India, Sept. 23 -- A forty-eight-year-old client who recently got diagnosed with a life-threatening condition tells me, "I feel like I have been sleepwalking through my entire life. To my family, the illness feels all-consuming and while there is a treatment plan with good prognosis, they are all scared for me. On the other hand, this is the first time I feel alive in years, and I don't know how I can explain this to anyone, but you." In moments of grief, loss and or a difficult diagnosis, we get a sudden clarity about our lives and can often be prompted to take the reins of our lives in our hands. This realization that one is leading a robotic existence can come in strange, unexpected ways. There could be a movie, a song, a work of art that stirs something in us, leading to the realisation that something is amiss. All of us at some stage, have experienced this feeling of resignation or long stretches of passivity. Often, I will see clients who are high-achievers, who have loving families and yet, on deeper introspection, they say that they are sleepwalking though their lives. This shows up in bouts of hopelessness, lack of meaning and purposelessness. I remember a client telling me, "Everything adds up beautifully from the outside, but the problem is that I don't feel much, there's a numbness or deathliness within, and I need to find what is it that I really want." This metaphorical sleepwalking through life is not necessarily on account of clinical depression or an altered mood condition. In fact, at the heart of it is an existential question: how does one build an authentic life? How does one live in a way that allows one to feel and experience a range of emotions? Also, in a larger context-- what does it means to experience flow, presence and feel alive? I tell clients that an awareness of discomfort, a dissonance that they experience is the first step. Sometimes, our own dissatisfaction is a prompt -- making us aware that something needs to change. However, often, when we feel uncomfortable, we choose to distract ourselves with social media to drown out this awareness as it can feel unbearable. I too am guilty of sometimes ignoring this 'gnawing' feeling only to realise later that that this suppression comes with a price. It could be in the form of sudden outbursts, feelings of heaviness, exhaustion, or subtle ways where the body carries the weight of all those emotions that we refuse to feel. To learn to identify what one wants to experience is the first way to get out of the numbness. I ask clients to narrate incidents from their immediate past or childhood wherein they experienced joy, vitality and it's a question that often opens a treasure chest of points that one can work with to build a meaningful life. Our unmet desires or dreams or conflicts that we shy away from acknowledging are what hold the key when it comes to leaning back into life. Life eventually boils down to a simple fact: what it means to love, and to be loved. Following that is the question of what it means to live in a way where one can impact the world positively. If you are stuck in a pattern of sleepwalking through life, begin with these questions, and be patient because you are already on the path to re-figuring and being self-aware about your life....