Existential Anxiety - What It Is, Why It Happens, and How to Find Relief

Existential dangers are inevitable. While we can never control the future, worrying about variables like climate change or AI taking your job or someone you love dying can be incredibly anxiety-provoking. Being aware of everything that could possibly go wrong is not particularly relaxing! 

Existential anxiety is a typical response to being acutely aware of just how unpredictable things can be. After all, you can do everything “right,” but the world still throws so many unexpected curveballs your way. Sometimes this can lead to a sense of impending doom. Even if it doesn’t, it can be hard to define meaning and safety when life itself can feel so absurd.

What Existential Anxiety Is

Existential anxiety is a type of anxiety associated with confronting the fundamental uncertainties of being human.

This includes anxiety around the big questions about meaning, purpose, identity, mortality, and freedom. While some anxiety attaches to more concrete struggles like an upcoming work presentation or a nagging health symptom, existential anxiety feels more ephemeral. You’re trying to make sense of what it means to be alive and unable to resolve some of the more unsettling aspects of being human. Unfortunately, there is no universal FAQ page for being alive.

This is what can make it all feel so disorienting. There may not be anything to solve or fix, and reassurance alone won’t necessarily ease some of the worry.

Existential Anxiety, Existential Crisis, and Existential Dread

Existential anxiety typically shows up with other existential concerns. They often overlap, even though the experiences may be somewhat distinct. 

Existential Anxiety: This is when existential anxiety feels like your average baseline. You resonate with a persistent undercurrent of unease connected to life's big unanswerable questions. It may be manageable enough that you move through your days just fine. However, it may feel more activated during moments of stillness or during tough transitions. It can feel sharp when more is at stake, such as when you need to make a serious decision. 

Existential Crisis: An existential crisis feels more acute. It can show up after a specific event, like getting a serious medical diagnosis or the sudden death of a loved one. These kinds of crises may come up around significant milestones, like a birthday or a child leaving home. When the crisis hits, those big questions may seem more urgent and destabilizing. You might feel called to do something profound like change careers or leave a relationship. Some of this may feel impulsive, but it  often comes from trying to instill a sense of meaning or find a deeper sense of purpose.

Existential dread: Existential dread feels like a low-level depression that makes living feel heavy. You may question the point of what you’re doing or feel generally apathetic when going about your usual motions. The upkeep of “just living” may seem really demanding, and existential dread can make you resentful of all you have to do just to get by. After all, answering a work email can feel ridiculous when you’re in the thick of contemplating the nature of existence. 

Signs and Symptoms of Existential Anxiety

Existential anxiety doesn't inherently announce itself as existential anxiety. 

You may notice that you're thinking about death more than usual or questioning choices that once felt settled. Some other signs of existential anxiety include: 

• Thinking a lot about death or mortality: You may find yourself preoccupied with dying or what happens after death. Truly accepting that your time here is limited can feel really uncomfortable. 

• Feeling like life is hollow or meaningless: You might go through the motions of everyday life, but things that are “supposed” to matter don't feel particularly meaningful.

• Losing motivation: You may feel more apathetic in general. Here, it can sound like, Why bother when everything is temporary anyway?

• Questioning who you are: You may feel less certain about your values or what kind of life you actually want to live. 

• Getting stuck in questions you can't answer: You might be looping with questions that just don’t have easy solutions, like What am I supposed to do with my life? What happens after I die? Am I choosing the right decision? Does any of this matter? 

What Causes Existential Anxiety?

It’s probably just one of those trade-offs that comes with being human and having self-awareness. Consciousness has its perks, but it also means you’re profoundly aware that you’re going to die. Some people can recall having existential anxiety as young children, but others resonate with it more strongly after experiencing significant stressors. 

As we get older, life transitions often bring more questions to the surface. There’s more at stake. For example, becoming a parent can suddenly make time and mortality feel much more real. A milestone birthday might cause you to reexamine where you are now versus where you thought you’d be. Or, you might accomplish a major goal that you thought would change everything, only to realize you’re still you.

Loss can also trigger existential questions. When death is no longer an abstract concept, you feel the pressure that comes with time, money, relationships, identity, and how you live in each moment. It’s a lot to take in!

Finally, the world at large can exacerbate anxiety. We continue to move through cycles of political instability, economic uncertainty, global health crises, and rapid technological changes. Even if you feel somewhat stable, you may feel like the world isn’t predictable or safe. This can create a deep sense of unease.

Is Existential Anxiety Normal?

Absolutely. We’d argue that existential anxiety is simply part of being human. There’s a disorientation that comes from having choices and knowing these choices have consequences and can define who you become. 

Having anxiety isn’t bad or wrong. It may motivate you to clarify your values or really define your relationships. But if the anxiety is affecting your functioning or creating decision paralysis, it can cause more distress.

How to Cope with Existential Anxiety

We’re not curing existential anxiety. Instead, we’re trying to make peace with the fact that you naturally worry about your existence and what the future holds. Nobody expects you to have peace or regulation all the time, but the goal is often about cultivating more inner trust that you can handle whatever life throws at you. 

Coping with existential anxiety often involves learning how to make room for uncertainty without letting your thoughts consume your entire day.

Come back to what's happening right now. Existential anxiety has a way of spiraling you into enormous questions about the future, mortality, and everything you can’t control. Grounding and mindfulness can bring your attention back to what is actually happening in this moment.

Stay connected to other people. Existential anxiety can feel incredibly lonely. While relationships don’t resolve mortality, they do remind you that love and friendship is one of the absolute best parts of this fleeting life we’re all in. 

Pay attention to what matters to you. Meaning doesn't necessarily arrive as one enormous revelation. It can emerge through how you spend your time and what you create. And if you focus on building passion, you’ll likely feel a greater sense of purpose in your life.

Give your thoughts some limits: Existential questions can feel consuming. Some people find it helpful to set aside designated time to think or journal about them. This encourages you to implement structure around your anxiety.

We absolutely want to emphasize that none of these strategies resolve the strange nuances that come with being alive. However, if you can simply accept these uncertainties for what they are, they will feel less daunting and chaotic.

When to Seek Therapy for Existential Anxiety

If you’re dealing with existential anxiety, existential therapy can help you deepen your relationship with things like meaning, freedom, uncertainty, identity, happiness, and mortality. While therapy won’t give you all the answers, it can offer room to compassionately explore some of your specific concerns. 

Existential therapy doesn’t focus on just reducing symptoms. Instead, it’s a more depth-oriented approach that allows you to strengthen your relationship to yourself and the world around you.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can existential anxiety go away on its own?

Sometimes. Existential anxiety can spike after a loss, transition, milestone, or other experience that suddenly brings bigger questions to the surface. But as you adjust to the situation, the intensity may decrease.

That said, some existential concerns don't exactly "go away." You still know you're mortal. Life remains uncertain. There will continue to be choices without guaranteed outcomes. Because you can’t eliminate those realities, you ideally learn to become better able to live alongside them. 

Is existential anxiety a mental illness?

Not inherently. Existential anxiety is a pretty normal response to confronting some intense facts about being human.

But existential anxiety can feel severe, and it may be significant enough to interfere with daily functioning. It may also overlap with other mental health concerns like depression, PTSD, or other anxiety disorders. If you're struggling to manage it on your own, talking with a therapist can help you better understand what's happening.

What's the difference between existential anxiety and depression?

There can definitely be some overlap. 

Existential anxiety tends to revolve around questions of meaning, mortality, identity, freedom, uncertainty, or purpose. Someone can be relatively happy and stable and still have that undertone of anxiety. 

Depression, however, involves persistent sadness, hopelessness, low energy, poor motivation, and a sense of disconnect in daily life. 

But people aren't diagnostic flowcharts; we don’t always fit in neat boxes. Existential questions can emerge during depression, and prolonged existential distress can leave someone feeling increasingly depressed. Therapy can help you sort through what you're experiencing rather than requiring you to figure out the correct label first.

Can therapy help with existential dread?

Yes. Existential therapy was essentially built for conversations about the parts of being alive that don't come with easy answers. We aim to help you understand your relationship with uncertainty and mortality. From there, you can reconnect with the values and relationships that make your life feel meaningful to you.

About the Co-Authors

Dr. Sadi Fox is a therapist in Brooklyn specializing in anxiety, depression, eating disorders, couples counseling, and therapy for high profile clients. She and her team at Flourish Psychology provide individual and relationship counseling for men and women locally in NYC and remotely through the state of New York.

Dr. Cynthia Shaw is a New York City psychologist specializing in existential concerns, including loneliness, dread, grief, identity, and self-worth. She and her team at Authentically Living Psychological Services offer individual, couples, and group therapy, with additional expertise in trauma, neurodivergence, chronic illness, and women’s mental health.