The significance of recovery in life and therapy

Timo Purjo

PhD, internationally accredited logotherapist and Logotherapy trainer, President at Viktor Frankl Institute Finland

Issue 2 · December 2025 · pp. 37–42 · Scientific and Practical Section

Life is a constant interaction with things, and it all requires recovery. Our brains, our entire bodies, and our awareness all need rest and recovery; otherwise, they won't function correctly or at all. Everyday recovery involves sleep, nutrition, movement, reflection, and social connection as “micro-recoveries.” However, recovery is a deeply personal journey that unfolds differently for everyone. Still, there are some approaches that many people find helpful across the different areas of life.

Giving yourself time to recover is, in any case, an act of taking care of yourself, nurturing yourself, and loving yourself. It's about showing yourself the recognitive attitudes of respect, love, and esteem. In other words, self-respect – considering yourself as an intrinsically valuable, unique, and capable person; self-love – treating yourself with acceptance, kindness, and compassion; and self-esteem – appreciating your strengths, skills, and good deeds.

All creation – the central path to meaning, as Frankl called it – requires effort and devoted dedication. However, that alone is not enough, especially if creating something is a human profession and therefore an ongoing process. Then, spiritual nourishment and restorative rest are also necessary. The second path to meaning presented by Frankl, namely surrendering to experience the beauty that life has to offer, letting go, and letting the flow take you, offers effective relaxation and calming.

What's more, creativity doesn't just happen when you're actively working – it flourishes when your mind has room to wander. Take small breaks, relax your body, and clear your mind. Petting your pets, walking the dogs, or going outdoors in nature without other distractions (such as your phone) can lead to unexpected creative breakthroughs. Even daydreaming while watching videos on social media can yield surprising insights. Such and similar activities can free your thinking from limitations and enhance the generation of new, innovative ideas by allowing your consciousness to form connections with your unconscious level of awareness. Creativity isn't about forcing inspiration; it's about creating the right conditions for it to flow naturally.

The insightful saying by Viktor Frankl, “What is to give light must endure burning”, encapsulates a profound truth about the human experience. It suggests that those who aspire to illuminate the lives of others often face their own struggles and sacrifices. Just as a candle must melt to provide light, individuals who seek to inspire, support, or uplift others may encounter challenges and hardships along the way.

We must persevere through all difficult experiences to achieve our life goals. Our strong spiritual capabilities, and above all, a loving attitude towards others and ourselves, are at the heart of this. No matter how important we consider our life tasks, we should not “burn the candle at both ends”, in other words, exhaust ourselves with excessive workload without sufficient recovery. The underexcitement that follows prolonged overexcitement paralyzes us, and sooner or later, we can't give anything out of ourselves.

Vigilance regulation is also key in therapy and counseling. Elisabeth Lukas addressed this issue in her presentation at the 2016 World Congress in Vienna. I have selected and modified the following based on her wise advice.

We must be with our clients in conversation. That means we must concentrate fully on the client, engage with them, and approach them spiritually so that we are almost in physical touch with them. And then we will develop the right feeling for what they need right now. Then the intuition that is so vital to the art of Logotherapy will increase. Then, when we are so close to a client, the right words will somehow come to us at the right moment.

This presence with the client has another advantage. Namely, when we are entirely focused on a client, we are not focused on ourselves. We sit there in complete self-forgetfulness, in self-surrender, and everything that has to do with us, our life, and our life story, as well as any old associations of ourselves, is all far behind us; we have distanced ourselves from that at that particular moment. That means we don't impose our own ideas on our clients. When we are completely present with a client spiritually, we are so far removed from ourselves that any unintended transference is unlikely to occur.

Of course, that also has a consequence. That kind of presence means that at the end of a conversation, we must return completely to ourselves and be fully present with ourselves again. And that means that after a discussion, we have to let go of the client, let them leave with all our best wishes for their own life, and hand over their own responsibility to them. What a client does with the content of the dialogue is their own. That, in turn, means we need a window of time before the next client. That requires a few minutes of peace in between, so that we can then fully engage spiritually with another person.

To bring the above together, Elisabeth Lukas also emphasizes the importance of recovery as part of effective helping that serves the client in the best possible way. She emphasizes the significance of recovery between therapy sessions, returning to oneself after having given a part of oneself to the client. It involves clearing the mind of the previous client's affairs and gathering strength for the new client.