Existential Anxiety and Its Purpose
Anxiety isn’t always something to get rid of.
Sometimes, it’s something to listen to.
Existential anxiety often shows up when we’re not living in alignment with our values—when the environments we move through don’t allow us to use the parts of ourselves that matter most. It’s the tension we feel when we’ve drifted too far from what gives our life meaning or when we’re in roles, relationships, or systems that ask us to shrink, act, submit, or be dissonant with our true selves.
This kind of anxiety doesn’t always scream. Sometimes, it’s a quiet sense of disconnection or a low-level agitation that hums beneath the surface. But it’s not random. It shows up in the space between who we are and how we’re living.
Take, for example, one of us who has a sharp mind- an intellectual—drawn to strategy, inquiry, and complexity—but working in a job that doesn’t require any of that. Over time, we start to feel anxious, even if everything “looks fine” on the outside. That anxiety is information. It tells us that our environment isn’t serving us—it’s not providing space for us to utilize our strengths and most favored aptitudes. And this comes at the cost of fulfillment and meaning. In that sense, anxiety becomes a signal, encouraging us to bravely seek out different.
Or consider one of us who holds honesty as a core value, and we find ourselves in a friendship where manipulation and half-truths are common—not always directed at us, but present nonetheless. The anxiety that arises isn’t just social stress—it’s protective, and it points to an ideological dissonance. It tells us that our sense of trust and coherence is being compromised. That anxiety can motivate us to set boundaries, step back, or move toward relationships that reflect our deeper sense of integrity.
So, the goal isn’t always to eliminate anxiety at all costs.
The goal is to interpret it.
To ask what it’s trying to point us toward.
To notice when it’s highlighting an area of misalignment.
When we start treating anxiety as a messenger rather than a malfunction, we uncover where change is asking to happen. Anxiety often shows us where something important in us is being ignored, denied, or suppressed.
And in that way, anxiety becomes a tool for realignment.
Not something to silence, but something to follow.
