What is the point of life? What happens when we die? Does anything we do actually matter?
Many people brush thoughts like these aside as they go about their day-to-day life. But some people find these questions deeply disturbing and heavy to live with. Existential anxiety is what happens when the large questions of human existence stop feeling philosophical and start feeling threatening.
The unique anxiety people experience from existential dread and questioning is very real and can be debilitating – but it can also be successfully treated. If you’re experiencing existential anxiety, a mental health professional can help you find relief and increased meaning in the here and now.
This page can also help you better understand existential anxiety in adults, including:
Existential anxiety, at its core, deals with the unavoidable uncertainties of being a human being. Death, freedom, isolation, and the search for meaning are all universal experiences that everyone grapples with from time to time. Oftentimes, these experiences and concepts surface and fade throughout the years. For others, they can become a persistent source of dread.
The term “existential anxiety” has roots within existential philosophy. It started with the work of thinkers like Søren Kierkegaard and psychologist Rollo May, who thought that confronting life’s inherent uncertainties could result in true psychological and emotional suffering.[1]
Existential dread in adults can develop gradually or surface after major life events, such as the loss of a loved one, a health issue, or a milestone birthday. Some people describe it as a sudden sense that the life they’ve created somehow feels “hollow,” or that they feel “paralyzed” by questions they can’t hope to answer.
This anxiety tends to get worse when your life feels uncertain or disrupted. And, without support, it can also deepen into something that quickly affects your relationships, sleeping patterns, and ability to function day to day.
AMFM is here to help you or your loved one take the next steps towards an improved mental well-being.
Existential anxiety might seem to come out of nowhere, but it’s typically caused by something that can make the big questions of life seem impossible to look away from.
The following are some common causes of this type of anxiety:
The fear of death can be one of the most common drivers of anxiety. A serious illness or the death of someone close to you can bring your mortality into a whole new focus. And, for some adults, that awareness never fades into the background, coming up again and again throughout the day.
Major milestones in life can often cause you to become increasingly reflective. Turning 30, 40, or 50, ending a longstanding relationship, changing careers, or becoming a parent can all prompt a deeper questioning of your identity and purpose in this world. Even experiencing a quarter-life crisis can cause this level of reflection in younger adults.
When your work begins feeling pointless, your relationships feel empty, or daily life feels lacking, meaning of life anxiety can quickly take hold. This is particularly common after someone achieves the goals they always believed would bring them true fulfilment, but still leaves them feeling wanting.
Feeling fundamentally alone can be a primary driver of anxiety about whether true connection is even possible. This existential dread involves feeling deeply and existentially separate from others, not just lonely. It also tends to add to feelings of other existentially based fears.
Losing your faith and questioning long-held beliefs and traditions can leave you without the framework you once used to make sense of life and death. Spiritual anxiety symptoms can bring about disorientation that can be extremely emotional and also signal deeper questions to be reckoned with.
Going through an ongoing exposure to uncertainty in the world – be it from trauma, chronic illness, or fears about global instability – can make existential fears feel relentless and inescapable. When the future feels genuinely uncertain and threatening, anxiety about your mortality and life’s meaning can increase exponentially.
Existential anxiety symptoms don’t always look the way you might expect. There’s rarely a single moment of panic that fades away. More often, it can show up as a slow, omnipresent uneasiness that’s hard to name and even harder to shake off. It can affect your emotions, thought patterns, physical well-being, and behavior.
Some of the signs and symptoms of existentially-based anxiety can include:[2]
Both depression and existential anxiety can look similar and share many of the same symptoms. They can also occur at the same time, known as “dual diagnosis.” However, they ultimately aren’t quite the same thing.
Depression (including major depressive episodes, dysthymia, and other depressive disorders) usually involves ongoing low mood, loss of interest in things you previously found enjoyable, and a diminished sense of self. Depression can have a biological component and often responds well to medication and structured, evidence-based therapy like cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT).[3]
Existential anxiety and depression tend to be more cognitive-based and philosophical in nature. The difficulties come more from a confrontation with life’s questions that have no clear answers and typically cannot be helped by examining errors in thinking patterns, like in CBT.
Below, we also take a look at existential anxiety’s similarities to generalized anxiety and panic disorders.
Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is all about worrying – about your health, finances, relationships, safety, and more. It’s future-focused and usually tied to specific, nameable fears in everyday life, although it can also occur without an inherent, identifiable cause. Existential dread in adults, however, is about the nature of existence itself, often expressed by grappling with the givens of existence like freedom and death.
Panic disorder and panic attacks produce acute, physical episodes of intense fear. Existential anxiety is rarely episodic and is typically more longitudinal, affecting large swaths of time.
However, chronic anxiety disorders and existential anxiety can also co-occur, with ongoing existential dread prompting panic attacks, depressive episodes, and social isolation.
A Mission For Michael (AMFM) provides treatment for adults experiencing various conditions. Anxiety support is a phone call away – call 866-478-4383 to learn about our current treatment options. See our residences in Southern California’s Orange County & San Diego County. Take a look at our homes on the east side of the Metro area in Washington County. View our facilities in Fairfax County, VA within the DC metro area.
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Carlsbad – Goldenbush
Female identifying house with double occupancy rooms. Features large rooms, updated interior, & covered seating in backyard.
Carlsbad – Hoover
Male identifying house with double occupancy rooms for our clients with ocean views and large rooms.
Dana Point – Blue Lantern
Male identifying house with double occupancy rooms. Features large rooms, updated interior, & pool.
Dana Point – Crystal Lantern
Female identifying house with double occupancy rooms. Includes large rooms, updated interior, & private treatment rooms.
Fallbrook – North Ridge
Male identifying house with double occupancy rooms. Features a tennis court, pool, and game area.
Fallbrook – Peony
Female identifying house with double occupancy rooms. Secluded area with library, large backyard, and pool.
Laguna Hills – Waterwheel
Female identifying house with double occupancy rooms. Features large rooms, updated interior, & large backyard.
Laguna Niguel – Campeon
Male identifying house with double occupancy rooms. Features large rooms, updated interior, & covered seating in backyard.
Lake Forest – Grayston
Male identifying house with double occupancy rooms. Features large rooms, updated interior, & covered seating in backyard.
Lake Forest – Sunnybrook
Female identifying house with double occupancy rooms. Newly remodeled interior with large rooms and backyard with garden.
San Juan Capistrano – Banderas
Male identifying house with double occupancy rooms. Updated interior, & covered seating in backyard.
San Juan Capistrano – Valencia
Female identifying house with double occupancy rooms. Features large rooms, updated interior, & covered seating in backyard.
Stillwater – Arcola
Male mental health residential house with double and single occupancy rooms. Secluded area with large backyard many dedicated spaces for therapy.
Stillwater – Dellwood
Female mental health residential house with double and single occupancy rooms. Beautifully appointed, relaxing atmosphere for healing.
Annandale – Rebel Rose
Female identifying house with single and double occupancy rooms. Secluded area with movie theater, on a large property.
Fairfax Station – Derbyshire
Male only house with double occupancy rooms. Secluded area with large rooms, gorgeous interior, and music/game room.
Great Falls – Kellie Jean
Gender Inclusive house with double and single occupancy rooms. Secluded area with movie theater, game room, and large property.
Vienna – Browns Mill
Gender Inclusive property, Restoring hope and well-being, AMFM Mental Health Treatment provides compassionate care in a peaceful setting.
Vienna – Corsica
Gender Inclusive house with double and single occupancy rooms. Secluded area with large backyard, movie theater, and dedicated spaces for therapy.
Vienna – Lawyers
Male identifying house with double and single occupancy rooms. Secluded area with large backyard many dedicated spaces for therapy.
Existential anxiety is, unfortunately, not something most people can simply think or reason their way out of. It does, thankfully, respond well to treatment, especially approaches that directly engage you with meaning, identity, and the emotional weight of uncertainty.
Talk therapy is the usual starting point for treatment of existential anxiety. Existential therapy works to address the givens of existence – mortality, freedom, isolation, and meaning – and helps you develop a grounded relationship with uncertainty. It focuses on building your capacity to live alongside these questions and more deeply explore them.
For example, logotherapy for anxiety, developed by Viktor Frankl, takes the stand that our drive to find meaning is a fundamental human need.[4] When this need goes unmet, it can cause great emotional and psychological suffering. Logotherapy then helps people to identify and go after what they find is genuinely most important in their lives.
Acceptance and commitment therapy, or ACT, emphasises that we can accept things we cannot control, including uncertainty and death. It encourages commitment to acting in accordance with our values in spite of life’s inherent discomfort to find new meaning.
For some adults, existential anxiety can become severe enough that it interferes with their ability to live day to day. Or it can become entangled with dual diagnosis issues like depression, anxiety, and other mental health disorders.
Inpatient anxiety treatment can provide the support necessary to remove daily distractions and a therapeutic environment to meet these challenges head-on with daily therapy and psychiatric care.
A Mission for Michael builds its own residential programs around evidence-based treatment and holistic therapies. Our approach includes mindfulness, breathwork, and experiential activities that can be meaningful for those facing challenges with purpose and identity.
If you’re not sure what you need for existential anxiety, let A Mission For Michael help you find your path. We offer free, confidential insurance verifications to help you decide, and can give you an overview of all our treatment programs to assist you in finding your best fit.
Call us today or contact us via our secure online form to learn more about what we can offer, and we’ll help you take your next best step.
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Existential anxiety is all about questions. So you may naturally have some ongoing ones about the condition after the information on this page. To help make it as understandable as possible, we’ve provided the following answers to FAQs about existential anxiety.
No, existential anxiety is not a category in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. But that doesn’t mean it’s any less real than generalized anxiety disorder or major depression. Let our clinicians help you identify the source of your distress and assist you on the path to recovery.
For some people, existential anxiety and dread gradually ease after a period of reflection. For others, it can deepen over time without the proper support.
Everyone is different, and it often comes down to whether your underlying questions feel workable or completely overwhelming. Therapy can accelerate the process of healing for those who are struggling.
It can, unfortunately. Chronic stress, regardless of where it comes from, places major demands on the body. Ongoing existential anxiety can cause disrupted sleep patterns, fatigue, and a weakened immune response over a lengthy period of time.
Absolutely. Just like how midlife and later life can bring life questions to be reckoned with, people in their early 20s and 30s can find it hard to cope with the expectations and realities of life. Call AMFM today, and we’ll help you explore these issues with care and compassion.
Many insurance plans offer some level of coverage for anxiety treatment, including inpatient or outpatient care depending on medical need. Coverage can vary by plan, so we can help you verify benefits, understand authorizations or limitations, and explore private pay options if needed.
At AMFM, we strive to provide the most up-to-date and accurate medical information based on current best practices, evolving information, and our team’s approach to care. Our aim is that our readers can make informed decisions about their healthcare.
Our reviewers are credentialed medical providers specializing and practicing behavioral healthcare. We follow strict guidelines when fact-checking information and only use credible sources when citing statistics and medical information. Look for the medically reviewed badge on our articles for the most up-to-date and accurate information.
If you feel that any of our content is inaccurate or out of date, please let us know at info@amfmhealthcare.com
