Everyone is Anxious: Depathologizing Existential Anxiety

It seems like everyone in western society is anxious about something, particularly people in my age bracket living in urban areas. Most of my peers seem at least somewhat dissatisfied with their current position in life. This dissatisfaction is not in itself problematic, because at least a little bit of dissatisfaction with one’s current position is necessary for ambition to take root. A healthy dissatisfaction with one’s current situation is necessary in order for one to move towards progress and positive change. What is problematic is the at times crippling anxiety that often accompanies this dissatisfaction.

mixed media, Reality, by me

I would consider myself success-oriented, and I’d say that most of my peers are as well. And you don’t need to be a ‘career person’ in order to be success-oriented. I have a pretty liberal definition of success - I define it largely by being able to do something that you don’t mind doing (or even like doing), in order to live in this world, ie. having a job that you like wherein you make enough money to pay the bills and live well. Others may have more constrained definitions of success (eg. making X amount of money, having X amount of notoriety, being an expert in one’s field, etc.). However in my mind, success and happiness are deeply intertwined, and as I like to consider myself as someone who doesn’t need that much to be happy, accordingly my definition of success is quite tame. ‘Living well’ has its own definition. For me it is synonymous with having fun, because as long as I am having regular fun - going on adventures, dancing, spending time with people I love, laughing, being playful, making music, being silly - in my view, I’m living well.

I often wonder if the current conceptualization of success in our society (ie. born out of a capitalist, North American, individualistic, etc. culture) is what leads to so much anxiety in the first place. In our world, we have to pay exorbitant amounts of money just to live - this is especially true for people in urban areas. This is exacerbated by the fact that the Baby Boom Echo (my generation) is largely made up of people who were raised with the message, “follow your dreams”, who, because of a forced narrative of career-oriented success and the commodification of the education system, became overeducated, and are now struggling to find meaningful work in an oversaturated job market. As Douglas Copeland put it so elegantly through the voice of one of his characters in The Gum Thief, “Earth was not built for six billion people all running around and being passionate about things. The world was built for about two million people foraging for roots and grubs.” We are tasked with living in a society with huge expenses, a terrible job market, and the idea that “doing what you love” (eg. working in a job and getting paid for what you love) is the main mandate of our generation. It’s what our parents suffered for, after all; for us to have better lives than they did.

So yes, sometimes I wonder if our widespread dissatisfaction and anxiety with our current situations is borne out of this socioeconomic climate. But I also think it’s born out of our current ideological climate, one that puts career and money and success as paramount. These are the narratives that were forced on us from a very young age. I’ve actively tried to reject this as I’ve grown older, and as I’ve said my main goal is to have a job that I like wherein I make enough money to pay the bills and live well. I’m doing okay by that standard. I don’t prioritize notoriety or monetary gain as much as others do, so why am I so anxious just like everyone else?

Here, as in most times of internal struggle, I turn to existentialism for answers.

I have, since I was very young, been acutely aware of the passage of time and the imminence and inevitability of my death. I believe that I understood the necessity for finding meaning and fulfillment from a very young age and experienced a lot of anxiety around the prospect of not living a meaningful, fulfilled life. I still suffer from this anxiety. I take part in a great many activities that are meaningful to me - I have amazing conversations with friends, I make music, I have wonderful relationships, I love immersing myself in nature, I love caring for others, and so on - and yet I constantly feel anxious about the future. I usually feel unfulfilled, like I should be doing something more to improve my current situation. The greatest source of this worry comes from being able to have a meaningful career and work-life-balance so that I’m able to do the things that are important to me (eg. care for others, have fun, travel, spend quality time with those I love, make art, be in nature). I worry constantly that I won’t be able to achieve this, and I constantly wish for more for myself, especially in the face of others’ happiness and perceived sense of fulfillment. I am plagued by uncertainty with respect to the future and I fear constantly that I will never be fulfilled.

collage, Happiness, by me

So it does not have much to do with monetary success, notoriety, or anything of the sort. I long for fulfillment, to be touched and transformed by my experiences, to feel like what I do matters, to feel like I matter, that after I die, I will have mattered. I sense a discrepancy between where I am, and where I want to be, and this causes me anxiety. It motivates me to make positive changes most of the time, but sometimes it throws me into despair.

Victor Frankl, father of Logotherapy (an existential form of psychotherapy) understood human beings to be spiritual beings, and the main motivating factor behind all human action as the Will to Meaning. We strive for meaning more than anything, we want our actions and existences to have purpose, to matter. In this conceptualization, what is most troubling to us is the existence of what called the Existential Vacuum - feeling like one’s life or actions has no purpose or meaning.

But the way I see it, the pursuit of meaning and fulfillment is necessarily asymptotic. Unless you believe in the kind of spiritual enlightenment espoused by certain systems of belief, Buddhism for example, it is difficult to conceive of a state of being of pure satisfaction and fulfillment. The spirit always strives, no matter what.

So in a sense, existential anxiety is completely normal. If fulfillment is necessarily asymptotic, and if the will to meaning is the main motivating force behind human action, then it is no wonder why we experience anxiety and dissatisfaction. However, contrary to being pathological, existential anxiety - or, experiencing the discrepancy between where one is and where one wants to be, in terms of fulfillment - is the hallmark of being human. Frankl called the power of the spirit to strive for meaning, even in the direst of circumstances (Frankl himself was interned and brutally tortured in concentration camps for six years during WWII) the defiant power of the human spirit. The human spirit strives, no matter what. Even when plagued by amotivation, the depression and anxiety that accompanies it is proof that the spirit is still striving, albeit ineffectively. The only time the spirit does not strive is in death, or conditions close to it such as coma.

On the subject of pathology, Logotherapy grants that there can be pathological anxiety in the psychological realm (eg. in the form of preoccupation and rumination), and in the somatic realm (eg. in the form of overactivation of the stress-response hormone, cortisol, in the experience of PTSD). However, the aims of Logotherapy differ from other psychotherapies. Whereas other psychotherapies aim to reduce tension between the current situation and desires, Logotherapy seems to honor this tension. It does grant that this tension between the current situation and desires can and should be minimized in the somatic or psychic realm. But in the realm of the spirit, which is the wheelhouse of Logotherapists, this tension between current situation and desires, between present and future, is honoured and nurtured as a breeding ground for growth and development. In this way, it “depathologizes” anxiety and points it out as an essential aspect of being human.

What makes this complicated, in my view, is that psychological, somatic, and spiritual anxiety are so intertwined. However, I personally understand the root of my anxiety to be existential. Yes, I feel like I have a faucet that’s constantly on, pouring cold fire into my chest. Yes, I have a destructively ruminative style of thinking. But I think that’s attributable to my constant awareness of the passage of time, of the inevitability of death, and my soul-deep desire to live a good life, to feel fulfilled, to contribute, to feel the whole world all at once with the measly capabilities of my tiny self in this one tiny measure of time.

I hope that with this understanding of existential anxiety as not just being normal, but necessary, as the hallmark of being human, I can begin to renegotiate the relationship I have with my own anxiety. Perhaps I can learn to accept it and honor it, and in doing so, I can just hope that the related psychological and somatic manifestations of anxiety will diminish with time and further self-reflection.