Depression and the Search for Meaning: An Existential Perspective
Depression can affect far more than mood. It can change how we experience ourselves, our relationships and the world around us. Things that once felt meaningful may begin to feel distant or empty. Everyday tasks can become exhausting, and the future may seem difficult to imagine with any sense of hope or possibility.
For some people, depression brings a question that is hard to articulate: What is the point? This may reflect more than sadness. It can involve a loss of connection with the things that once gave life direction, a sense of belonging or a feeling of being fully oneself.
Understanding depression through an existential lens
Existential psychotherapy explores how we experience being alive, including questions of meaning, identity, freedom, responsibility and our relationships with others. From this perspective, depression can sometimes be understood in the context of a person's relationship with their life: the choices they face, the expectations they carry, the losses they have experienced or the distance they feel between how they live and how they wish to live.
This does not mean that depression is simply a crisis of meaning, or that finding a purpose will make it disappear. Depression has many possible contributing factors, including biological, psychological and social influences. Each person's experience is different, and it deserves to be understood in its own context.
An existential approach offers space to explore what depression feels like from the inside, without reducing the person to a diagnosis or assuming there is a simple explanation for their distress.
How can psychotherapy help with depression?
Psychotherapy for depression can provide a space to explore difficult feelings, recurring patterns and questions that may be hard to share elsewhere. Rather than rushing to offer solutions, therapy can help you begin to make sense of your experience and notice what has become disconnected or difficult to bear.
An existentially informed approach may explore questions of identity, belonging, loss and uncertainty, alongside the practical realities of everyday life. The work is not about forcing optimism or expecting you to discover a grand purpose. It is about making room for your experience and gradually exploring whether new ways of relating to yourself, other people and the world might become possible.
Finding a way back to connection
When you are depressed, it can be difficult to imagine feeling differently. You may not have clear answers about what is missing or what needs to change. You do not need to have those answers before beginning therapy.
If you are looking for depression therapy in London, psychotherapy can offer an opportunity to explore what you are experiencing with care and curiosity. Together, we can begin to understand your difficulties and consider what might help you feel more connected to yourself and your life again.
How Sara can help
As a BACP member, Sara Allahverdi is an integrative psychotherapist offering psychotherapy in London and online. Her integrative approach draws on many different, including existential perspectives to explore emotional distress, relationships, identity and questions of meaning. She works with people or couples seeking to better understand themselves and navigate life's challenges. As a couples therapist and individual therapist in London, She can support you to explore your depression through relationality and connection.
