SYNOPSIS:

    When we live deeply in our spirits,
we discover also a dark side, existential anxiety or angst.
We can understand this anxiety against the background
of our intelligible worries and fears.
When we understand this problem in our spirits,
our Existential Malaise might also appear in other guises,
such as meaninglessness, insecurity, loneliness, & despair.

OUTLINE:

A.   SEPARATING SIMPLE FEAR AND EXISTENTIAL ANXIETY

     1. General description.

     2. Cause.

     3. Duration.

     4. Scope.

     5. Cure.

B.   ATTEMPTING TO COPE WITH EXISTENTIAL ANXIETY

C.   MEANINGLESSNESS IS ANOTHER WAY TO EXPERIENCE OUR MALAISE

     Now we turn to the dark side of our human spirits.
Developing our spirits brings us many wonderful, positive capacities:
the ability to stand back from ourselves in any given situation,
the freedom to shape our own futures to our own designs,
and the sensitivity to meet other persons as I and Thou.
But along with these life-enhancing possibilities
comes an awareness that initially seems entirely negative: anxiety.
Søren Kierkegaard made this link: the more freedom—the more anxiety.
As we become more deeply persons of spirit,
we discover both our freedom and our angst.

     Because our capacities of spirit are linked together,
we sometimes give up spirit in order to avoid existential anxiety.
If we are gripped too strongly by the inexplicable terror,
we might turn away from spirit altogether, giving up our freedom,
and returning to the psychological and intellectual dimensions of life.

     Some persons of spirit are so devastated by existential anxiety
(probably because they are especially sensitive persons)
that escaping this gnawing inner state-of-being
becomes the fundamental thrust of their lives.
They take drugs, become depressed, seek distraction
—anything that offers hope of relief from free-floating anxiety.

A.  SEPARATING SIMPLE FEAR AND EXISTENTIAL ANXIETY

     In order to understand angst—a phenomenon of spirit—
we must separate it from simple fear—an intellectual-emotional phenomenon. 
There are five basic differences:

    1. General description.  When a definite situation in the world
threatens us or something that we value, we are afraid.
Fear is our emotional response to understandable dangers.

     But, existential anxiety threatens us internally rather than externally.
When angst makes us tremble, we don't know why we are 'afraid'.
However, anxiety often mixes with ordinary fears and worries.
When we experience both intelligible fear and existential anxiety,
our underlying anxiety often exaggerates our ordinary problems.
We become terrified and immobilized by daily troubles
that by themselves would not exceed our capacities to cope.

     2. Cause.  If we can find a specific reason to be worried,
our problem is psychological—some fear, dread, or trouble.
Much psychological digging might be needed to uncover hidden conflicts.
But if we resolve all possible causes of fear, worry, & stress,
and we still find ourselves inexplicably terrified,
we might be justified in calling our malaise "existential anxiety".

    In saying that existential anxiety has no cause,
we mean that it does not result from a specific situation in the world.
Objective dangers always approach from a certain quarter,
but existential anxiety arises from deep within our own spirits;
angst seems to 'come at us' from everywhere and yet from nowhere.

     3. Duration.  Fear is temporary.
We are afraid when we discover ourselves in dangerous situations.
But whatever conditions make us afraid are likely to change.
And when the dangers have passed, our fears should also disappear.

     4. Scope.  Fearful situations threaten some of our values
while other parts of our lives remain safe and secure.
A fear might be as trivial as worry about bouncing a check
or as major as our very survival, which includes everything we value.
But usually the threat is limited to one dimension of our lives:
our relationships, our finances, our physical health, etc.

     But existential anxiety touches every aspect of our lives
—because it arises from the very core of our beings.
We cannot turn away from existential anxiety
—except by means that make us spiritless,
which only ignores the inner trouble.
Whenever we are fully alive in spirit, angst is there.
Existential anxiety is pervasive.

     5. Cure.  When we find ourselves afraid,
we 'instinctively' know what to do.
Perhaps we do not know the perfect method for coping with a rival lover,
but at least we can think of a few things worth trying.
Fearful situations imply their own solutions.
When we have identified a threat and its means of approach,
we immediately think of appropriate ways to ward off that danger.

     Existential anxiety, on the other hand,
feels like a 'threat' from all directions and from nowhere.
So our fight-or-flight response to fearful situations will not work.
We cannot evade our existential anxiety
because this 'threat' comes from deep within our selves.
In contrast to all situations of fear, we cannot cure our angst.

    To summarize this 5-fold distinction:

        Simple Fear                    Existential Anxiety

1. Psychological response to danger.  1. Free-floating, uncaused 'terror'.

2. Caused by specific threats;                2. No intelligible cause or source;
we know why we are afraid;                   we don't know why we are 'afraid';
approaches from a certain quarter.       'comes from' everywhere and nowhere.

3. Temporary—lasts only while              3. Permanent—ever-renewed inner
the danger is present; may pass by.     state-of-being; does not pass away.

4. Limited to the values                           4. Pervades our whole being;
that can be reached by the threat.         unlimited menace; touches everything.

5. We know how to cope with fear:       5. Nothing we do will overcome angst;
fight or flight.                                            psychological techniques are useless.

B.  ATTEMPTING TO COPE WITH EXISTENTIAL ANXIETY

     When we first glimpse our existential anxiety, our minds rebel.
We cannot tolerate an unintelligible terror beyond cure.
So our immediate response to all dread is to look for a cause.
Usually we can find a valid explanation for our sense of apprehension.
But if we are dealing primarily with existential anxiety,
our urge to explain might lead us to create fantasy worries.
It might also lead to exaggerated fears of real dangers.

     Angst might manifest itself in "jumpiness" or "nervousness".
We might cling tenaciously to 'security blankets' from the past
because any change threatens to uncover our underlying angst.
Thus, it might cause fear of the future or fear of the dark,
because the unknown seems to harbor the "nameless dread".
We might even experience it as fear of 'the nothing' or fear of death.

     However, we should not resist these disclosures from our depths.
Becoming aware of our angst is a sign of our deepening spirits.

C.  MEANINGLESSNESS
IS ANOTHER WAY TO EXPERIENCE OUR MALAISE.

     Our Existential Predicament might also feel like meaninglessness.
A similar 5-fold analysis would look like this:

Relative Meaninglessness              Existential Meaninglessness

1. Disappointed expectations;                1. Collapse of all meaning;
failure to fulfill accepted criteria.             lack of ultimate purpose in life.

2. Discrepancy between established     2. Uncaused; discovered as a
criteria and observable actualities;       fundamental condition-of-being;
based on intellectual information.         existentially disclosed.

3. Temporary—lasts only until               3. Permanent—no matter what we
the discrepancy is corrected.                change, meaninglessness continues.

4. Limited to a specific                            4. Pervades every
realm of meaning.                                    dimension of life.

5. We know what to change                   5. Nothing we can do will make
to bring meaning.                                    life ultimately meaningful.

     Our Existential Malaise might also be felt as:
existential loneliness, existential depression, existential absurdity,
the existential Void, existential splitting, existential guilt,
ontological anxiety, existential despair, & existential insecurity.

AUTHOR:

created April 26, 2004; revised many times, including 8-22-2007; 12-8-2007;
3-6-2008; 3-28-2008; 10-28-2010; 12-4-2010; 3-26-2011;
8-11-2012; 3-25-2014; 4-10-2015; 8-3-2018; 4-30-2020;