Psychotherapy works with feelings, symptoms, and childhood patterns. It helps people return to a functional level and adapt better to whatever is happening in their lives. It is a great place to vent, get validation, work thought trauma and develop better regulation or coping skills.

Coaching works with external goals and effectiveness. It helps people define objectives, overcome practical obstacles, and move toward measurable results. It is a great place to clarify what you want and build momentum toward achieving it, without necessarily questioning whether the goal itself is meaningful or coherent.

Philosophical counseling initiates a vertical movement, a form of transcendence.

It shifts us from the everyday attitude to a philosophical attitude, which eventually becomes a philosophical way of life.

A philosophical attitude means refraining from unreflective immersion in everyday life. It involves inspecting one’s own existence in order to free oneself from suffering and stepping away from habitual ideas about the subject.

A philosophical counsellor is not interested in helping you become “normal”. We aim to help you raise above the norm of being simply functional. The mission of philosophical practice is to go beyond normality and beyond mere functionality.

On a more practical level:

• A psychotherapist or coach will not interrupt you, a philosophical counsellor will. We invite the clients to practice “precious speaking”, meaning that speech should be intentional and used carefully rather than impulsively.
• Instead of exploring your past and personal history, philosophical counsellor is more interested in the meaning and structure of your thinking - the concepts, assumptions, and beliefs behind what you say.
• A therapist or coach often supports your narrative and helps you move forward with it. A philosophical counsellor may challenge your statements, expose contradictions, or question your assumptions in order to deepen your thinking and self-awareness.
• In therapy or coaching the conversation often follows your emotional flow. In philosophical counseling the dialogue can become very precise and analytical: we examine definitions, key words, arguments, and the logical implications of what you say. The goal is not comfort, but clarity.

Philosophical counseling is especially valuable for people who are not necessarily in psychological distress and are not simply seeking better productivity.

It is for those who sense that the real question is not only how they feel or how effectively they perform, but why they think, feel, act, and ultimately live the way they do.

Philosophical counseling does not replace therapy or coaching. It serves a different purpose: helping a person examine the ideas, assumptions, and values that shape their life, and reflect on them with greater depth, rigor, and intellectual honesty.

We so often use the phrase "quality of life", but so rarely examine it. In practice, what we often call quality quietly dissolves into quantity: more achievements, more possessions, more experiences. Our cultural fixation on accumulation begins even in the language we use to describe a good life.

But if we are trying to examine quality, we must exclude everything related to quantity.

Quality of life is not determined by the number of... children, houses, cars, travels, diamonds, clients, or diplomas one collects. To speak about quality, we need completely different criteria.

Over many years of working with people 1:1 and listening to hundreds of life stories, I began noticing a pattern. Disclaimer: my observation is not a scientific study - there no longitudinal datasets or randomized trials behind it. It is simply a conclusion based on experience.

The pattern is this:

This observation may sound surprising, because intellectual life is often associated with intelligence or education, which are again... measurable. An intellectual life has very little to do with IQ or number of diplomas. And it is not about being “smart.”

It is about having habits that nourish the mind rather than merely occupy it.

These habits can be very simple:

None of this is particularly dramatic, until we realize that we live in an anti-intellectual world. Our society is performative, fast, and relentlessly oriented toward productivity. Activities that cultivate depth often appear as a waste of time, impractical, or even unnecessary. Something we might consider doing when we retire.

People read much less than previous generations, especially the long-form content. Creative hobbies disappear, being replaced with self-optimization focus. After a long day at work the tired mind seeks relaxation and distraction.

And funny enough, many people sincerely believe they already think enough during the day. Work does make us cognitively tired so by evening the brain indeed feels exhausted. But a tired brain is not the same as a brain that has done truly intellectual work, it just did some problem-solving.

Instead of intellectual life, we increasingly see substitutes:

As a result, life becomes efficient and productive, yet intellectually shallow.

Human beings are naturally oriented toward growth. Not only career growth or financial growth, but the growth of the Inner Person. When this impulse is suppressed, personality becomes distorted.

A useful metaphor is the bound foot of a Geisha - intentionally deformed to fit an imposed standard. In a similar way, a life organized entirely around economic accumulation and digital distraction often produces a deformed Inner Person.

We see this pattern everywhere:

But intellectual growth follows a different logic. It is directed toward the development of the person:

This is the ancient philosophical idea of self-cultivation. The Stoics believed that such work on oneself was the most reliable path to a good life.

For a long time I too believed luxury was primarily material: financial security, comfort, abundance. Today my answer would be different. If someone asked me what I consider my only real luxury, the answer would sound surprisingly modest:

From the outside it does not look impressive at all. There are no dramatic gestures, no heroic reading schedules, no displays of discipline. I do not wear busy-ness as a badge of honor.

I simply replaced anti-intellectual activities with those that nourish the mind.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly to others, a different way of living emerged.

If you want to know whether intellectual life exists in your routine, you might ask yourself:

One of the most unsettling ideas in philosophy is also one of the simplest: there may be no meaning to life. At least, no objective meaning, no predetermined purpose, no cosmic mission, no duty assigned to us by someone higher in the structure of the universe.

This idea sits at the heart of what philosophers call the philosophy of the absurd, most famously articulated by Albert Camus.

Human beings are creatures who long for meaning. We instinctively assume that life must contain a deeper explanation, some hidden reason that justifies our struggles and gives coherence to our days. We search for it everywhere - in success, relationships, spirituality, ideology, achievement. We behave as if meaning were an object misplaced somewhere in the world, waiting to be discovered.

The world responds to this with indifference and silence. The answers we are looking for out there, in the world, are not there. It is from this silent confrontation between the Human longing for meaning and the indifferent World that the Absurd emerges. The absurd is not a property of the universe, nor a flaw in human nature. It is something that arises in the collision between the two.

Once we become aware of the absurd, we must ask ourselves: how should we live then?

Camus believed there are several possible responses.

The person who revolts will strongly disagree life has no meaning and choose to still love, create, care, choose, strive, dream. If there is no universal script for life, then each human gesture becomes an act of freedom and meaning. In a world without predetermined meaning, every decision becomes genuinely ours. This makes life truly open.

And then the existential choice becomes: even if the world has no ultimate meaning, I refuse to live as if nothing matters.

And this revolt changes everything.

An OUTSIDER is a person who feels like a stranger in the society of Normal People.
In a socially acceptable form, he is an introvert. In a less acceptable form, a hermit. He tends to self-isolate. He sees the world too clearly and too painfully. He cannot dissolve into the daily routine. He asks radical questions about life, death, purpose. He wants to go beyond the trivial. He suffers from a sense of meaninglessness. And perhaps, most of all, he suffers not from his abnormality, but from his inability to fit into modern society.

“He knows he is sick in a society that does not know it is sick.”

- Colin Wilson, The Outsider (1956).

The Outsider Cycle

In The Outsider (1956), Colin Wilson describes the cycle a typical outsider goes through:

1. Be “normal” - he wants to stop being an outsider, wears masks, mimics The Normal People, formally accepts the rules of the game and the system.
2. Alienation - feels exhausted from trying to be normal, isolates himself, feels lonely. He bitterly realizes that the strategy of mimicry is not sustainable in the long term.
3. Crisis - experiences his otherness as a personal tragedy, balancing between despair and destruction: should he still force himself to be normal, or accept exile and loneliness? At this point he has 3 life strategies to choose from:
4. He can choose self-destruction and become a “superfluous man,” incapable of finding his place in the world. He does not want to live like everyone else, but also cannot create his own path.
5. He can choose to force himself to fit in even harder, but the price will be depression and burnout.
6. He can stop bargaining with reality and accept it. If so, he gets a chance (but not a guarantee) to move to the next stage.
7. Rebellion and search - a new, creative, and unique view of life is born. He gains the ability to turn suffering into strength, loneliness into a source of insight and inspiration. Out of rebellion comes creativity: art, philosophy, new projects and communities. “Life as a project” starts forming, one that is based on self-expression and personal meaning.
8. Return to the world - he stops victimizing himself and becomes a Prophet. He goes beyond the trivial and the mass. He takes pride in his otherness. He understands that being an outsider is not only a tragedy, but also a possibility. He becomes visible.

The tragic path of The Outsider

The path of the outsider is tragic and difficult. It so happens that, because of my profession (I am a weird psychologist who believes more in the power of philosophy and books than in trauma processing and medication), I know many people who feel that they do not fit with the norms of modern society.

You do not have to look far. Anyone who reads more than 1 book a month already looks suspicious. Anyone who has even some kind of intellectual life is, at the very least, weird. Anyone who decides to leave a corporate career, change profession, and live on 20% of their previous income… well, this person is not merely suspicious and weird. This person is DEFINITELY unwell.

Are you trying to tell me you have some kind of inner life? That you have some complicated thoughts? That you are constantly searching for some meaning, cannot calm down and live normally, like all normal people? No, no, that’s too intense.

And in response, those who feel nauseated by toxic positivity and superficial networking, those for whom it does not work to be constantly available, productive, light, cheerful, social, resourceful, they do begin to feel defective.

Because modern society demands that we not only live our lives the best way we can, but that we constantly enjoy ourselves, look for pleasure, consume, be fast, be busy, be adaptive, be simpler. Be normal..

But what if you simply cannot not? What if you still have Big Questions? What if you cannot enjoy what you are supposed to enjoy? What if you do not want to participate in the endless rat race for experiences, high status, perfect body, income, travel, personal brand, and the right version of yourself (“right” from the point of view of money-making, of course)? What if you do not want to optimize life, but to understand and deepen it?

What if you do not want to consume, but to create?

Are you sure you want to be normal?

I believe in the power of books much more than I believe in the power of psychotherapeutic techniques, and there is one book that in my humble opinion has a wonderfully healing effect: The Revolt of the Masses by José Ortega y Gasset (1930).

This is not a motivational book about how you need to believe that you are chosen, a superhuman, or a special snowflake. This book simply shows an alternative scenario. It describes The Normal Person and what will become of our society if The Outsiders keep crawling back into their caves and spend their lives simply reading books.

A Normal Person is not necessarily a bad person. The mass man can be very successful, intelligent, kind, wealthy, well-integrated, and highly functional. The main differences lie elsewhere: this person has almost no interest beyond pleasure and survival, he has no cultural or intellectual life, he has no demands towards himself, he does not feel an inner obligation to grow deeper. He does not feel the urge to create. He accepts himself as the measure of all things. He is not tormented by any questions and looks for digestible, quick, ready-made answers. The goal of his life is comfort, stability, and safety.

And in the name of this, he will destroy anyone who dares to remind him that life can be something more than comfortable survival. He will despise and exclude anyone whose very existence violates the collective agreement that being normal is enough.

The choir does not like soloists. If this is the alternative, are you absolutely sure you want to keep suffering because you are different? Are you sure you would prefer to be an insider, to be Normal? And if not, what good can you make of it (see points 4 and 5 of the cycle based on Colin Wilson’s book)?

What to read next

• Colin Wilson - The Outsider
• José Ortega y Gasset - The Revolt of the Masses
• John Fowles - The Collector

In 2025, I chose not to make any New Year’s resolutions or set any goals, except one. I had been gifted a beautiful vintage 12-volume collection of Dostoevsky’s complete works in Russian, and committed to reading one volume each month throughout the year. By the end of 2025, I had read everything he wrote. It became one of the achievements I am most proud of.

Looking back, I realized I didn’t just read Dostoevsky, I learned from him. This is what he taught me.

Lesson on evolution

In the first two-three volumes, the early works, I noticed that Dostoevsky wrote with a certain hesitation and modesty. You could feel the insecurity, the experimentation, the attempt to find a voice. Compare those early works to his later masterpieces, and it’s difficult to believe they came from the same person.

He was not talented by nature. He was not born great. He did not have a clear identity. He became all of those gradually and much later, only by experience.

We, however, expect ourselves to produce brilliance from day one. When something we create doesn’t take off, we suffer and we consider giving up. Sometimes we do give up even before we give ourselves a chance. Dostoevsky taught me to allow myself to earn my voice through time and not expect too much too early, or at all really.

Lesson on imperfection

Dostoevsky wrote for a living. He did not have other sources of income. This made him work under pressure - contracts with publishers, deadlines, urgency. His novels were often published in journals by chapters. While the first chapters were already in print, he was still racing to write the next ones. There was no time to endlessly revise or polish. His manuscripts often contained irregular punctuation, abrupt sentence structures, and repetitions. He could change the direction mid-story. Timelines did not fully align. Plot threads that were introduced but not fully resolved.

His work was not perfect or sterile. It was raw and this is what made it beautifully authentic. We, in contrast, chase perfection. We rewrite, refine, overthink until exhaustion. Dostoevsky taught me to push the “publish” button before I feel ready and that trust that real will resonate more than flawless.

Lesson on crisis as opportunity

At the height of his early success, Dostoevsky was arrested and sentenced to death. He stood before the firing squad. The final rituals were completed: last meal, last rites, the blindfold, the lineup… and then, moments before execution his sentence was replaced with prison and exile.

This was a deeply transformational experience. In a letter to his brother Mikhail he wrote:

“Brother! I have not despaired and have not lost heart. Life is life everywhere - life is within us, not in what is external. Beside me there will be people, and to be a human among people and remain one forever, in whatever misfortunes, not to lose heart and not to fall, that is what life is, that is its task. I have understood this. This idea has entered into my flesh and blood.

Life is a gift, life is happiness, every minute could have been an eternity of happiness. If youth only knew! (...) Now, as my life changes, I am reborn in a new form. Brother! I swear to you that I will not lose hope and will keep my spirit and my heart pure. I will be reborn for the better. That is all my hope, all my consolation.”

In his works you can see a before and after. The “real” Dostoevsky has only started after his return to St. Petersburg, 10 years after the mock execution. Perhaps he only became who he is today because of that experience.

We struggle to accept hardship. We see crisis as interruption, as derailing from our path. Dostoevsky taught me that crisis often is something that puts us on our path.

Lesson on courage

Dostoevsky did not aim for clean, coherent characters. His protagonists are divided, contradictory, unstable, tormented by ambivalent feelings. They love and hate, believe and doubt, aspire and self-destruct, often within the same moment. He did not resolve these tensions. Now critics believe his characters were intentionally contradictory, reflecting real human complexity, however his contemporaries were very critical. They argued his characters were psychologically inconsistent, exaggerated and lacking realistic coherence. Nonetheless, Dostoevsky did not try to fit the norms and standards of his times.

We, however, tend to smooth ourselves out and shape what we create to fit expectations because deep down we fear criticism and crave acceptance. Dostoevsky taught me to have the courage to strive towards staying truthful rather than fitting the norms.

Lesson on complexity

Dostoevsky did not simplify his ideas to make them easier to consume. Reading him requires effort and feels like hard work. His texts are dense, intellectually demanding and philosophically layered. If anything, his works become more complex over time.

Dostoevsky did not only create literary masterpieces but was also engaged with major 19th-century debates on faith vs atheism, free will vs determinism, morality vs freedom. It looked like he didn’t seem to write for a broad, mass-market audience or aim for easy accessibility.

We often do the opposite. We tend to simplify our ideas, wanting them to make sense easily, quickly and to as many people as possible. This deprives them of depth and complexity and makes them indistinguishable from everyone else’s thinking. Everything starts to sound the same.

Dostoevsky taught me not to hesitate in writing for a narrower audience, to be bolder in thinking, to stay with complexity, and trust the reader’s ability to process complex texts that are not ideally readable. And also not to be afraid to segment my audience.

And lastly…

I also realized that Dostoevsky is not my favorite Russian writer but that is okay. I don’t have to admire someone unconditionally to learn from them. So the last lesson is this: we don’t have to be adored to make an impact. Sometimes, the most important lessons come not from those we love most, but from those who make us think.