Haga LivsCenter - Lifeplanning

At the beginning of 2020, the Corona Virus spread over the world and caused sickness and death among many thousand and brought most countries on Earth to a lock-down. This extraordinary situation has led to a global crisis of epic dimensions, and people are collectively experiencing an existential crisis where the world as we know it is replaced by a time of great uncertainty. This book was written to help understand and to show a way to deal with the psychological distress, such as burnout, depression and anxiety, that millions of people were struggling with even before the corona crisis and that we anticipate will become an even greater challenge and matter of concern thereafter. Our perspective on this is based on the perception that people have lost connection to important aspects of themselves and of basic human needs in response to a society and a world focusing on performance and materialistic values as a goal in itself. The psychological response to this is for many a lack of meaning, which, in turn, will trigger psychological distress that contain a message for you to wake up and to take action according to the existential psychological approach that we embrace.

The response from the surrounding society to the enormous increase of the psychological suffering in the Western World during the past decades has been to kill the symptoms with medicine and to support people to readjust to the structures in working life and in the society. The corona crisis is breaking this strategy apart in its ruthless way around the world, causing all of us to experience an existential crisis that contains not only pain but also a message of hope for a new path for humanity going forward, where our human needs and our interaction with others and with the world has a potential to be based on sustainability in all its dimensions. In order for this to happen, we need first to understand what was wrong in the previous narrative that caused us to react with psychological distress and impaired quality of life despite living at a time when we were enjoying a higher level of freedom, financial stability and longevity than ever before. It is only when we give up the urge to go back to things as they were before that we can become open to new ideas, perspectives and ways of living in the future where our health and wellbeing will be at the center of the evolution. We hope that this book will contribute to this understanding and this journey for the future by sharing our personal and professional experiences gained through almost twenty years of work with people suffering from the most common psychological illnesses that we have helped and supported to find healing.

For the past decades, the Western societies have experienced a new rise of psychological distress, such as stress, burnout, depression and anxiety, that they have tried to heal through a medical point of view, offering a diagnostic terminology and medication to help people to better cope with their daily life. We, Fredrik Bengtsson, a clinical and occupational psychologist from Sweden, and Bibiana Badenes, a physiotherapist and somatic and movement educator from Spain, decided in 2003 to offer a different point of view on these health issues and built a holistic residential program, named Lifeplanning , that has been offered to around one thousand five hundred Swedish white collar patients in Spain ever since. This program is based on a different perspective where we help the participants to see and to understand their symptoms and their suffering in a bigger context and guide them in building resilience to better cope with the current paradigm shift in the surrounding society. Instead of focusing on diagnostics and illness, the participants gain perspectives helping them to realize that they often have healthy symptoms as a response to a life where they have lost the connection to various essential parts of basic human needs and what creates meaning in their lives. By unravelling the underlying message of their symptoms, they find the answers they need in order to regain health and wellbeing.

This program has been conducted in collaboration with major international corporations, such as SEB and PwC and, in later years, with the Health Insurance Company Euro Accident Livfrskring AB. The majority of the participants of this program has been middle class people with a career and a good social situation, people with a high standard of living and freedom of choice. Psychological distress and illness, such as depression, anxiety, burnout and existential crises, hitting the privileged people of the Western World in great numbers is important to understand not only to be able to help those who suffer, but also because of its relation to the surrounding society and the correlation between welfare development and impaired psychological health, well-being and resilience. We believe that these symptoms reveal important parts of human conditions and of what we need to feel happy, motivated and experience life as meaningful, that have been lost during the evolution of the post-industrial era.

With this book, we share our deep understanding, philosophy and clinical experience gained through working with thousands of people suffering from similar symptoms for the past 20 years. Moreover, we suggest a way forward to help people to better cope with and to build the resilience that is needed to handle the stressors of modern life in order to improve their quality of life and to prevent psychological illness.

The main focus of the book is to share some of the key components and experiences learnt throughout many years of in-depth clinical work together, something that will also be mirrored by the personal reflections from some former participants sharing their insights of what this program has offered them that they had not found elsewhere. The overall aim of the book is to share important knowledge and perspectives on life and health, hoping to inspire people to more proactive work with themselves in order to live healthily inside out in a world characterized by spiritual hunger in an age of plenty. Considering the global crises caused by corona and its subsequent consequences for the economy, the world is facing years of uncertainty where people will have to take active part in finding solutions for themselves, to learn how to be calm and to feel good even in absence of control and answers, and to engage in the creation of a new paradigm, a new story about what life on Earth is about. We believe that our philosophy may help and inspire people to develop resilience and an inner compass at a time of confusion and, thus, supporting the evolution of a new and more sustainable way of living for the future.

We feel very humble and grateful for having the chance to truly touch peoples life and to contribute to the healing process for those coming our way. With this book we wish to convey our deepest gratitude to all the participants of the Lifeplanning program from which we have learnt so much, and for the generous feedback and recognition that you have given us. A special thank you to those of you who are sharing your personal stories in this book, showing us that being vulnerable is a way to connect with others and that we can only be strong if we allow ourselves to be in touch with our vulnerability. We also wish to thank the wonderfully constructive and rewarding collaboration we have had with SEB and PwC in the past and that we enjoy with Euro Accident today. Thank you for your trust in us and in our work and for making this great adventure possible!