Good Morning!

Hey, everyone. My deepest apologies for leaving you hungry yesterday. But, I’m back and ready to fill your thought bellies.

From today through the rest of the week, we’re diving into the existential (and Stoic) approaches to mental health. Some of what we talk about may sound like an echo of our recent weeks, but that means this is stuff that’s familiar and will be easier to apply to our own lives.

Today, we’re going to talk about the concept of anxiety with Søren Kierkegaard. Burning that off, we’re going to do the Possibility Check. Wrapping up with our Book Nook, we’re going to open up Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Anxiety.

When most people talk about anxiety, they think of it as purely a negative emotion. That feeling of impending danger affects roughly 19% of U.S. adults. Anxiety disorders can have a crippling effect on people. What if we didn’t view it so negatively? Kierkegaard distinguishes between fear and anxiety. It’s an important distinction: fear has an object (danger) and anxiety appears even when nothing specific is wrong. Thinking a little deeper, we could argue that anxiety often comes from internal awareness rather than a real external danger.

Kierkegaard uses a famous metaphor of standing at the edge of a cliff. The dizziness one feels at the cliff is not only the fear of falling, but also the realization that you could jump. That is the dizziness of freedom. Anxiety, then, comes from recognizing our ability to choose.

Anxiety reveals how much freedom we have. Freedom means multiple possible futures. Possibility can overwhelm the mind. It begins imagining outcomes that are not guaranteed. It introduces uncertainty. Anxiety is the emotional side of those possibilities.

It’s important to remember that not all anxiety signals danger. Sometimes anxiety signals responsibility and choice. We have a lot of choices to make in our lives: career decisions, relationships, life changes, etc.

Through Kierkegaard’s insight, anxiety can be a signal of potential, rather than purely a problem.

Ask yourself:

“Anxiety may be compared with dizziness. He whose eye happens to look down into the yawning abyss becomes dizzy.”
— Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety

Kierkegaard compares anxiety to the dizziness of standing over an abyss. Looking “down into the yawning abyss” doesn’t always have to be a literal cliff. It can be the man starting a new job, the woman who’s about to get married, the student who’s about to graduate. All of these things reveal a very real sense of possibility. Having the freedom to make these decisions also carries responsibility, which fills us with fear of the unknown.

What we have to ask ourselves: Is this anxiety warning me? Or showing me I’m free?

Munch on that for today. If you’re stuck worrying, try thinking about what you could be excited about. Have a great day, and come back tomorrow for another steaming hot plate of Thought Breakfast!

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Remember to stay mindful, smell the flowers, and take it easy.

Chef Ricky - Thought Breakfast