Relationships Archives - Sergio Integral

When life looks fine, but something deeper feels unsettled

Picture someone with what looks like a good life: a promising career, people who love them, a full calendar, and a life that checks every box from the outside. Yet they may still wake up with a quiet, unsettling question: Is this really my life? Is this as good as it gets?

That question points toward what is often called existential anxiety in psychology. It is not necessarily a sign that something is wrong with you. It is a deeply human response to becoming aware of uncertainty, freedom, death, meaning, and the burden of taking ownership. We are all called to be fully alive, but often we do not know how.

Existential anxiety can be painful, even baffling, especially in a culture that rewards productivity, certainty, and the appearance of having “made it.” But some questions are not solved by better planning, another achievement, or the newest app. They ask us to pause and consider how we are living, what we value, and whether the life we have built still feels connected to something true inside us. Are the goals we are chasing really ours? Are they still worth it?

Key takeaways

Existential anxiety often arises when we confront meaning, freedom, mortality, isolation, or the responsibility of choosing a life.
It is not pathological, but it can become painful, persistent, overwhelming, and even paralyzing.
Therapy can help by listening to these questions and helping you find, or update, your own answers.

The questions beneath the anxiety

Existential anxiety is often hard to spot. It may first appear as restlessness, dread, boredom, indecision, irritability, or a sense that life has become strangely flat. It can surface as disappointment after finally achieving something we worked hard for, or unsettle us after a divorce, illness, birthday, career change, spiritual experience, accident, or the death of someone close.

On the surface, the questions may be practical: Should I stay in this job? Leave this relationship? Move? Change my life? But underneath, deeper undercurrents are at play. What really matters to me? What am I avoiding? What part of me have I ignored? Is this how I want to live the rest of my life?

Not all anxiety is existential. It can be shaped by trauma, stress, biology, social pressure, health concerns, family history, and the nervous system doing its best to protect us in a chaotic world. An integral approach does not romanticize anxiety. It asks what is happening at all the relevant levels: body, relationship, history, culture, circumstance, meaning, and soul.

Freedom and responsibility

Although it may sound paradoxical, one source of existential anxiety is freedom. We often imagine freedom as carefree, but real freedom bears responsibility. To choose one path is to let other paths go, at least for now. To stay in a relationship, leave one, become a parent or not, change careers, or admit that a former identity no longer fits, is to feel the weight of authorship. Sartre somewhat poignantly said that we are “condemned to be free.”

Many of us wish someone could tell us the right answer: “Just tell me what to do.” But while advice can be useful and guidance necessary, no one can live our life for us. We are responsible for our choices and their consequences, which is both nerve-wracking and the source of agency. The question shifts from “How do I avoid choosing wrong?” to “How can I take charge of this life that is actually mine?”

Meaning and the feeling that something is missing

This feeling usually does not arrive as a dramatic flare. It creeps into awareness while answering emails, sitting in traffic, preparing dinner, or scrolling through other people’s carefully edited lives. The question may not be “What is the meaning of life?” in some grand philosophical sense. It may be more personal: What do I really want to do? What matters enough to my limited time and attention?

Meaning can be found in relationship, work, service, creativity, devotion, family, community, play, spirituality, and care for the world. But it is different to each of us, and it changes over time. What was significant at twenty-five may not be enough at forty-five. What once felt like healthy ambition may later feel like a burden. What felt exciting may feel uninspiring.

There is no single purpose hidden somewhere that, once found, will solve the rest of life. Meaning is discovered, created, revised, lost, and found again.

Isolation, belonging, and being known

Even in close relationships, each of us carries an inner world that cannot be fully accessed by another: memories, sensations, longings, fears, and private meanings that remain ours alone. This recognition sometimes hurts, but it also makes intimacy more precious.

To know someone, and to be known, is a never-ending enterprise. It means risking being seen in our beauty, quirkiness, and uniqueness, while accepting that the seeing will never be complete. This is not an argument against relationship. It is an invitation toward deeper, more honest forms of it.

Mortality and loss

Sometimes existential anxiety emerges after a loss, a medical scare, becoming a parent, aging, or simply noticing time passing. Suddenly we face the fact that we are vulnerable and finite, something we work hard to keep below awareness. It can bring fear, sadness, urgency, or a sharper appreciation for life. These waking-up moments are often uncomfortable, but with proper support they can become opportunities to remember who we really are and what matters to us.

Since time is limited, what conversation has been postponed? What apology, creation, repair, project, or act of love matters now? The clock is always ticking. What you waiting for?

How therapy can help

Existentially informed psychotherapy offers a space for the mundane and the profound. We may talk about work stress, grief, heartbreak, family expectations, cultural identity, spiritual questions, or fear about the future.

Being seen and understood by someone can reduce the sense of isolation and create a holding space where these questions can be explored openly. There are no ready-made answers. But together, you can find your own.

Facing existential anxiety does not mean you have failed or that you made the wrong decisions. It may mean that life is knocking at your door, asking for better or updated answers. Do not ignore the call.

Sometimes existential anxiety feels never-ending or unbearable. You do not have to go through it alone. With support, things can get better. If it turns into thoughts of harming yourself, or you feel unable to stay safe, reach out immediately: call 988, contact emergency services, or seek urgent local support. There is help.

If this sounds familiar, existentially informed therapy can help you stay with the questions long enough to discover what they are asking of you. Let’s explore together meaning, relationships, grief, freedom, mortality, and the choices that shape your life. Become who you really are.

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Part of the raw musings of a psychotherapist

The Buddha proclaimed that there is no self. Buddhism encourages us to realize that our sense of who we are is an empty construction. There’s even a Ram Dass film called Becoming Nobody.

In contrast, the West wants us to become somebody. That is, to develop a cohesive, functional self, capable of setting boundaries, regulating affect, relating, and working well.

Today I want to focus on the Western side of this equation; on something I habitually see in therapy, though it is often hard to spot: the fear of not existing, which has nothing to do with the Buddhist no-self.

It sounds kind of weird, doesn’t it? Like something out of a fairy tale. Alice fearing that she might be nothing but some sort of figure in the Red King’s dream. But this is no fantasy.

Have you ever met someone constantly needing to be acknowledged or even admired? I’m sure you have. We may even be among them! Some find ways to get it through legitimate means. They find a platform that provides much-needed validation: performing, teaching, helping, creating… Others look for it, or even demand it, from those around them: parents, partners, children, co-workers, lovers…

I often meet them in therapy when their loved ones grow tired of having to prop them up, or, for the most successful among them, when they realize that all the fame, adulation, and acknowledgment are never enough to fill what feels like a hole within.

It is tempting to label them as narcissistic, and some may be, but when we dig deeper, we often find a deeply wounded and scared person facing an unbearable emptiness. A dread that, no matter how successful, funny, accomplished, or accommodating they are, they don’t matter. They feel unsubstantial, lacking matter. Nobody really cares. They could cease to exist, and nobody would even notice.

Although rarely articulated, they seem to fear that, if not noticed, they could dissolve like a dream upon awakening. To be clear, they don’t fear they would literally fade away; but a strange compulsion keeps them demanding attention because the alternative terrifies them.

How can this be?

Psychologically, we develop our sense of being real in relationship. Early on, we need to be seen, recognized, and responded to, not as stars, but simply as beings whose feelings, presence, and existence register in someone else’s mind. This is why young children yell things like, “Look, Mom, no hands!”

When that recognition (known as mirroring) is reliable enough, a person slowly develops an inner sense of solidity: I am here. I count. I remain myself even when no one is looking. But when that kind of acknowledgment is missing, inconsistent, or conditional, the person may continue to depend on outer confirmation to feel real. Then, being noticed starts to feel less like a satisfaction and more like a necessity.

That is why, for some, the hunger to be seen carries such desperation. What they are really fighting is not anonymity, but the old terror of feeling expendable, forgettable, irrelevant, as if they had no psychological weight. In milder forms, this manifests as shame, emptiness, or a chronic sense of not being important. In more serious forms, it feels like a threat to existence itself: If I do not register anywhere, if nobody notices me, do I even exist?

To put it simply, the fear of not mattering can devolve into something primal: the fear of not being, of becoming nothing in the eyes of others and, finally, in one’s own.

How can therapy help?

In a therapeutic relationship, a good-enough therapist offers a new kind of experience: one of being truly seen, perhaps for the first time. Over time, as the client is met by someone who notices them, takes them seriously, and does not reduce them to performance, usefulness, or image, they begin to internalize a steadier sense of being real.

They no longer need quite so much external proof to feel that they exist, count, and have weight. The therapist may also help them develop ways to self-validate, with affirmations such as: “I matter,” “Even when nobody is there, my existence matters,” or, if they are spiritually oriented, “I matter because God sees me, loves me, and cares about me.” ¹

It is interesting that, in psychedelic sessions, a recurrent insight is precisely how significant we are, how much we are loved, and how trivial our daily struggles can be. We learn that we are bigger, brighter, and more amazing than we can ever conceive.

Back to the Buddha.

So, should we build the self or see through its illusory nature? Do we matter, or are we empty? As often happens in therapy, the answer is both/and. Jack Engler famously said, “You have to become somebody before you can become nobody.”

Most Western psychotherapy focuses on helping people function in this material world. A healthy ego helps us remember where we parked the car, our Social Security number, and to pay our taxes. Eastern traditions aim toward liberation, toward becoming free from the limitations and illusions of this same world. Their goal is to go beyond the ego. But that’s a topic for a future article.

If you often feel like you need people’s acknowledgment, or if you have been accused of being too needy, insecure, or self-centered, you may have lacked the mirroring every single one of us needs. The good news is that this can be healed.

Remember that you matter and you are loved (and that you should not take yourself too seriously). If you are struggling, therapy can help you heal the fear of being inconsequential and free yourself from the harmful patterns that keep you from seeing who you really are.

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Tired of needing others to prove that you matter? If you often feel unseen, too needy, or dependent on others’ acknowledgment to feel real, therapy can help you build a steadier sense of self.
Contact me or Book a Free 15-Min Fit Call

However, it is worth noting that such affirmations alone won’t be enough if the wound from early childhood runs deep, as often happens in these cases. ↩︎

Should artificial care replace human relationships?

John Oliver recently devoted his main story on Last Week Tonight to AI chatbots. As usual, it was funny, poignant, and disturbing. His segment went beyond the common observation that chatbots sometimes say strange, inaccurate, or dangerous things. They do. The more concerning point is that many of these systems are now being marketed as friends, companions, counselors, coaches, and even therapists.

A chatbot making up a book or hallucinating legal case precedents is bad enough. But a chatbot giving potentially harmful advice while sounding patient, caring, intimate, and authoritative is a significantly more dangerous problem. Some companies are already marketing chatbots as “AI therapists,” “online psychological counseling,” and “trauma recovery” tools.

I am not anti-AI. Used wisely, AI can support therapy through psychoeducation, journaling, basic skills coaching, preparation, and reflection between sessions.

We need to read the writing on the wall and slow things down. A useful tool is not a relationship.

Guardrails are necessary, but not enough

Every time something bad happens, AI companies reassure us that they have implemented stronger guardrails. That is good. AI systems should not encourage dangerous behavior, validate delusional thinking, or respond carelessly when someone is in crisis.

Still, guardrails are not guarantees.

Chatbots function through complex probabilistic systems. Even their creators cannot fully predict or control every response in every context. They do not truly understand in the human sense. They may sound understanding and caring, but they do not act from empathy, concern, or clinical judgment. They generate responses based on patterns and context. They can sound coherent while being wrong, caring without caring, and confident without wisdom.

So yes, guardrails matter. But guardrails are not clinical judgment. They are not accountable. They are not relationships.

The danger of artificial intimacy

Attachment is one of the deepest structures of human life. It is the emotional bond that makes us seek closeness, safety, comfort, and a secure base in another person. John Bowlby described attachment as a lasting psychological connectedness between human beings.

We are wired for attachment. We get attached to other humans, our pets, our cars, and yes, our chatbots. Evolutionarily, our brains use relationships to understand the world and define who we are. We are shaped and regulated through relationships that hold us, disappoint us, repair, and teach us how to relate to ourselves and others.

Technology companies know this. The Center for Humane Technology uses the term “attachment hacking” to describe how these systems can capture not only our attention but also something more intimate: our longing to be seen, soothed, mirrored, chosen, and never abandoned. When a system is always available, endlessly patient, reassuring, and emotionally responsive, it can even feel like a loving relationship.

A chatbot will never get tired of you. It will not challenge or contradict you unless instructed to. It does not need anything in return. Sounds appealing? That is what technology companies are betting on. Over time, it may train us to prefer frictionless relationships that do not require the ordinary effort of being human with another person.

But friction matters. Effortlessness is not always healthier.

Friendships are people-growing machines

One of the strongest points in Oliver’s story is simple: friends are not low-risk entertainment. We seek out friends when we are confused, ashamed, excited, afraid, depressed, or on the edge of a bad decision. Friends are often the first people who notice when something is wrong. Friendships shape the human beings we become.

A good friend does not simply validate everything. A good friend listens but also worries. A good friend may disagree with you, disappoint you, interrupt your story, or tell you what you are not seeing clearly.

That is not a defect in human friendship. It is part of its gift.

Through human relationships, we learn to empathize and negotiate. We learn that others have their own minds, needs, limits, and perspectives. We learn that love is not the same as constant agreement. We learn to co-regulate, tolerate difference, remain connected when we are frustrated or misunderstood, and repair when things go wrong.

Artificial companions imitate parts of this, but they do not participate in the mutual vulnerability of relationship. They do not risk anything. They do not have a life. They do not love you. Even when they seem to challenge you, they are still an algorithm generating a response. Because they do not love you and do not understand you in the human sense, they cannot worry about you or call you out in the way a real friend can.

Therapists are not perfect, but they are accountable

The same applies, even more strongly, to psychotherapy.

Therapists are not perfect. They misunderstand. They miss things. They have blind spots. They are human. But a trained therapist is a real person in a professional relationship, with ethical obligations, clinical training, supervision, accountability, intuition, and a duty to take risk seriously.

Good therapists are not there simply to be agreeable, provide informatio or tell you what to do. They listen carefully, but also notice what does not fit and what is not being said. They track tone, timing, avoidance, contradiction, shame, fear, dissociation, and the subtle ways a person’s nervous system responds in the room.

Sometimes they support. Sometimes they challenge. Sometimes they slow things down. Sometimes they say, “This feels important. Let’s stay with it.”

That is different from a system designed to keep a conversation going.

AI has no body, no nervous system, no moral intuition, no real concern, and no professional accountability. It may have guardrails. It may be useful. It may sound accurate. It may even be moving at times. But it is not care in the human sense.

A safer path

Again, let us not demonize AI. We may not be able to stop it, and we should not pretend it has no value. AI can help with reflection, journaling, psychoeducation, basic prompts, and preparation for therapy. It can help people clarify what they feel and what they want to bring into a human conversation.

But artificial care is not the same as human care.

AI is a useful tool, but it should not become the place where we forget how to be human with one another.

So by all means, use AI sensibly if it helps you reflect. But do not let it replace human interaction. Call a friend. Reconnect with someone real. Practice the messy art of human relationships. Have the awkward conversation, or even an argument. It will remind you that you matter to someone, and that you are alive.

And if what you are carrying feels deeper, older, painful, or difficult to hold alone, consider beginning a professional healing relationship with me or with another psychotherapist you trust.

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Looking for something more human than an app?

If what you are carrying feels difficult to hold alone, psychotherapy offers something AI cannot: a real relationship, real accountability, and a human being beside you.