Your Anxiety Reveals Your Authenticity with Tony Johannsen | Inspired Evolution | Amrit Sandhu

Our guest for this week is Tony Johannsen, an existential psychotherapist, coach, facilitator, artist, and behavior-change specialist.

Today’s episode is a two-parter! The first part had been recorded live at an event called ‘Get Hacked, Get Hi’ and the other is our followup Zoom conversation. Almost two hours of in-depth conversation about existential philosophy and how to apply it to personal growth. YEW!

About Tony

Tony Johannsen is a certified psychotherapist who uses an approach based on existential philosophy in order to help people build richer and more rewarding lives. He draws on a vast base knowledge from disciplines such as neurology, philosophy, psychotherapy and combines them with flow states to inspire positive changes in the behavior of his clients. Tony predominately works with the criminal justice system and he is an expert on the topic of substance and alcohol abuse and addictions.

His understanding of anxiety is both fascinating and unique because as he believes it should be considered a guiding tool rather than a symptom that has to be treated. In these 90 minutes of in-depth conversation, we explore some of the most burning questions related to our existence and the human experience.

Tony usually keeps a low profile and doesn’t do much work in the private sector. But he is preparing a series of workshops for 2020 and it sounds like an amazing idea! If you enjoy his approach and message, make sure to check out his website or follow him on social media for updates!

Connect with Tony:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tony.johannsen.7
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWMRqQQXgoysLRszegXzMTQ?
Website: https://www.tonyjohannsen.com/
In This Episode We Canvas:

The Difference Between Sympathy and Empathy

Tony never shied away from talking about death. At the young age of 15, he had his first direct experience of mortality when his brother tragically died in a car accident. He reminisces about how he was bothered by the fact he felt people were offering sympathy and pitty. Today, Tony makes a key distinction and a conscious decision to refrain from sympathy and turn to empathy.

The 4 Key Existential Givens

Tony provides us with an overview of existential philosophy and it’s founding postulates. The four fundamental existential givens are:

1- Death

2 - Meaninglessness

3 - Isolation

4 - Meeting of Freedom and Responsibility

Anxiety as a Call to Authenticity

Tony’s unique understanding of authenticity is one of the key aspects of his approach based on existentialism. Rather than looking at anxiety as something to be treated and removed, he chooses to look at it as a way to reveal authenticity, the things that are most important to us.

How to Hack Blame and Anger

You can expect a lot of practical takeaways from this conversation and one of them is Tony’s advice on how to hack anger and refrain from placing blame on others.

The Difference Between Nihilism and Existentialism

Existentialism is often confused with Nihilism which usually puts people off from exploring these ideas further. Nevertheless, there is a key difference between these two schools of thought and Tony uses a very relatable example in order to highlight this distinction.

Overlooking Crucial Existential Challenges

In this part of our conversation, we explore all the distractions we experience in today’s world and why existential questions remained relevant throughout history.

Differentiating Between Pain and Suffering

Trying to stay away from pain may even seem intuitive to some, but this approach can have very serious consequences for how we raise our children.

Why We Chose to Change Behavior Over Our Meaning Structure

We are all more inclined to do something different but we’re way less inclined to try to think different. In this section, Tony breaks down the background of why trying to change behavior comes easier to us than trying to change our meaning structure.

The Ironic Nature of Trying to Be “Your True You”

Playing around with the ideas of self, flow, and “revealing the real you”, Tony shares a fascinating paradoxical gem about the relationship of these concepts.

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