Philosophers in the Therapy Room

The gaze isn’t just eyes on me; it’s the moment my activity is caught in another’s look and I’m flipped from subject to object. A second ago, I was absorbed with my project, interested, even quietly joyful, in what I was doing. Then the look lands. In Sartre’s terms, I become being-for-others: visible, exposed, available to be judged, evaluated, negated, and abandoned. The look doesn’t merely observe; it rearranges my self-experience, interrupting the flow of self-constituting action and returning me to myself as seen.

In this episode, Dr Zahra and I discuss shame from an existential and phenomenological perspective. Shame is not something inherently destructive but a fundamental part of the human condition that reveals important existential truths about the self, relationships, and the world. Referring to Tomkins and Affect Theory, we'd been able to name the affective pivot inside that instant: shame ignites when interest/joy is abruptly impeded, especially under a look. The warmth of engagement cools, agency reverses, and the body registers exposure before any story forms. That’s the existential core we’re tracking: shame as the first flash of being perceived as an object. Only after this rupture do the familiar aftershocks organise scripts in which other emotions latch onto shame (withdrawal, attack self, avoidance, attack other).

There are losses that break us loudly, while others pass unnoticed, unnamed, unwept.

In this episode, we turn toward those quieter sorrows that never found language, the ones that never received permission to exist. We begin with Freud’s notion of melancholia: grief that doesn’t know its object, mourning that turns inward, as the self becomes the site of absence.

Then we enter a phenomenological space, where sorrow is not simply a mood, rather a way the world appears: no longer as a horizon of “I can,” but as a closing down, a withdrawal, a silent “I cannot" .

We reflect on the losses we never named, the parts of ourselves we lost with others, and the strange, beautiful moments when we are full of sorrow without knowing why.

In a world shaped by the modern happiness project, a world that demands productivity, cheerfulness, and emotional clarity, Sadness becomes suspect.

But perhaps sadness is not weakness; perhaps it is a form of truth-telling. In the therapy room, we are invited to stop smiling. To grieve what was silenced. To honour what was lost before we even knew it was ours.

In episode 16 of Philosophers in the Therapy Room, we invite you to listen to the silence beneath the smile.

There are wounds that do not bleed, only burn.

In this episode, we turn toward the slow fire of embitterment; that heavy mood that settles in when justice is denied, when betrayal is met with silence, and when the soul, unwilling to forget, takes its stand in protest.

Embitterment is not simply a feeling. It is a way the world shows itself as dimmed, distorted, and coiled with grievance. Heidegger called these attunements moods [Stimmung], not because they are fleeting, but because they shape the very sky under which we live.

Here, we dwell in the mood of defiant despair, as Kierkegaard would name it, where care [Sorge] has turned in on itself, where the ethical wound cannot heal because the world has refused to listen.

And yet, embitterment holds something sacred: a memory of dignity, a refusal to call injustice normal. What does it mean to remain faithful to this bitterness without letting it close the future? We invite you into a conversation that does not seek easy relief but rather recognition of the mood, the wound, and the protest that still burns at the heart of the embittered soul.

In this episode of Philosophers in the Therapy Room, we turn toward the unsettling terrain of anxiety, not as a clinical symptom to be corrected, but as a fundamental mode of human existence. Drawing from existential and phenomenological thinkers, we ask: what does anxiety reveal about our being in the world?

We begin with Heidegger’s notion of Angst, that strange and unsettling mood which exposes the raw fact of our thrownness into existence. From there, we enter the clinical space of Daseinsanalysis, where Ludwig Binswanger’s analysis of Ellen West offers a haunting portrayal of a person whose entire world—bodily, social, temporal—has collapsed under the weight of unbearable freedom.

But anxiety does not only speak in words. It shakes the body and preempts language. With Julia Kristeva, we explore the bodily reaction of abjection, the nauseating boundary-collapse between self and other, subject and object—where anxiety takes on a visceral, almost pre-symbolic intensity.

This is not an episode about overcoming anxiety—but about encountering it as a revelatory mood: one that speaks to our vulnerability, our potential, and our longing to make meaning where none is guaranteed.

Tension is not the obstacle—it is the terrain. In this episode, we explore the charged space where individuation takes shape within relationship, not outside of it. Drawing on Simone de Beauvoir’s notion of generosity, we reflect on how boundaries, far from walls, can be expressions of care—for self and other alike.

With echoes of Jung’s Red Book and the dynamic oppositions it reveals, we consider how the “dance of individuation” unfolds when we resist collapsing tension into rupture or fusion. Instead, we listen to it as a kind of pulse: a rhythm calling us to become.

Through a therapeutic lens, we ask: how can we hold the paradox of being for the other without losing ourselves? How do we remain open and giving in relationships without losing ourselves? Can generosity become a mask for self-abandonment, or a pathway to deeper connection? What happens when generosity is wielded without the grounding of a differentiated self? What does it mean to remain open in the face of conflict, dissonance, and the intimate risk of love? This episode is an invitation to enter the fertile in-between, where transformation lives.

How do we remember what we never lived? How does trauma reverberate across generations, shaping identities and ways of being in the world? In this episode, we explore intergenerational trauma as a lived phenomenon, one that transcends individual experience and persists in the silence, gaps, and embodied traces of history.

Building on generative phenomenology, we consider trauma not merely as an individual affliction but as something embedded in intersubjective and historical structures. The “generational exiled”, carry histories that remain unspoken yet deeply felt. Trauma, in this sense, is not just passed down biologically or psychologically but through the very structures of experience, shaping how descendants of trauma survivors relate to time, self, and others.

Yet, if trauma extends beyond the individual, so too must healing. Generative phenomenology suggests that reconnecting with the past does not mean merely remembering but transforming our relationship with it. Uncovering the implicit narratives, gestures, and silences through which trauma endures opens possibilities for re-living history differently, not by erasing suffering but through reorienting it toward meaning, recognition, and ethical responsibility.

How can we think about healing when what needs to be healed is not entirely our own? What does it mean to bear witness to a past that still insists on being acknowledged? Join us as we navigate these questions, tracing the invisible threads that bind past and present, self and other, rupture and restoration.

What happens when time itself breaks? When trauma strikes, it is not merely an event but a rupture in self-temporalization—a fracture in the very way we experience time. In this episode, we turn to phenomenology and Bergsonian philosophy to explore how trauma shatters the flow of lived time, leaving the past piled into an everlasting present.

Drawing on Husserl’s internal time-consciousness, we examine how trauma fixates the past on a moment that refuses to recede, freezing the subject in an unassimilable past. Meanwhile, Bergson’s notion of pure memory and habitual memory helps us understand why traumatic experience resists integration: instead of passing into the virtual reservoir of memory, it remains actualized, replayed, and embodied as raw sensations.

Through this lens, we ask: How does trauma distort the horizon of possibilities, severing one’s ability to anticipate the future? What does it mean to live trapped within the broken hourglass of time, where experience no longer flows but solidifies into an eternal now? And can phenomenology offer a way to restore movement to time, allowing the self to re-engage with the world beyond the moment of rupture?

What drives our action: the intellect or the passions? For Spinoza, this question lies at the heart of understanding human flourishing. In this episode, we explore Spinoza's profound insight that intellect, while essential for understanding, lacks the intrinsic power to provoke action. Instead, it is the passions that move us. But not all passions are equal. Passive affects, which are those we endure rather than direct, can leave us vulnerable and disempowered. Spinoza argues that transformation does not arise from suppressing or intellectualizing these passive affects but from deeply engaging with them.

Through this engagement, we internalize the affect, journeying through it rather than avoiding it. This process involves uncovering the possibilities each affect holds, allowing a passive affect to give way to an active one. Active affects emerge when we align our emotions with an understanding of what enhances our power to act and our connection to the world. This is not a simple matter of rationality overriding emotion; rather, it is about reshaping our emotional landscape from within, creating a harmony that leads us closer to the good life.

Join us as we unpack Spinoza's radical vision of emotion regulation, where the interplay of passion and intellect reveals new ways to navigate our inner worlds and move toward empowerment and freedom.

In this episode, Dr. Sameema Zahra and I bring the 17th-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza into the session to explore his fascinating ideas on affect and the distinction between passive and active states of being.

By 'affect', Spinoza refers to the body's capacity to act, be acted upon, and experience changes in its power to exist and persevere. Affects are not just fleeting emotions; they encompass the entire spectrum of how we respond to the world. They shape our moods, motivations, and overall ability to engage with life. Spinoza helps us see how these responses are not neutral—they either enhance or diminish our power to act.

We also delve into Spinoza’s distinction between passive affects—those that happen to us and diminish our autonomy—and active affects, which arise when we fully understand and align ourselves with the causes of our emotions. This distinction offers a profound lens for understanding how clients might feel stuck in cycles of passivity or, alternatively, how they might find empowerment and freedom through greater awareness and agency.

Join us as we unpack these ideas and consider their implications for therapy. How can understanding Spinoza’s theory of affect help us guide clients toward active engagement with their lives? And how might this philosophical framework illuminate our own practices as therapists? Stay with us as we journey through Spinoza’s thought and its relevance in the therapy room.

In this episode of Philosophers in the Therapy Room, Dr Sameema Zahra and I engage with the Heideggerian concept of Sörge (care) and explore its profound implications for understanding our relationship with the world. We suggest that care is not only a fundamental condition of being but also an existential imperative that binds us to the political realities around us. This connection underscores why we cannot afford indifference to global events. We also discuss anger as a moral emotion—a vital signal alerting us to threats against our values. If we fail to heed these signals, we risk allowing harm to our "house of being," potentially leading to moral injury. This episode invites listeners to consider care not just as an individual experience but as an ethical call to remain engaged with the world