Anxiety, for many of us, attaches itself to our daily concerns: we worry about tasks to be completed, or replay, over and over, a miscommunication with a friend. It is often said that action is the antidote to anxiety. And there is truth in this – some anxieties can indeed be quelled by doing. You make a specific plan to complete the tasks that are overwhelming you, or you talk to your friend directly and find clarity.

But there are anxieties that can’t be resolved pragmatically. Existential anxiety refers to the anxieties we have about our very existence. Fundamentally, we fear death, and we fear losing those who are most precious to us. And along the way, we avoid uncertainty at all costs.

Anxiety and the wish for certainty

Anxiety of all sorts is accompanied by a wish for certainty, as though if we could arrive at certainty, if we could be really, really, sure about the problem in front of us, our anxiety would disappear. We want 100% certainty that we will pass our exams, or that our turbulent flight will land safely, or that our loved one will recover from a health scare.

Research consistently demonstrates that anxiety is associated with difficulty tolerating uncertainty. In a recent paper addressing the phenomenon of intolerance of uncertainty, Allan and colleagues (2023) write: “Uncertainty is universally aversive...” For most all of us, uncertainty feels, at its heart, unsafe, and when faced with it, we feel anxious, and we attempt to mitigate risk. But even when momentary certainty is possible, it is short lived. No matter our efforts, we cannot know the future. Our existential anxieties remind us, constantly, that, despite our efforts to enact control in and shape our lives, so much is out of our hands. Little certainty is possible, except for the certainty that we and all those we love are mortal.  

The role of death anxiety

In the fields of psychology and psychiatry, there is longstanding interest in the role of death anxiety in our lives. How does death anxiety impact our behaviours and our emotional states? Why does it seem to be more troubling for some people than for others? And how can we face this most deeply held fear? These are open questions that can be looked at through the lenses of psychology and philosophy, through spiritual practices, and through art. Yet despite so many efforts toward a depth-oriented approach to death anxiety, our social and cultural surrounds often encourage us to avoid and ignore this fear, or to respond to it with action by, for instance, exercising with greater frequency.

Even in the context of psychotherapy, treatment for anxiety doesn’t always get at the depths of our existential fears. In a paper on the relationship between death anxiety and mental health, researchers explain: “At present, most treatments for anxiety-related disorder focus on challenging the patient’s specific threat appraisals, such as by examining the likelihood of dying from a spider bite or disputing the client’s inflated estimates of the probability of a plane crashing. Such treatment approaches may not, in fact, be targeting the underlying fear of non-existence” (Menzies & Menzies, 2023). 

How to quell existential anxieties

When it comes to our existential anxieties, we need to address the roots of our fears, rather than attempting to quell them at the surface. We can act in the hopes of shaping our lives, while simultaneously recognising the limits of our control. And we can learn to tolerate and even to accept the reality that only our mortality is guaranteed. Uncertainty and mortality – these are the human condition. We can put words to our existential anxieties, and in making them explicit, we can commune with other people instead of bearing our dread alone. There is comfort in remembering that these are the very oldest fears, they are fears that we share with history and with the future and with all those we love. We are afraid, perhaps, but never alone in the fear.

References

Allan, N. P., Gorka, S. M., Saulnier, K. G., & Bryan, C. J. (2023). Anxiety Sensitivity and Intolerance of Uncertainty: Transdiagnostic Risk Factors for Anxiety as Targets to Reduce Risk of Suicide. Current Psychiatry Reports, 25(4), 139–147. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11920-023-01413-z

Menzies, R. E., & Menzies, R. G. (2023). Death anxiety and mental health: Requiem for a dreamer. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 78, 101807. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbtep.2022.101807