On Anxiety and Its Possibilities

W. H. Auden once wrote a long poem called “The Age of Anxiety.” The poem is not read very often, and there is widespread opinion that the poem is a bit on the boring side despite winning the 1948 Pulitzer Prize. The title, however, is familiar and easily embraced. How often do we think of “our time” as “the age of anxiety,” for there are so many things we can point to that seem to justify ascribing the phrase to this time, these days of our lifetime.

Think of some of the things we live with day in and day out: nuclear weapons, depletion of carbon-based energy sources, terrorism, religious extremism, violence and war, an underperforming economy, environmental degradation, near-miss asteroids, potentially pandemic viruses, ineffective antibiotics and the list goes on. Even the presidential campaign has been an unusual cause for anxiety production. The Washington Post ran a story on “election stress disorder” reporting on the negative mental health impact of the recent campaign; and therapists around the country have been remarking on an increase in billable hours as ordinary American citizens have been seeking therapy due to the unprecedented level of stress associated with the campaign. The things that generate anxiety in our “age of anxiety” are apparently legion.

Everyone knows something about anxiety and everyone can point to specific things that are anxiety producing for them. Perhaps it is the prospect of public speaking or preparing for a job interview or making that call to the doctor about the test results. Anxiety is related to fear, but fear usually has a direct object in the present moment: encountering a bear in the woods will quite naturally provoke fear, and the fear will be visible on one’s face. Anxiety, however, is a bit below the surface and not necessarily visible, and it seems to be concerned with the future, that is, with things one anticipates might happen—possibilities.

Anxiety is associated with being preoccupied with future possibilities, positive or negative, and while anxiety can be hidden it shows up in the experience of a “wired” racing mind as if over-caffeinated, or a sense of panic, or in heart palpitations and shortness of breath, or in being preoccupied and unable to let go of one’s preoccupations. Some college counselors have noted that anxiety is the primary mental and emotional malady they encounter in students today, and the fact that so many students have trouble sleeping is concrete evidence of that insight. Worry about academic performance, how one will fit in socially, what kinds of job prospects await after college are only a few of the preoccupations that can keep an undergraduate awake at night, unable to settle down. Anxiety is often associated with sleep disorders.

Anxiety is a normal part of our emotional register and in some ways it can help us adapt to situations we may be facing. Being anxious about a public speaking engagement may lead to more preparation, and test anxiety may lead to more thorough study. But anxiety can also get out of hand. Abnormal anxiety, an actual disorder, does not go away, gets worse over time and interferes with one’s ability to accomplish tasks and sustain relationships. Psychologists and counselors deal with anxiety disorders; psychiatrists might even prescribe a medication to help, but medications carry various risks. Treatment even for more extreme forms of anxiety can be effected through stress management and various forms of psychotherapy.

Because of the way therapy professionals have gotten involved with anxiety as a psychological issue, it is often overlooked that anxiety can also be framed for a spiritual analysis. The great nineteenth century Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, analyzed various emotional states while sitting at his desk and contemplating the human condition through his prolific writings. He dedicated one of his books to anxiety, addressing the topic from a spiritual point of view. What he said about anxiety is this: Anxiety is the announcement of freedom’s possibility.

Knowing that one is free to choose what to do—to do this rather than that—presents people with the opportunity for decision-making. What decision a person should make is not always clear. Sometimes people have to decide in the face of incomplete knowledge and a paucity of facts. Sometimes people just have to decide, knowing that not to decide is to decide. This can be scary—“dizzying” is how Kierkegaard put it—but it is also the context within which all of us live, and it is an opportunity for both responsibility and creativity. In freedom we can see all kinds of possibilities, but the spiritual insight here is that it is the freedom that creates the anxiety and the anxiety that makes possible our creativity.

I think we lose sight of this basic insight. Thinking about our freedom and our capacity to decide things in our lives, even amid the many constraints we experience, is central to thinking about the spiritual life. The spiritual life encompasses our anxieties and fears and worries—even our pathologies; and as we cannot escape our freedom we cannot escape our anxieties. One of our spiritual chores in life is to address anxieties less as objects to be avoided and more as possibilities to embrace.

The spiritual life is about freedom and what we choose to do with our freedom. It turns out we cannot do the spiritual life without anxiety, so anxiety is one more thing we have to discern and learn from, one more thing that draws our attention to our preoccupations with self. The hope--and it is a spiritual hope—is that we might not settle in our self-concerns but move beyond self toward concern for others.