Existential Therapy in New York City

Meaning-Centered Psychotherapy for Anxiety, Identity, and Authentic Living

Existential therapy in New York City offers a space to slow down and engage with the deeper questions shaping your life — questions of meaning, identity, freedom, responsibility, and how you want to live. I’m Caleb A. Dodson, a licensed psychotherapist serving individuals in New York City and across New York State, and I work with people who feel stuck, unmoored, or quietly dissatisfied despite outward success.

Rather than focusing only on symptom reduction, existential therapy invites a fuller exploration of your lived experience. Together, we attend to anxiety, depression, relational struggles, and life transitions as meaningful expressions of something trying to be understood — helping you move toward a life that feels more grounded, coherent, and authentically your own.

What is Existential Therapy?

Like all the best questions, this one has no simple answer. We can start, though, with the time-honored tradition of asking a question with a question: What is life?

We’ve all heard the phrase ‘you only live once’, but underneath what may seem like an empty truism lies the most profound truth of all. Whatever beliefs we may have about existence after death, the life you live on earth is the only one you will get. Your life may be imbued with meaning, connection, and passion, or it may not. It may only seem. Your life may be weighed down by emptiness, loneliness, and disappointment, or it may not. If you lead a meaningful life, you will have contributed something unique and special to the universe, for the only person who can be you is you. Existential therapy is your path to your version of the life truly lived. Authenticity. Because you are unique, your experience in existential therapy will be unique, as unique as the life that therapy will help you to live.

Existential Therapy as a Paradigm Shift

In recent decades, the emphasis in psychotherapy has been on making outward changes in the fastest possible time. Therapists will offer ‘practical tools and strategies’ to combat anxiety and depression, which will make an impact in ten sessions or less. I’m not here to knock that kind of therapy. Practitioners of CBT, DBT, EFT, or IFS do great work helping their clients hold down a job, maintain their relationships, and function as members of society. Even if it leaves them with the impression that they have a good life. Existential therapy is about something different, not just living, but living well, not just being a more functional person, but being a better person too. By becoming a better person, you trust that you will become a happier person, too, but that is not why you do it.

Existential therapy is not for everyone. If you need relief from crushing back pain to get out of bed, then a new exercise routine is not going to cut it. If your mental pain is unbearable, then you have the right to seek treatment that can provide you with relief. Existential therapy is about something different. Whereas a typical therapist looks at depression or anxieties as problems to be solved, or at least ‘tuned down’, in existential therapy, we look at your feelings of anxiety, sadness, or despair as a part of you. We won’t look for ways to avoid them, but for ways to confront them, to understand them, to feel them more deeply, more profoundly, so you can integrate them into a greater version of you. The goal of existential therapy, in short, is to help you find a way to live more authentically with yourself so you can contribute to this world.

The Existential Crisis

For many people, life in New York City appears outwardly full — full of people, stimulation, opportunity, and possibility. And yet, living here can feel quietly disorienting. In a city defined by constant motion, comparison, and attention-grabbing demands, it’s common to feel strangely alone, even while surrounded by others. The sheer density of experience can leave little room to slow down, reflect, or feel genuinely met.

Beneath the surface of busy lives and impressive résumés, existential questions often begin to take shape: Am I a burden to the people around me? Why do I feel unseen despite being constantly connected? Why does my relationship feel thin or unsatisfying when, on paper, everything looks right? Will I always feel this way? These concerns are not usually resolved by changing jobs, upgrading relationships, or optimizing daily routines — especially because many people asking these questions already appear successful and well-resourced. Nor do they tend to dissolve through advice or symptom-focused approaches alone.

Existential therapy offers a space to stay with these questions rather than rushing past them. In our work together, we focus on understanding your experience as it is lived — not as a problem to be fixed, but as something meaningful that is asking for attention. This is not an abstract or purely intellectual process. It is a relational, engaged exploration of what lies beneath anxiety, dissatisfaction, and a sense of disconnection, oriented toward helping you move toward a life that feels more coherent and authentic.

From an existential perspective, lasting change emerges from inner transformation. Rather than beginning with short-term strategies to manage symptoms or perform better, we attend to the deeper task of being human — and of being you. As this work unfolds, outward changes often follow naturally. Difficulties that once felt immovable may begin to shift, and choices that seemed unavailable may come into view. The shape of a meaningful life cannot be known in advance; it is discovered through living. What often becomes clear, over time, is that meaning is not absent — it is already present, waiting to be encountered.

Existential Therapy with Caleb Dodson

There are many therapists who will include ‘existential therapy’ in their list of treatment modalities. The truth is, however, that the number of therapists in the United States who have received formalized full psychotherapy training in genuine existential therapy or analysis is very, very small. Most have just taken a class or a seminar. This orientation has been the focus of most of my development as a person and therapist, the focus of my master's thesis, doctoral dissertation, and I’ve undergone formal training in Existential Analysis through the GLE International. If you are looking for existential therapy in Seattle or just want to learn more, please give me a call or shoot me an email. I'd love to visit – it’s what I do!