  • [09:18] Robust international collaboration on climate change and AI safety

  • [10:29] Mature, compassionate immigration policy in the US

  • Quote (Dan, 08:02):

  “You see how that's something that like, okay, that’s not to be possible—not in 2026 anyway. It might have been possible in 1976… but it’s not possible today. But you see how it’s a good thing to want.”

• Nuance: Kristen notes the tension between accepting limits and continuing to strive for progress.

  • Quote (Kristen, 08:38):

  “I can already hear people… parsing things out, like, ‘Well, we should fight for this.’ And it’s like, okay, yes. But even if you’re doing that, you have to accept where we currently are.”

• Kristen adds a personal, generational example: the improbability of influencer fame as an escape from economic anxiety.

  • [12:51] “Maybe an attachment to this impossible or Black Swan possibility... It’s tough—technically possible, but so unlikely.” — Kristen

4. From the Impossible to the Desirable: Extracting Values

• [15:30–18:33] Dan works through an example, dissecting why he wants a shared informational reality:

  • Underlying values: Open-mindedness, emotional maturity, and media literacy.

  • Kristen adds: Relational closeness.

  • Quote (Dan, 17:44):

  “What is it that I care about that I find valuable that we could extract from that wish... For me: open-mindedness, emotional maturity, basic media literacy.”

  • Quote (Kristen, 18:15):

  “I think there’s something about... relational closeness. It kind of puts a wedge in things and it’s hard... The value of trying to foster that is big for me.”

5. Taking Action Aligned With Values

• [18:33–20:37] Now at "the desirable": What actions or goals rooted in those values are truly possible?

  • Examples: Working on personal open-mindedness, seeking relational closeness with individuals, supporting educational efforts around media literacy.
  • Quote (Dan, 20:37):

  “…existential psychology is first and foremost an individual psychology… how do I, thrown into the ocean, learn how to surf?”

• Recognize what you CAN control: behavior, growth, local action—rather than futile efforts against society-wide limits.

6. Reflection, Self-Responsibility, and Regret

• [22:36–26:26] Kristen raises the issue of feeling regret or frustration when our behaviors fall short of our own values—sometimes only becoming clear in hindsight.
  • Is the existential process partly about aligning conscious values and behavior, and recognizing legitimate regrets?
  • Quote (Kristen, 23:21):

  “Maybe a lot of our frustration in life... is coming from the fact that we’re recognizing where we’re not just fully living into [our values].”

• Dan confirms: Existential therapy encourages a “clear-eyed” look at where we’ve self-deceived or failed—balancing this with acknowledgment of external factors beyond our control.
  • Quote (Dan, 24:17):

  “Identifying legitimate regrets is definitely a part of doing existential therapy… it’s not a beat yourself up modality... but it’s really trying to do both of those things.”

7. Cultural Pressures and Avoidance of Responsibility

• [25:35–26:52] They discuss generational and cultural trends (particularly in left-leaning, younger demographics) toward blaming external factors for personal setbacks—how existential realism can help navigate both individual agency and social context.

8. Humor and Humanity

• The episode concludes with lightness: Kristen makes a “Bohemian Rhapsody” joke about reality vs. fantasy ([26:52–27:16]), showcasing the show’s accessible, personable tone.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Analog Note-taking & AI ([00:15–02:34]):

  • Dan jokes about “going analog” and his resistance to AI, quipping, “When they write the history of the great AI Rebellion, there will be a chapter dedicated to me handwriting my notes for episode prep instead of using ChatGPT.”

• Naming Reality as Triage ([04:28]):

  • “It’s a form of triage... There’s kind of a similar thought process in terms of like sort of checking off possibilities or possible directions.”

• On Accepting Limits and Avoiding Futility ([05:32]):

  • “We are not sidestepping [pain and anxiety], we’re actually looking at it and extracting positive stuff out of it. That’s going to be sort of the meat of the concept today.”

• On Individual Responsibility in Existential Therapy ([20:37]):

  • “Existential psychology is first and foremost an individual psychology... What do I do, thrown into the ocean, to learn to surf?”

• On Regret and Values ([23:21]):

  • “Once you find [the value]... I can look back even in my own life and say, I probably would even assign the word ‘regret’ to some things... Oh, I don’t think that was living up to my values... But I couldn’t have articulated that at the time.”

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:15–02:34: Analog note-taking, show banter, analogy between prepping for the episode and resisting AI.
• 03:00–05:01: Review of existential triad and the stepwise process.
• 07:08–12:51: Collective impossibles—media reality, international collaboration, immigration policy; generational anxieties.
• 15:30–18:33: Extracting values from impossible desires (open-mindedness, emotional maturity, media literacy, relational closeness).
• 18:33–20:37: Translating values into realistic, actionable goals.
• 22:36–26:26: Aligning with values, dealing with regret, honesty about personal shortcomings.
• 25:35–26:52: Contemporary trends in externalizing responsibility; cultural resonance of existential process.
• 26:52–End: Humor and closure (“Bohemian Rhapsody” joke).

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Summary Takeaways

• Hope through Limits: By honestly naming what cannot be achieved (the impossible), we can discover what truly matters to us (our values), and orient our lives toward concrete, realistic expressions of those values (the desirable)—even amidst collective anxiety and uncertainty.
• Personal Agency and Acceptance: Existential psychology blends acceptance of real constraints with self-responsibility, aiming for growth—not futile struggle against immutable limitations.
• Relational and Social Nuance: The process can lead to both individual and collective action, but always starts with clear-eyed self-reflection and naming what we can (and cannot) control.
• Grounded Optimism: Acknowledging the impossible can paradoxically increase hope by clarifying focus and preventing wasted energy.

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For more insights and the continuation of this conversation, listeners are encouraged to join Dan’s Patreon.

Transcript

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[Dr. Dan Koch]

Welcome back, everybody, to Religion on the Mind and more specifically to this miniseries we are calling anxious times. I'm Dr. Dan Koch, licensed therapist and psychology of religion researcher, and I'll be joined in these episodes by a longtime friend of the POD and collaborator, Kristen Tiedman. For each Anxious Times episode, we're going to be highlighting one or more specific concepts from existential psychology and practically applying them to living through unsettling periods like the present moment. This first set will include five or six episodes, and we plan to return for more later on, but possibly in the fall. Let's dive in. Okay, Kristen, I know you and I are both big fans of the HBO show the Pit, and this opening joke is only a very mild spoiler for season two, but I did want to start out by saying, you know, people can't see this. They don't see us over at Video. It's audio only. But I'm holding in my hand this nice little paper notebook, and much like the ER at the Pit, I've gone analog. I've gone analog this week. No Google Docs. It's all handwritten notes. I scanned them and sent them over to you as part of our prep, and we're gonna see how that feels. But I feel a bit more like personal investment already.

[Kristen Tiedman]

You know, I mean, you know, they have those studies, too. They say the handwriting, blah, blah, blah, does something.

[Dr. Dan Koch]

Yeah. For learning and. Yeah, yeah. For encoding and learning information. Yeah.

[Kristen Tiedman]

And my one Prof. In grad school allowed no technology in the classroom, so that's when I really. And copious note taking was required. So initially I would get hand cramps. I had to relearn how to write a lot. And then. Then my muscles got strong and I was able to write like the wind.

[Dr. Dan Koch]

Yeah, you do have to. You gotta.

[Kristen Tiedman]

Political philosophy.

[Dr. Dan Koch]

Yeah. Oh, there you go. Well, when they write the history of the great AI Rebellion, there will be a chapter dedicated to me handwriting my notes for episode prep instead of using. Using ChatGPT.

[Kristen Tiedman]

I love it.

[Dr. Dan Koch]

Okay, so here's where we're at. Last week we talked about. We did the first half of this Emmy Van Dersen triad through the necessary, the impossible, and the desirable. If you go through all three on a particular topic, like with a therapy client, for instance, it is sort of this holistic, quite practical process that you do end up with something really tangible at the end. And I sort of teased last week that we weren't going to get to that in that first part, but we are going to get to that today in a number of specific examples. So I think that will be a bit satisfying for listeners, I hope. But to recap briefly, the necessary, which is what last week was about, these are unchangeable limits of reality. We talked about mortality, we talked about time, we talked about embodiment, we talked about political difference, psychological difference between people. You know, that we have agency but so do other people. We require calories, these kinds of things, these unchangeable limits. And the practical effect of that conversation was really around 2, not wasting energy and therefore feeling let down by ignoring those limits, deceiving ourselves, maybe trying to have our cake and eat it too. But today we're gonna actually get deeper into values and sort of value centric action, not merely sort of saving energy from tilting at windmills. And we're getting into the impossible and the desirable, which we're gonna cover both of those. Cause they're really kind of a 1, 2 movement.

[Kristen Tiedman]

Nice. We've always thought, you know, we've heard with God all things are possible and that's great. But today we learned about the impossible. So we have to strip away, strip away some of our old notions.

[Dr. Dan Koch]

Yeah, yeah, that's good. Okay.

[Kristen Tiedman]

Can God make a rock that God can't move is the real. You know, we are going to actually

[Dr. Dan Koch]

steer pretty clear of navel gazing questions like that today. So main takeaways. I like to do this at the beginning and the end of these episodes, maybe to keep the pit metaphor going. It's a form of triage. There's like a. Some of this feels a bit to me like triage where you're like, okay, what's going on here? What can we eliminate what remains? There's kind of a similar thought process in terms of like sort of checking off possibilities or possible directions, that kind of a thing.

[Kristen Tiedman]

I mean, go, Dr. Dan.

[Dr. Dan Koch]

Wrong kind of doctor. So here's the kind of four step process that we are talking about today, which is including last week's sort of necessary work. So step one, identify the hard limits of reality. That's what we did last week. Step two, identify things that we would really love for good reasons but that are not possible because of either the limits we've named in step one or some other reasons. That is what Emmy van Dersen calls the impossible. Step three, convert those items in the impossible, the things that we would like to do for good reasons into values or priorities. So make them A bit more generalized. And then number four, identify specific goals or actions to that align with those values, that align with those values or priorities and that don't contradict the limits of reality from one and so are in theory accomplishable. But with existential therapy, of course, there are no guarantees. We don't know the future, we're not sure that we can accomplish them. But at least we are not wasting our energy on things that are in principle not accomplishable. But now we've also brought in the the values and priorities that we have extracted from the pain of the stuff we wish could be true. And that's really where we're honing in, I think on the anxious times aspect that there's real pain, there's real anxiety, there's real grief, and we are not sidestepping it, we're actually looking at it and extracting positive stuff out of it. That's going to be sort of the meat of the concept today. How's that sound?

[Kristen Tiedman]

I am excited as always, getting practical.

[Dr. Dan Koch]

And a brief connection back to episode two. In Boundary Situations, we might say Boundary situations make clear some of the limits that we named last week with the necessary. And then now we are sort of doing the next step in that ongoing process. That's how I would situate it in the larger series.

[Kristen Tiedman]

Okay.

[Dr. Dan Koch]

Okay. And when you hear this note, that means I have turned a page in my Analog journal. Okay. We're one quarter of the way through my handwritten notes. All right, so let's apply this concept of the impossible to our collective upheaval, collective anxiety, these collective events we talked about in the Boundary situations episode. So again, these are things that we wish could happen and we wish they could happen for good reasons. All right, so I came up with three, and I'll give you a chance to respond if you want after each. And then you can also feel free to add in your own. So in terms of this collective anxiety and upheaval, number one, I wish we could have a shared informational reality across socio political divides. Do you wish that too, Kristen?

[Kristen Tiedman]

So much, Dan.

[Dr. Dan Koch]

You see how that's something that like, okay, that's not to be possible, not in 2026 anyway. It's not going to be possible. It might have been possible in 1976 or 46 or something. It's not possible today. But you see how it's a good thing to want. I want that because it would be great to be able to sort of see the world clearly with someone on the other side of these issues or the media landscape. Or something like this, maybe loved ones in my life. That's not a bad thing to want. It's a good thing to want also. It's not possible. And that that alone is like some of the work just accepting that.

[Kristen Tiedman]

Yeah. And I mean, I think people can kind of. I can already hear people like parsing things out and be like, well, we should fight for this. And it's like, okay, yes. But even if you're doing that, you have to accept where we currently are. And I think that's something I have trouble doing. I'm sure I'm not alone there.

[Dr. Dan Koch]

Well, and you know, skipping forward, there may be ways that you individually in your life can do things that would work toward a shared informational reality, maybe with the individuals in your life. Right. Like maybe you can't solve the national thing or maybe you can maybe you are become part of a movement that is working to get ballot measures going that would, you know, that would help with this or, you know, there's any number of ways you might address it practically. But yeah, not just banging her head against the wall of like just wishing that I could send my newsmax pilled aunt, you know, facts that she would just accept. It's not going to happen. She doesn't trust them. Right. Okay. Number two things I wish could be true international collaboration, robust international collaboration on climate change and AI safety alignment. That's a good thing to want. I want it for good reasons. It's pretty clearly not happening right now anyway. Maybe it could happen, but right now I want that, but I can't get it.

[Kristen Tiedman]

Yeah, I think it's really frustrating. I mean, this is where you can get so pessimistic, I think with a lot of the AI stuff and I mean, yeah, kind of job pessimism, especially for white collar sort of positions. But it's so. It's, I think, acutely felt among people. But yeah, there's just, it's a lot of question marks with AI. That's a whole conversation. And so we kind of have to accept a lot of unknowns.

[Dr. Dan Koch]

Yeah. So this is my. The third one is my kind of personal political issue. I think we talked about this a bit in episode one or two. An item that would fall under the impossible for me. I wish for good reasons that we could have compassionate and mature immigration enforcement and agreement by all or most Americans on some basic standards for compassion and maturity. I would love to have that. That would be a great thing to have. It does not look like I can have that right now.

[Kristen Tiedman]

Yeah, Yeah. I mean it's funny, I just saw something quite recently where there are a larger constituency of people from both sides that agree than we think.

[Dr. Dan Koch]

Yes.

[Kristen Tiedman]

But again the, the information that we're getting and what we're dealing with does not show that. And I mean it's very obviously that's part of, that's kind of baked into this whole thing is the way media portrays everything and it's just like, okay, we have to recognize that that's not gonna change overnight.

[Dr. Dan Koch]

It won't change overnight. I do think looking to polling like that can be quite helpful and can be encouraging and, and actually can even inform items that might fall under the final category of the desirable. That is like in principle achievable things that I can work toward. Right. But what we actually find like in the last, really, I mean this is off the top of my head, but something like since Obama we more have a sort of a ping ponging back and forth of like a lot of immigration and then a huge clampdown and then a lot like Biden. I think it's uncontroversial even on the left to say that Biden's administration really bungled the southern border and let in something like, you know, it's like four or five times as many non legal crossings as Trump's administration before him. And like that's part of the, part of like what's going on now within this massive crackdown. So we, we ping pong back and forth and I would really love if we didn't, but I don't have control over that. So like that's a good thing to want. I want it for good reasons. It's not possible right now. Did you have any other items in this sort of collective upheaval, collective anxiety that might fit under this category of the impossible?

[Kristen Tiedman]

Yeah, I kind of took a different spin here because something we've talked about a lot is maturity. And so maybe tell me if this fits, if this kind of would be a category that would work. We have currently a generation of more, you know, of younger people who are aspiring to be things such as influencers and to kind of get into this, I mean this arena of whether we like it or not, get rich quick kind of like, I mean, or that the fame and chasing that, and it's now this goal of many young people to be an influencer, but that's statistically quite improbable. And even the people who have made it or are influencers, they're not making a living. The majority of them are not making a Living right. Very, very few are making a solid living, and even fewer are making, you know, boku bucks, as my mom likes to say. So I would say this is something where, if you have so many people aspiring to it, there's a little bit of maybe an attachment to this impossible or black swan possibility. I mean, it's tough, technically possible, but so unlikely. Do you think this kind of fits that? And I think that's seen, you know, it's seen as an escape from the anxiety to just say, well, if I'm rich, if I'm famous, I won't have to worry about these things. Is that kind of along these lines?

[Dr. Dan Koch]

Yeah, I like that. I would say that if you have an individual person who's like, I'm gonna be a successful influencer, and if they are being motivated by this sort of collective anxiety, they don't feel confident that they can just, like, get a normal career, for instance, because of the way that the economic chips are stacked against them, then I would say that's sort of taking. Trying to address that collective anxiety through an individual project. But if it was a therapy client or coaching client, it would be like, okay, let's talk about the realism of that goal. The influencer is just sort of a newer version of it. But, like, think about someone who's like, I'm gonna be a rock star. I'm going to be a movie star. I mean, there's always been a sort of. I will sort of skip straight to stardom and fame and plenty of money as an out. And for a lot of people, I've known many people like this. I probably have been guilty of this myself to some degree, especially when I was younger, of really kind of ignoring the realities and the likelihood of things like that and telling myself that I had a greater chance to be great. At one point, I infamously. In my early band days, I gosh, I fucking regret saying this, but I one time said to my band, I was like, 20. I was like, guys, I'm wondering if I might be a musical genius. And, man, do I regret that I never lived that down for the next eight years of the band. And I was wrong. I was not a musical genius. Right? All right, so let's talk about this next move. So. So that's the impossible. And for each of these, I want to bring in the desirable sooner than later, as opposed to sort of saving it for the end, because this is really like a 1, 2 move. So I picked one of these, and we could also respond to one of the other ones if you want to. So the item from the Impossible that I chose was this shared reality, this shared informational reality, right? So that's something that I want for good reasons, but I can't get it right now. Well, when we talk about the desirable, we're saying, okay, what values underlie that desire? So what is it that I care about that I find valuable that we could extract from that wish for a shared reality? And I came up with three items. Other people would maybe have different ones. This is always gonna be a little bit personal. So this is not why everybody would want that shared reality, but this is why I personally want the shared reality. Number one, open mindedness. Something that I value. Number two, emotional maturity. Increasingly, as I get older and also as I work with more and more clients, right. Like I, I, that, that seems to be getting in the way sometimes of that shared reality. And then basic media literacy. That one came up for me because of, you know, thinking through some of like the sort of media criticism, media studies angles, amusing ourselves to death, Neil postman, Marshall McLuhan. The message is the medium and sort of this turn kind of back to like everything's becoming television and reality television. And it seems like that's sort of degrading. And then people sort of don't know how to figure out what news or information to trust. So like those are three things I value. Open mindedness, emotional maturity, basic media literacy. Would you add anything else in there? Like, is there a distinct thing that you value that would be related to wanting this shared reality?

[Kristen Tiedman]

I mean, I think there's something about, I don't know if I'd say it, like getting along as a value or being close to people, maybe like that relational closeness. I think that's something where it kind of puts a wedge in things 100% and it's hard. That's one of those things. Yeah, you can't change other people. But the value of trying to foster that is big for me.

[Dr. Dan Koch]

Okay, so then the final question. This is really where we get to the desirable. The items in the desirable, this final category, are in theory achievable. So they're not contradicting the limits of nature, but they're not necessarily achievable, but they could be. So they could be actions or goals or even just sort of like the north point on a compass. I would like to work on my own open mindedness. I would like to work on my own emotional maturity. Maybe I'm lacking some media literacy. Maybe I have other things that it's like, oh, when you Say, relational closeness. Right. Okay, so in what way am I maybe letting some of the hard limits around a shared informational environment that I wish we had get in the way of relational closeness with this loved one? Right. Is there a place for me to grow here? Or is there some tangible goal or whatever like, you know, some people will do? Hey, I think that this loved one of mine would be down to, like, trade articles or trade books to read, or does have enough emotional maturity to, like, get together and see if we can find some common ground across difference. Other times you're gonna recognize that one or more people involved in that do not have the ability to do that. And that might be a harder limit that you can't. That you just be bumping up against. Again, it'd be discernment on an individual, case by case basis.

[Kristen Tiedman]

But what I'm hearing, and maybe. I don't know why this is hitting me anew kind of in thinking about this, but it's really turning back to yourself and not just saying what's possible, impossible. Obviously that's kind of the underlying theme, but what's within your realm of control and mainly pertaining to you, like, what is, you know, you're saying, oh, I want to be close to that person, but kind of recognizing they can't really do any. They can't do anything. I can only do what I can do. Is that a good way to put it?

[Dr. Dan Koch]

Yes, because existential psychology is first and foremost an individual psychology. It is about. I mean, existentialism is about the individual human being and where we find ourselves, what we are thrown into a world that is already going before we arrive. And a lot of sort of quote unquote decisions have already been made, so to speak, about our lives. We don't choose our genetics. We don't choose our family of origin. We don't choose our ethnicity, nationality, and cultural context that we're born into. We don't choose the year of our birth. And so it is about like, well, okay, so given that I am sort of thrown into the ocean, so to speak, how do I learn how to surf? That's kind of the basic thing. So it does end up filtering back through the individual in almost all cases. But for instance, the. Let's say the thing that it's like, let's say someone listening, and they're like, it's the media literacy thing. That's the really big one for me. Okay. Are there any groups in your area who are working on elementary, junior high, or high school curricula around media literacy? Is There a way for you to get involved. Is that connected to your world at all? Right. So it can be collective action. It's not only individual, but you also might go, oh, you know what, the open mindedness thing really pisses me off because actually I struggle with open mindedness. Right. Sometimes we are really frustrated by the things in other people that are actually growth areas for ourselves again, person to person. But then you could go, okay, well then, so maybe actually I could do my own work here and I'd probably find that really valuable and. And then who knows what that would open up and what other relationships. And all the way back to episode one. Oh, that makes me feel anxious. But maybe I use that energy to sort of expand my world.

[Kristen Tiedman]

Yeah, I think it's just, I don't know, becoming more clear. The elucidation you're providing is really helping me, but.

[Dr. Dan Koch]

Shut the fuck up. Oh my gosh. Don't talk to me that way.

[Kristen Tiedman]

Oh my gosh. But I was gonna say one other. I don't know if Emmy van der Zen talks about this, but one other thing I wonder is as we run into these values, I am curious if it's like when we're kind of hitting them or recognizing them is part of our, like you're kind of saying, yeah, the open mindedness. Maybe we are recognizing we're not fully living up to what we value for ourselves. But would you say there's like a lack of alignment or a lack of. I'm trying to find the best way to put this.

[Dr. Dan Koch]

If you identify a value that you're still not really great at, is that what you're talking about?

[Kristen Tiedman]

More that I think that, yeah, the process of identifying the values, I think maybe a lot of our frustration in life maybe like is a lot of this coming from the fact that we're recognizing where we're not just fully living into them. Like, I think if you're kind of like subconsciously they exist, obviously, but if you haven't identified them, there's kind of this vague frustration. But once you find, find it. And again, with all these givens, you're like, man, I can look back even in my own life and say, I probably would even assign the word regret to some things that I did out of, I don't know, some sort of not thoughtful, discerning process. And now I'm like, oh, I really, I don't think that was living up to my values for X, Y or Z reasons. But I couldn't have articulated that at the time. Is that, is that Kind of part of this. Does she speak to that at all?

[Dr. Dan Koch]

Identifying legitimate regrets is definitely a part of doing existential therapy. Yeah, it's really encouraging the client to clear eyed notice places where they have deceived themselves, where they have told themselves they can have their cake and eat it too, when where they have told themselves it's someone else's fault and not their own. Now that is also balanced by a sober look at the larger world, including all the forces that they did not choose. So it's not a beat yourself up modality in that sense, but it's really trying to do both of those things. I think she would say that she likes to start with the necessary. Not only because it's maybe just the most grounding, but it also kind of takes the pressure off a little bit. You kind of, you ease your way into it by going, okay, what are the things like gravity, calories, what are the things that I have absolutely no control over and that are definitely not my fault? And then you kind of, you go from there and you end up when you get to the desirable. Okay, now here's the thing in front of me that I am really choosing and I am on the hook for this and this is what I'm gonna do about it. I'm like taking sort of full responsibility.

[Kristen Tiedman]

Well, and I think this goes to some of the impulses of the age or what I would say maybe skewing slightly in the left leaning youth ish culture, millennials maybe included there, of really wanting to say so little is your fault. You can say, well, this didn't work out for this reason or that reason. I mean, it reminds me of our great divorce conversation where it's like, oh, just the chips are stacked against you and some of those characters. And I, that that is a way to maybe feel good in the shorter term. Like I think it assuages your kind of impulse to feel like you were. You don't want to admit your failings, I guess is part of it. But like how does are there? Well, the desirable then is kind of continuing to face that, I guess.

[Dr. Dan Koch]

Yeah, it's like choosing something that is genuinely coming out of who you are. Right. But doing so in a way that acknowledges the real world limitations. And sometimes, you know, you might kind of have a first draft of this and then you start doing it and you realize that you got some of those limitations wrong and you might revise or you know, sort of tighten it up, tighten up the plan a little bit.

[Kristen Tiedman]

Yeah, I mean, is this the real world or is this just fantasy caught in a landslide.

[Dr. Dan Koch]

An escape from reality. And then we'll go into, like, some Italian. That joke was not for the young listeners. That was Bohemian Rhapsody. Okay,

[Kristen Tiedman]

You can listen to the rest

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[Dr. Dan Koch]

Sam.