Understanding Anxiety
An Existential Perspective on Fear, Conflict and Choice
The Audio Reflection
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The Unknown
Photograph by Evan Kaufman
Anxiety and the Unknown
Within human life, there is a core tension that every one of us must contend with. It is part of the human condition, independent of our background, personality, or circumstance. This tension lives between what is present right now and what might unfold in the future. It may involve the next few minutes, the coming days, or the next several years of our lives.
At its root, this tension that we call anxiety is an encounter with the unknown.
The Hardware of the Self
Anxiety often appears first as a sensation within the body and nervous system. It can be subtle, like a nagging tension or a restlessness in the background of daily life, or it can become overwhelming. In modern life, anxiety often shows up in ways that seem irrational or out of proportion. Yet, on a deeper emotional and physiological level, it is almost always signaling something meaningful.
To understand anxiety, we have to begin at the most basic level of our experience: the biological.
We are not disembodied minds floating through the world. We are corporeal beings whose nervous systems, hormones, and evolutionary survival mechanisms shape how we experience threat, safety, and uncertainty. In this sense, our bodies are the “hardware” through which our experience of self is run.
This matters because any serious attempt to change our relationship to anxiety has to deal with this reality. The idea that we can simply think our way out of anxiety—that we can override fear or uncertainty through insight or willpower alone—is a profound misunderstanding. Anxiety is not merely cognitive. It is embodied.
From this biological ground, anxiety begins to take on different forms as we move through life.
Layers of Anxiety and Freedom
What follows is a way of orienting ourselves to some of the primary ways anxiety tends to show up in human experience. These observations come from my lived experience as well as my clinical practice.
Fear-Based Anxiety
Fear-based anxiety arises when we perceive a threat, whether physical or psychological. This response is deeply rooted in our biology and exists to protect us.
Sometimes the threat is real and immediate, such as encountering a rattlesnake on a hike. Other times, it is subjective, shaped by past trauma or learned associations. A distant sound, a smell, or a situation in the present can activate a nervous system that learned long ago that the world was not safe.
Fear-based anxiety often has to be addressed first within a therapeutic context. If we do not feel fundamentally safe—either internally or externally—it becomes very difficult, and sometimes impossible, to work with deeper layers of anxiety related to choice, meaning, or growth. In my opinion safety is not optional to quality psychotherapy. It is foundational.
Anxiety and Unresolved Conflict
Another common form of anxiety emerges around unresolved conflict. This might show up in a relationship that is no longer working, a situation that feels misaligned, or a truth that remains unspoken.
Many people respond to this kind of anxiety by turning inward. They might ruminate, suppress what they feel, or tell themselves that it will eventually pass. In the short term, this can reduce discomfort. However, in the long run, it often leads to a growing sense of internal strain or fragmentation.
There is another possibility, however. Instead of moving away from the anxiety, one can move toward the conflict itself. This means taking the risk of engaging the unknown: initiating a difficult conversation, setting a boundary, or making a change that feels uncomfortable in the present. While this often increases anxiety initially, it tends to restore a sense of coherence over time.
In this sense, conflict-based anxiety can signal where action is needed. Growth frequently requires tolerating short-term discomfort in service of longer-term integrity and well-being.
Anxiety and Choice
A deeper and more existential form of anxiety arises from choice itself. Our agency in the world is inseparable from our capacity to choose. The more meaningful a choice is, the more weight it tends to carry. Trivial decisions rarely provoke anxiety. Decisions that shape identity, direction, or values often do. However, it is critical to understand that the perception of choice is what matters, and each individual will have widely different reactions to a given choice.
This is why existential anxiety commonly appears around relationships, careers, commitments, and questions of how one wants to live. The existential philosopher Søren Kierkegaard famously described anxiety as “the dizziness of freedom.” When we recognize that no one else can live our lives for us, that our choices are genuinely our own, a kind of vertigo emerges. This is not a disorder, but a direct consequence of freedom itself.
Anxiety as Possibility
When we begin to work with anxiety in this way, something important shifts. Anxiety is no longer only something to be removed or managed. It can also become information.
Often, anxiety points toward growth or possibility. To grow is to move into territory that is not yet fully known. Any meaningful change—be it personal, relational, or existential—requires stepping into uncertainty and the unknown to some degree.
From this perspective, anxiety can function as a signal or guide rather than a problem. This does not mean it should be ignored or romanticized. But it does mean that eliminating anxiety at all costs can come at the expense of a life that feels alive, coherent, and meaningful.
Externals and Internals
As our understanding of anxiety deepens, another layer becomes visible. Every experience of anxiety is shaped by both external conditions and internal responses. External factors may include work environments, relationships, economic pressures, cultural expectations, or social systems. At the same time, each of us brings a particular way of responding, how we interpret, avoid, engage, or resist what we encounter.
Therapy often begins by working with internal responses. Over time, especially in depth-oriented therapy work, the focus can expand. Responsibility begins to include shaping a life in which external conditions are more aligned with one’s values and limits.
Any serious investigation of anxiety requires holding both sides at once. Anxiety is never only internal, and it is never only external. It always arises from the interaction between the two.
Choosing Our Unknowns
Ultimately, relating honestly to anxiety, freedom, and choice requires coming into contact with the unknown. Freedom, at its deepest level, is not about eliminating uncertainty. It is about choosing which uncertainties we are willing to live with, and which ones we are not.
This encounter is often the deepest aim of therapy, particularly within the existential-humanistic tradition that informs my work. It rests on the belief that we are active agents in our lives, capable of changing not only our environments, but also our relationship to ourselves.
When approached anxiety with care and understanding, it can often become not an obstacle to freedom, but one of its clearest signposts.
