Therapy-in-the-world: a hermeneutic phenomenological study of accessible self-therapeutic modes of being

This qualitative study concerns four women and four men, untrained in psychotherapy, who integrated accessible, low-cost experiences into their lives in ways they described as ‘therapeutic’. These apparently simple experiences – including music, football, silence, long-distance cycling, paddleboarding, journeying, and artistic creation – existed in subtle relationships to the particular distress with which each person was living. The study asks how integrating these experiences was ‘therapeutic’ for its participants. It uses the existential idea of being-in-the-world as a lens through which to view the phenomenon of people’s self-therapeutic experiences outside formalised therapeutic or self-help practices.

The study finds that worlded self-therapy, or ‘therapy-in-the-world’, can be modelled as experiential phenomenology: a process involving a separation-from and a return-to one’s habitual modes of being. The study considers the relevance of its findings to the practice of caring professions including psychotherapy, counselling psychology, nursing, social work and teaching. It suggests educational opportunities to promote and facilitate the self-therapeutic use of accessible, worlded experiences for the wider public.