Existential Courage:
a lived and relational process that we can develop and support
A 3-hour workshop from Professor Emmy van Deurzen
offered live online and nationwide
Fri 24 JULY 2026 6.30pm to 9.30pm
Introduction
What does it mean to live—and practise—with courage in the face of crisis, limitation, fear of the future, personal collapse? In existential therapy, courage is not understood as the absence of fear, but as the capacity to remain engaged with life as it is, even when it is difficult, ambiguous or confronting. This workshop with Professor Emmy van Deurzen explores how existential courage can be cultivated, both within ourselves and in our work with clients.
The Workshop
In this reflective and practice-oriented workshop, Emmy will explore with you the nature of existential courage and its role in therapeutic work. Drawing on philosophical and clinical traditions, she will trace how courage has been understood across existential literature and how it can be mobilised in response to existential anxiety, crisis and the fundamental challenges of being human. She will bring these ideas alive, showing how the therapeutic relationship itself becomes a space for practising courage, how we sit patiently with clients in their pain until the energy builds to move forward.
Through teaching, discussion and some shared reflection, you will consider how existential courage emerges not as a fixed trait, but as a lived and relational process that can be supported and developed over time. There will be space for you to reflect on your own experiences of existential courage and consider how these insights can be translated into therapeutic practice.
Learning Objectives that You Can Expect from this Event:
- A clearer and more grounded understanding of existential courage and its philosophical roots
- Greater insight into the relationship between existential anxiety and courage in human experience
- Increased confidence in integrating existential perspectives into your therapeutic work
How This Workshop May Impact Your Practice
It will support you to more actively integrate existential perspectives into your work, offering a framework for understanding and responding to the challenges your clients face.
Who is this Workshop Appropriate For?
Any counsellor, psychotherapist, coach or pastoral carers who wants to work more confidently with themes of anxiety, meaning and human struggle.
A small selection of references:
Deurzen, E. van (2026) Beginning to Live: The Art of Existential Freedom. Allen Lane
Deurzen, E. van (2021) Rising from Existential Crisis: Life Beyond Calamity. PCCS
Deurzen, E. van (2008) Psychotherapy and the Quest for Happiness. Sage
Deurzen, E. van (2020) Rising from a Shattered Life: Psychotherapy and Existential Crisis, in Grief Matters, The Australian Journal of Grief and Bereavement, Volume 23/Number 1, pp 25-30.
The Details
Date: Friday 24 JULY 2026
Time: 6.30pm to 9.30pm AEST
Location: online via zoom (registrants will receive an invitation to participate and all the details they require in advance of the date)
Cost: $220 (flat rate)
CPD Hours: 3
Emmy van Deurzen is a philosopher, counselling psychologist and existential therapist, who has worked with people on transformative life experiences since 1973. She is a visiting professor in psychology and psychotherapy with Middlesex University and she is the Founder of the New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling and the Existential Academy, in London. She was given an honorary fellowship with the British Psychological Society, an honorary life membership with the European Association for Psychotherapy, the Federation for Existential Therapy in Europe and the Society for Existential Analysis. She is a fellow of the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy for which she served as first chair. She is the current President of the worldwide Existential Movement. Her twenty books have been translated into two dozen languages. Her new book ‘Beginning to Live: The Art of Existential Freedom’ was published by Allen Lane in 2026.