One of the participants in my leadership workshop (I’ll call him Peter) was experiencing some form of existential anxiety and questioning the meaning of his existence. Too many changes were happening simultaneously and contributing to his low state of mind. The first change was the death of his father, with whom he had many unresolved issues. Peter realized that his father’s death made closure difficult, complicating the mourning process. He was also retiring as CEO and taking on the position of Chairman of the Board. It was beginning to dawn on him that the role of Chairman was very different from running the day-to-day operations of the company. All of a sudden, he had much more time on his hands and he really didn’t know how to deal with it. One unhappy result of this was realizing how far apart he and his wife had grown. They seemed to be living in parallel universes.
Having more time available may seem like a luxury, but for some, idle time can become the devil’s playground. It may force them to reflect on things that before were more easily pushed out of conscious awareness. Given his present situation, it was difficult for Peter to transcend his previous state of constant busyness—no longer being able to resort to the “manic defense.”1 This describes a pattern of behavior whereby we try to distract our conscious mind from uncomfortable thoughts or feelings with a flurry of activities or try to avoid them by resorting to opposite thoughts or feelings. Being locked into our own mind—unable to find any mindless escapes—can be extremely uncomfortable. For many of my clients, many inner demons come to the surface when they no longer can rely on this manic defense.
The Nightmare
In Peter’s case, his existential anxiety had been triggered by two painful transitions, but his present state of anguish had flared up following a nightmare about one of his best friends, a very successful businessman. When I asked what this friend meant to him, Peter said that he had always looked up to him as a role model, someone he wanted to emulate. In his nightmare, a large, admiring crowd was standing on the front lawn of his friend’s house waiting for him to show up. But instead of making a grandiose appearance, his friend stayed out of sight. Eventually, he slipped out of the back entrance to the house, to avoid being seen by the crowd. After his escape, he walked up to Peter, looking unwell. When Peter asked what was going on, his friend told him that he wondered whether all the effort he had made to be successful had been worth it. He was exhausted by maintaining a façade of success. Yes, he knew he had a several imposing houses and flashy cars; he even had a yacht. But the houses were empty. There was nobody there. The cars were just sitting idle in the garage. And he very rarely used the yacht. Why was he hanging on to them? What was the point of having them? The he asked Peter if he could borrow some money and use his phone. Peter went to help him, but then couldn’t find his wallet or his phone. This made him feel very panicky and he woke up.
At first, Peter brushed the nightmare aside, saying to me that all dreams just random noise in the neurological system. But he changed his mind when I told him that in dreams, we often see the things we don’t want to see in daily life. Dreams can be indicators of major personal concerns. Nightmares in particular should be seen as very strong warning signs—like someone is talking to you, but you don’t want to hear what’s being said. And a dream that isn’t interpreted is like a letter that isn’t opened. I explained that, like it or not, he was the director, producer, and scriptwriter of his dreams. He created all the images himself. He owned them and was best placed to recognize the associations that would help him to figure out what was really going on—there is usually residue from the preceding day that triggers a dream. Dreams can have multiple meanings and can be confusing because they use highly symbolic language. For children in particular, dreams are like safe rehearsals for difficult situations they might have to face in the future. Dreams tend to slip away from us quickly because when they become too vivid, we get confused between what’s reality and what’s fantasy. But this is also the reason why dreams can be such great help in the creative process. Many important creations have been instigated by dreams. And we could think of nightmares as dreams that have failed in their role as the guardians of sleep. Instead of neutralizing the anxiety associated with their content, as dreams are meant to do, they compound it.
I encouraged Peter to think about the associations he could make with his nightmare. One of the first was futility. Here was his highly admired friend who told him that all his efforts to be successful had turned out to be pointless. All his life, he had been trying to get people’s admiration but for what? Wasn’t this the same question Peter was asking himself? Did his friend represent another version of himself? The nightmare made Peter question why he had always tried to emulate his friend. Those thoughts led him to question what he had really accomplished in life. In his dream the things that were precious to him (money and his phone), the latter symbolizing all his important contacts, seemed to be lost. Were these the only things that should be important? Then Peter wondered why the house in his dream had been empty. Why was there nobody there? Was there anybody who really cared about him? Where was his wife? What did an admiring crowd on the lawn matter? Those people were merely strangers.
Existential anxiety is related to difficulties in adapting to change—when we find ourselves in situations that take us out of our comfort zone. When we are faced with significant life transitions, we can lose the security and safety of a familiar context and structure. If that’s the case, we can start to question the whole point of living. Why bother to carry on doing what we’re doing, if we have to accept the fact that we are going to die? Why bother to make all this effort? It is pointless to go through all these motions, if it’s only going to end in death. And as is to be expected, these thoughts will come more top of mind as we age.2
Death Anxiety
I knew that both the aging process and exposure to death (the recent death of his father) had contributed to Peter’s experience of death anxiety—heightened existential anguish related to death. Like many of us in the same situation, he was becoming more aware that death is the shadow that follows us wherever we go. From a neurological point of view, we have to thank the development of our frontal lobes (the last part of the human brain to develop) for these experiences. This part of the brain has given us the ability to conceptualize the future—and a part of that future is the knowledge that death is inevitable. Given our biological architecture, death anxiety is a universal and seemingly exclusively human phenomenon. It is always lurking under the surface of our consciousness, making it hard to adapt to the reality of our own finiteness.
Death anxiety was making Peter feel anxious about everything, although he was unable to articulate exactly why he was feeling this way.3 As we spent some time together reflecting on his mental state, I pointed out that self-awareness is a very precious gift but it can also be toxic. Increased self-awareness can be a fertile ground for anxiety. Self-awareness makes us human, but it also makes us aware that we will grow, blossom, and, inevitably, diminish and die. But I added that this kind of anxiety can also become a path toward greater self-insight and wisdom.
A Sense of Disconnection
As if death anxiety wasn’t enough, Peter also experienced strong feelings of disconnection. Associating with the lost phone in his nightmare, he questioned his relationships to everything and everyone. As things stood, he felt completely alone and lost, in spite of having a family and friends—and in spite of having a very successful career. These concerns about death and about belonging meant that he had become preoccupied with how to deal with life’s big questions—how to create new meaning in his life. What should be his future focus? Where did he fit in the greater scheme of things? The question whether he had really fulfilled his full potential added to his anguish. He wondered whether he had made the right choices throughout his life. For most of us, the most important choices we make will be our choice of partner and choice of career. But we will also question how our life might have evolved if we had made different choices. Although Peter’s unhappiness was far from ideal, I saw his current struggle as a very natural, human way of discovering what was really important to him.
I pointed out to Peter that while we have the luxury of freedom of choice, having to make choices can be very stressful. With freedom of choice comes the responsibility to make good use of it. There is always the nagging question of what choices to make? Having to decide between several choices can be paralyzing. I suggested that Peter should reflect on the choices that would provide him with most meaning. Some people have a hard time dealing with the guilt (and regret) of not living as fully as they believe (or know) they could have lived. These feelings can become really troublesome when they think they may have made the wrong choices. Fear of dying is one thing, but what about the fear of having lived a meaningless life?
Finding Meaning
Peter’s case illustrates the significance of meaning. When you grow older and realize that the way you are living your life is providing very little meaning, focus, or structure, the likelihood increases that you will look start to back at your life. However, if you become preoccupied with dissecting your past, the possibility of existential despair is increased. You may obsess about losses, mistakes, and bad choices. Unfortunately, you will never be sure whether the choices you have made have been the right ones. But you also realize that the alternative is no longer a realistic option. You may start to brood about what your other life could have been, in particularly relating to your choice of partner. The more you feel that you have “unlived” your life, the greater your death anxiety will be. For some people, the thought of death will mean all their activities are increasingly experienced as meaningless.
Existential despair is the theme of an early film, Ikiru (“to live”), by one of my favorite directors, the late Akira Kurosawa. His film dramatizes the affirmation of life through an exploration of death. Starting with an X-ray of a diseased stomach, it tells the story of Watanabe, a Tokyo bureaucrat, diagnosed with terminal cancer, who comes face-to-face with the emptiness of his existence. He will die soon but he has never really lived. Wallowing in his own misery, he tries to find escape in nightclub life, but these diversions don’t bring him much pleasure. Eventually, inspired by a lively young woman who has a very positive outlook to life, Watanabe realizes that it is not too late to do something meaningful. He remembers a group of women looking for help to clean up and transform a boggy wasteland in their neighborhood into a play park for children. The group has been shuttled from one bureaucratic office to another with no result. Watanabe decides he will take on their cause and support their lobbying for the playground. He knows exactly how the city bureaucracy works and uses this knowledge to make the playground a reality. The sad truth of the film is that Watanabe only starts to reflect on life when faced with the imminence of his death. Wouldn’t his life have been much better lived, if he had realized how brief his time on earth would be?
Existential anxiety can be very painful, as the stories of Peter and Watanabe show, but it can also stimulate us to find new meaning in our lives. In Peter’s case, I tried to reframe his situation by pointing out that his concerns about having led a meaningless life could also be a sign that he was in a position to really appreciate life. Perhaps he should stop looking forward and back and make a greater effort to be in the present—forget the goal and enjoy the journey. Too much self-absorption could trap him in a highly neurotic spin of future-based thinking that could cause a great deal of anxiety about meaninglessness. Perhaps he should be less preoccupied with material things like houses, cars, and yachts and make a switch in perspective that could enable him to live more fully and passionately in the present. A different outlook might help conquer his anxiety. He should give up his maladaptive coping strategies, which were making it impossible for him to live an authentic life. Too many people go through life with their “eyes wide shut,” never looking at the big picture—never considering the activities that would provide them with meaning. The most effective response Peter could make to his existential crisis was to have meaningful relationships and engage in meaningful pursuits. Human beings are meaning-making creatures. Whatever situation we find ourselves in, we will always try to create meaning. When we can’t, we become prone to existential dread and anxiety. Peter’s challenge would be to discover the kinds of activities that would provide him with meaning on a daily basis.
I suggested that it would be good practice for Peter to regularly remind himself of the things he should be grateful for. Were his feelings of gratitude related to his family, to his friends, or other people? Perhaps he could look for patterns among the things he appreciated and start to keep a balance sheet of the activities that made him feel truly alive. It would be good for his mental health to spend more time getting involved in these kinds of things. We all need to be able to identify the activities that energize us and give us pleasure and create a sense of flow—a feeling of being at our best.4
As time went on, Peter came to accept that existential anxiety is part of the human condition but that this didn’t mean he had to live with constant stress, worry, and fear. The challenge for each of us, when dealing with life’s big questions, is to find our own ways of meaning making. It is our responsibility to find ways to make life livable. When we live a life that provides us with meaning, our existential anxiety is likely to abate. I told Peter that he should understand that it isn’t the future that’s so frightening; on the contrary, it is the inability to have some control over it that makes us afraid.
I pointed out to Peter that he was fortunate in having so many options—an observation he found reassuring. There are always things that will be out of our control but many of Peter’s concerns were self-inflicted. Fortunately, our self-determination and free will gives us the freedom to make choices about the things that we can control. Peter shouldn’t see himself as the victim of circumstances. He should make the effort to be the master of his own fate.