Onat Ozden

Hello, I am Onat Ozden, an Existential Psychotherapist. I also utilise Systemic and Psycho-Trauma approaches. Therapy is a collaborative exploration into the complex subjectivity that is ‘you’. Just like other therapeutic approaches, existential therapy helps people who are suffering and in crisis. Every now and then, we all come across circumstances that challenge our basic sense of security, identity or significance in life. Although these experiences can be painful and make us feel hopeless, they also provide us a great opportunity of growth through questioning our deeply held personal values in life and beliefs about how the world functions. By illuminating our human limitations and unique constraints, we can start to truly understand our distress and come to choose and construct our own way of being that is both meaningful and fulfilling.

The Existential approach is against categorising our unique personal experiences while avoiding stigmatising labels. Instead Existentialism focuses on the paradoxical nature of humans; on the one hand each person is unique in how they understand and experience their lives, on the other hand there is a universality to the ‘human experience’ in trying to make sense of one’s shared suffering. Dysfunctional behaviours or unhealthy symptoms are not pathologized, but understood as an attempt of coping with difficulties and an expression of one’s disconnection from themselves, their surroundings and from reality.

Additionally, social identities such as religion, gender, sexuality, ethnicity etc were always things I wondered upon and reflected on. As a gay man growing up in Istanbul, I experienced oppression based on my sexual identity, whereas growing up as ethnically a 'white Turk' I always made an active choice in realizing the privileges that came with it and prioritised educating myself on the Kurdish and Armenian oppression within Turkey. Social identities are a huge part of what makes us 'us', which are usually not tackled in counselling to the extend as it should. Better understanding of our experiences around both oppression and privilege has the potential for us to view some of our sufferings from a new perspective.