This post almost serves as a Part II to my last one, Doing All the Things You’re Not Supposed to Do After Divorce. While my divorce was a transformative experience, my time in Vienna, Austria opened my heart and eyes. It was as if it woke me from a deep slumber that I didn’t realize I had been in my entire life. It was this experience that really shaped the person that I am today and that influenced my approach to therapy.
The entire two-week trip was absolutely magical. Vienna is a clean, beautiful city with well-manicured lawns covered in tulips — my favorite flower. This was the third and longest of the study abroad trips I had done. Our classes were held at the Sigmund Freud University (SFU), where we studied Dream Analysis for the first week, followed by a week of Existential Analysis. I met people from around the world, which brought in a fun, new perspective into our classroom discussions that we eagerly continued outside of class over a bottle of wine.
I could go on forever about the incredible conversations, jokes, dancing in random places, crying in public, and relationships developed over this two-week span. However, the most influential point of this trip was the first day of our Existential Analysis class. It was a bright, sunny July day as we sat in class and met our professor for the week, Dr. Alfred Längle. It was on this morning when I felt a shift in me.
He started the lecture by discussing the goal of Existential Analysis — to become more human, the person who I am, a truly authentic self. And then it happened. He posed the question that he stated we always carry with us:
“How good or fulfilling is my life?”
It was at this moment that I felt like I finally woke up — with a jolt. It felt as if he took the story of my life as a neat stack of papers into his hands and tossed those papers into the air. As I watched the story of my life slowly drift to the floor in a scattered mess, he continued on with the lecture. He discussed the importance of finding your inner consent — giving oneself permission to be who you are right now, to do (or not do) what it is that you desire. According to Dr. Längle, in order to provide oneself with inner consent you must “say yes to life.”
This yes is the turning point of existence.
I felt tears welling up in the corners of my eyes and a lump in my throat during this lecture. I knew that even with a year of being on my own in Los Angeles and facing many fears as I navigated life post-divorce, I still was not feeling fulfilled in life. I still was not living true to my authentic self.
Honestly, I didn’t even know who or what my authentic self even was. I knew that I was enjoying living a completely different lifestyle in Los Angeles from what I had ever known. But sitting in that classroom in the middle of the most beautiful city I had ever experienced, I was hit with the realization that my life was not as fulfilling as I wanted it to be.
I had spent the last year facing challenges and experiencing a new life that I created after my divorce. Yet, I was still living a life based on expectations and shoulds. I was finishing up my first year in a three year PsyD program, which I had decided to attend in order to learn and gain more clinical skills and because I wanted that “Doctor” title (although I would have to go by the name “Dr. R” because people can rarely pronounce my last name correctly).
My learning experience at SFU showed me that I was not getting the educational experience in the United States that I wanted. I wasn’t learning anything that I didn’t already know from my Master’s program but was suddenly in much more student loan debt.
A couple of conversations later, with the director of the PhD program at SFU, my mentor, and with my friend who attended SFU — I decided to say yes to my life. I decided to drop out of my PsyD program in Los Angeles with the intention of moving to Vienna. While there wasn’t an Existential Analysis PhD program at SFU, I knew that I wanted to be able to study with Dr. Längle as much as possible. I had also fallen in love with the city.
Upon my return to Los Angeles a few days later, I started the process of informing my school that I would not be returning for the fall semester and looking for employment and housing back home in Phoenix. The plan was to return to Phoenix so I could finish my clinical hours and obtain my independent license while I applied to the PhD program at SFU, worked on learning German, and saved for the big move to the other side of the world.
Fast forward to today — 5.5 years later. Obviously, my plans changed. I returned from Los Angeles and was accepted into the PhD program at SFU. However, the logistics of continuing in my career would be difficult in Vienna, especially since my attempt to learn German was going so poorly. I also fell in love with Phoenix and it became a city where I actually wanted to be. Getting to experience Phoenix as a single, slightly more confident adult helped me to get to know my city and myself better.
Say yes to life.
This statement has since become my personal motto. I use it as a hashtag in every Instagram post. I say it in therapy and talk about it’s meaning often. I even got the words “say yes” tattooed on my arm to serve as a daily reminder to always work towards saying yes to my most authentic self.
With so much time that has passed since that first Existential Analysis lecture, the magical feeling of that moment has dwindled a bit as it is now stored into a mental cabinet of fond memories. Every day life with its stressors, joys, worries, and mundane moments can make it easy to forget about our intentions in life. Since that beautiful trip, I have experienced anxiety and heartache that even a tattoo couldn’t remind me to find the joy in life. But once I remembered and made the conscious decision to provide myself with that inner consent again, then I started to be on my way to being an active participant in my life. I started to create and experience the joy and fulfillment of life because of the permission I gave myself to do so.
As Dr. Längle stated, the question is always with us. So I ask you — how fulfilling is your life and what are you willing to do to create a life you enjoy?
