existential anxiety

n. Anxiety is a feeling of nervousness, jitteriness, or dread that is generally a consequence of anticipating a perceived future threat. The adjective existential denotes pertaining to the basic inescapable realities of the human condition. Hence, existential anxiety is anxiety regarding one or more of these realities.

Research in psychology has recently directed a large amount of attention to the nature and consequences of existential anxiety, leading to the emergence of a subfield labeled experimental existential psychology. This subfield has focused on the big five sources of existential anxiety: death, meaninglessness, identity uncertainty, isolation, and freedom.

The knowledge that one will inevitably die conflicts with the human desire for continued life and all it has to offer. A variety of selfreport instruments have been developed to measure death anxiety. Terror management theory proposes that the potential for anxiety engendered by this awareness of one’s mortality is managed by embracing a culturally based conception of reality, or cultural worldview, which allows individuals to believe they are eternally significant members of a meaningful universe, rather than material animals fated only to obliteration upon death. A large body of experimental research has supported the theory by showing that reminders of mortality lead individuals to bolster faith in their cultural worldview and the belief that they are enduringly significant contributors to the world. Reminders of mortality also seem to increase the appeal of ideologies and leaders who promote the righteousness of the ingroup and the quest for a heroic triumph over out-groups designated as evil.

Given that we will all die, that our understanding of the universe is limited, and that cultures around the world have very different ideas about the nature and purposes of human existence, how can we sustain meaning in our own lives, and in life in general? Meaning is generally provided for people over the course of socialization by parents, teachers, mass media, and religious, social, and political institutions. However, knowledge of alternative views of life’s meanings and specific unexpected life events often challenge our beliefs about what is meaningful, and when they do, anxiety is likely to result. People are often motivated to reduce this anxiety by either affirming the validity of their own meaning systems or seeking new meaning systems, as happens when people convert to a new religion or cult.

We all want to have a clear identity, to know who we are. In addition to providing a meaningful conception of the world, cultures provide us with names, roles, and group identities that help give us that identity. Erik Erikson posited that for most people adolescence is a key time for developing a clear sense of identity. However, because most if not all of our beliefs about ourselves originate with other people, and we may fall short of the expectations associated with our desired identity, at different times in life we may feel uncertain about aspects of our identity. This personal uncertainty can arouse considerable anxiety. To attempt to reduce this anxiety, people often cling more tightly and rigidly to their cherished beliefs about themselves. But they may also seek new group affiliations, relationships, and career paths to establish a sense of who they are more firmly.

On the basis of our mammalian ancestry and inclination toward group living, many theorists have posited that we humans have a need for affiliation and intimacy, to belong, to attach to or connect with our fellow humans. However, we all have interior subjective experiences that can never be shared with another. We can touch another’s skin, and we can try to communicate our inner experience through words, facial expressions, and body language, but we can never fully, accurately know another’s conscious experience and no one can ever know ours. Thus, no matter what we do, there is always a gap between us and others, and this realization can arouse feelings of loneliness and isolation that generate anxiety. Research suggests that people try to cope with these feelings by seeking intimacy in their close relationships and by sustaining interpersonal affiliations and group identities that help them conceive of themselves as part of a larger whole rather than as an isolated organism. One effective way to feel less isolated is to develop a relationship with someone who seems to have a similar subjective experience of reality to ours, a process known as I-sharing.

We usually think of freedom as a good thing, but Otto Rank, Eric Fromm, and other theorists have noted that freedom may offer people so many potential choices that they can become mired in uncertainty and indecision. Furthermore, freedom entails a great burden of responsibility for one^,s own actions, and potential guilt, shame, and regret. Therefore people often experience anxiety regarding their freedoms. As a consequence, they often rely on close others, leaders, and social institutions to make decisions for them, thereby sacrificing their freedom to reduce their uncertainty, anxieties, and potential for guilt, shame, and regret.

The existential anxiety aroused by these five existential concerns can fuel personal growth or can contribute to maladaptive defenses and mental health problems. Existential psychotherapy, an approach summarized by Irvin Yalom, is focused on helping people whose problems seem to stem from existential anxiety. Yalom proposed that these existential concerns generate anxiety when people have inadequate ways to address them; this anxiety, in turn, may contribute to additional maladaptive coping strategies or defenses. Existential psychotherapy focuses on helping individuals let go of these maladaptive defenses and construct more beneficial modes of addressing their existential concerns, modes that contribute to rather than hinder effective functioning and life satisfaction.

- jg