4 Ways To Address Existential Anxiety

Existential anxiety is the ultimate FOMO. I am not afraid of dying as much as I’m afraid of not living. It is peak fear of missing out.

I’ve felt it since I was a child, and I see that same link of anxiety in my children. Being hyperaware of our own mortality can cause incredible stress and a sense of overwhelming pressure.

These days, I am living my dreams, but I am filled with existential dread. To be honest, I think everyone has some level of this, but many people are comforted with either denial or faith — or perhaps a combination of the two. They’ve been able to believe in something that gives them peace about our limited existence — or perhaps, they don’t feel it’s limited at all.

There are days I’m practically crawling out of my own skin at the thought of the average lifespan because it doesn’t feel like nearly enough. One hundred years doesn’t seem like nearly enough living, and yet the average life span is far shorter. It leaves me feeling anxious, angry, and overwhelmed, and I know I can’t possibly be alone in feeling this way.

I started reading about existential anxiety and what can be done about these overwhelming feelings since it’s unlikely I will adopt either denial or faith to deal with them. Here are a few ways to deal with overwhelming existential anxiety:

Get therapy.

Of course, this one isn’t quite so straightforward. For many of us, therapy is neither affordable nor accessible, particularly when many therapists will not accept insurance or offer sliding scale rates unless you want to work with an intern. Even online therapy options seem to be priced out of the average household’s budget.

With that being said, therapy was by far the most powerful experience of my life. I went in college when I was struggling, and it was a transformative experience that has continued to benefit me. In fact, much of the work I did in therapy came years later when those lessons came home to me in a way I could finally understand.

When we’re struggling with existential anxiety, having a safe place to talk this out can be helpful. Friends will likely be well-meaning, but they lack the training for handling and even fully understanding the severity of this anxiety. They’ll likely offer platitudes when what we really need is space to be heard and to talk out what’s going on without freaking out everyone around us.

Practice mindfulness.

Mindfulness is, perhaps, the greatest weapon against an existential crisis. I will be dead one day, but I am alive today. Sometimes, I feel like I’m trying to wring the joy out of life, and bad days leave me feeling wrecked because I see them as wasted. That’s not being mindful; that’s just drowning in anxiety.

Mindfulness helps us redirect our energy to the here and now. Rather than fearing time and the unknown, we center ourselves in our breath, in the present moment, and in the experience of life as we know it. We allow our senses to fully open to the world around us, so that we live well while we’re actually living. There is an incredible power in being present for the present.

Focus on gratitude.

Gratitude is another powerful help for existential anxiety. I cannot lengthen my lifespan by raging against it, but I can be grateful for what I have while I have it. Centering my thoughts on our many blessings can help shift our focus away from an attitude of fear and scarcity and into one of abundance.

This isn’t always an easy shift when we feel stressed. It helps when we’re able to focus on big picture thankfulness as well as the tiny things in life that fill us with a sense of gratitude. By looking for and counting both, we become more aware of everything have and, hopefully, become less focused on what we don’t.

Create meaning and purpose.

This step is significant. Life is short. Life is unfair. We know all this. The question is: what are we going to do about it?

Will we waste time going to war with strangers on the Internet? Will we spend our days living out someone else’s vision for the future? Will we stay in relationships where we keep feeling like we deserve more but will never, ever get it? How much time will we waste on meaningless things that suck out our time and energy?

Creating meaning and purpose doesn’t always look like quitting our jobs. It can look like finding meaning in whatever job we do. Creating purpose can be doing whatever we do well, even if no one else notices or cares. This is an intentional way of living that tells the Universe that we know time is short, but we get to choose how we will spend it.

When we make intentional choices, we create that meaning and purpose. For some of us, it’s breaking a toxic generational cycle so that future generations feel more love and peace than past ones. Sometimes, the meaning and purpose we find is in being kind to others, being a good friend, or being a gentle and loving parent.

Meaning and purpose can come in many forms. It can look like living our values or advocating for others. It can be knowing when to speak up and when to shut up and how to hold empathy for other human beings even when they hurt us. Sometimes, it’s loving another human being fully and making sure they feel it.

Our lives are infinitely powerful, but when we get stuck in an existential crisis, it doesn’t feel that way. It feels like time passing much too quickly. It feels like graying hair and wrinkled hands and being seen as invalid long before we’re ready to stop contributing to the world around us. It is being relegated to less than while we still have beating hearts, strong bodies, and agile minds. It is watching loved ones die and feeling powerless to ever hold anything long enough to have peace.

Addressing the anxiety means taking back our power — not to extend our lives but to make the most of them. It looks like making peace with what is beyond our control and creating meaning and purpose anyway. Perhaps that requires finding faith in something outside of ourselves or perhaps it just means making as much of a difference as we can in whatever time is allotted.

—

This post was previously published on Medium.

***