Myths of Life – Identifying and Removing the Myth of Limitation

Existential angst is an experience that leaves the person asking the bigger questions of life e. What is the point?  What is the purpose of living? Is there any meaning or just that I or others make of things?  A person facing this experience can find themselves caught in the grip of questioning everything that may have believe about life now or in the past.  Norms, social expectations and individual and collective belief systems are questioned as the person truly realises, maybe for the first time, that they alone are the only ones who can make sense of their lives and the world in which they live.  Even if others offer solutions, it is each individual who must choose to belief one thing or another, without any real sense of objective rightness in that decision.  Existential angst leaves us at the crossroads in our lives – we can either shrivel and withdraw from the headiness of our freedom to choose our own meaning (and being itself) or grasp the challenge and live in an awareness of ‘not knowing’ but taking full and complete responsibility for our life choices.

Existential concepts are valuable in understanding every day happenings and provide a different way of interpreting the sometimes bizarre or unexpected behaviour of others.  For example, imagine a situation where you confide in a friend.  For example, you explain that you and your partner have parted ways.  You are surprised by their lack of empathy for your situation and consider them selfish as they turn the conversation around to themselves.  Surprised, you struggle to understand how this person can ignore your plight and focus on what ‘your break’ means to them.   Are they selfish, have you misunderstood the reality of your relationship with them or are the responses more existential in nature?

If you consider the friend’s responses as indicative of a different worldview, it can be a refreshing and insightful way to consider the sitaution – which is existential in nature.  What if, the friend believed that relationships should last forever and that  people should stay together regardless of their differences and work through their problems? What if your changed circumstances challenge their beliefs that separation is even possible and that the world is certain?  Instead of the issue being one of her being unable to offer you support, it becomes one of crisis for the friend, since she is challenged in her beliefs about what is possible.  The world has suddenly become unpredictable and unfixed – unlike her fixed view of what the world should be like.

The changed circumstances reflect to her the uncertainty of life and the ineffectiveness of fixed models of the world.  She, like us all, have to come face to the face with the co-created nature of our unfixed phenomenal existence.

How is it different from anxiety conditions?

People seem to be more anxious these days – overwhelmed, stressed and questioning of how they want to live their lives.  Worries and concerns seem more prevalent as we fit so much into our busy schedules.  How is everyday anxiety different from existential anxiety or is it related?

Existential anxiety is an inevitable aspect of our condition as human existents.  The Existential-Phenomenological perspective questions the assumption of us as fixed identities, instead seeing Self as  focal point in relation, i.e. the-self-in-relation (to others, to itself) rather than a fixed or separate entity (Heidgegger 1962, Boss 1963, Spinelli 1994).  The Self is not a substance but a verb a potentiality (May 1983).  Because of this, we are free to choose our own being.  This is the source of existential anxiety, since we have no yardstick against which to judge the rightness of our being – what we believe, how we live our lives, how we see ourselves and others.  Everyday anxiety results from the busyness of our minds, often against expectations we may feel are unchangeable. Unquestioned expectations however are the source of inauthentic living since they deny the full responsibility we have for our being. Hence existential anxiety might lurk behind everyday anxiety – hence why traditional relaxation and time management solution often don’t work.

By acknowledging and embracing the presence of existential anxiety, you may find that everyday anxiety is reduced or removed since you become an observer of your own being, rather than focusing on solutions unrelated to the true nature of your distress.