The Sense of Meaning and Purpose
The sense of meaning and purpose is, in one form or another, 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, a sense of boredom or mediocrity, or just a sense of something missing or a general dissatisfaction or resignation with life. Whilst these experiences may be conscious, some of them lie completely out of one’s awareness.
The search for meaning and purpose is most often accompanied by a misapprehension that the meaning is to be found in one thing—in something that lies outside of ourselves, or in something that we need to find or attain. For instance, a belief that meaning will come with finding the partner one has always been in search of or that it will come with starting a family and having children. Some may believe that moving far away and living a peaceful life, attaining success in professional life, or achieving wealth that will enable them to experience freedom, peace, or contentedness by stepping out of the rat race will bring meaning.
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 one has always strived for. Whilst the consciousness of these fantasies may vary, they are most often led by a perception 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 kinds”, once their “kids grow up”, once they “find what is fulfilling in life”, once they attain “a level of financial security”, etc.
Unconsciously, these quests 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 the 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 others’ needs, be in any way dependent on others, or be controlled by others.
Similarly, someone may feel that purpose and meaning can be found as they end their suffering, mediocrity, boredom, or cease to be the hostages of their own lives. Often the most intuitive solutions are, for instance, attainment of wealth, comfort, social or professional status, a fulfilling career, or just the perfect partner who can save them. Unfortunately, all this is a mirage that keeps their hopes up. And 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, if successful, however, one realises that, not only they believed in a fantasy, but also that the fantasy was largely based on unconscious beliefs and experiences. The purpose of the fantasy is to not lose hope that one’s unmet needs will someday be met, that the past injustices will be mended, and that the wound will be healed—so, that the person will some day 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 the experience. The sense of internal emptiness, lifelessness, or boredom renders life mediocre and purposeless. A person may find no meaning in the things they do, the lives they lead, the relationships they have. Nothing will give them that feeling or bring them the solution.
However, psychotherapy 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 internal, often unconscious, sense of internal emptiness, boredom, or mediocrity. Through psychotherapy, one often realises that the meaning will not come from the external world. It will not emerge from “doing something meaningful”. Nor can meaning be consumed by experiencing or acquiring “meaningful things”.
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.
A sense of meaning is an internal experience that comes from a lack of meaninglessness rather than an experience of meaningfulness. This is why someone that experiences meaning in life tends to have difficulties conveying what it is that they find meaningful. They will, however, be able to tell you that they do not experience meaninglessness. On the contrary, a person that is 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 that 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.
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