How the Way You Respond to Anxiety Changes Your Life - Søren Kierkegaard on Angst

this video is sponsored by the book summary app blinkist use the link in the description and you'll receive one free week and 25 off a premium membership deeply perplexed by the absurdities and troubles of existence 19th century theologian and philosopher soren kierkegaard explored and wrote of profound new ideas that would ultimately challenge the way humanity thinks about philosophy religion and psychology considered by most to be the father of existentialism his work examines themes common to the school of thought prodding mocking and attempting to resolve falsities of tradition and convention the inconsistency between people's true selves

and how they act in the world and the despair and anxiety so entrenched in it all kierkegaard was born in 1813 in copenhagen denmark as the youngest of seven children to a very well-off family early on in his life he was exposed to philosophical thinking as his father was very interested in philosophy himself often reading and having conversations related to it around young kirkergaard in early adulthood he would go on to study philosophy and theology at the university of copenhagen here however he would soon find himself disliking and turning away from the historical and philosophical

works he was being exposed to finding them often overly intellectualized and incongruent with how life is actually lived what i really need to do he wrote is to get clear about what am i to do not what i must know this assessment would ultimately define the orientation in which kierkegaard would direct his philosophical efforts also arguably significant to this orientation by age 22 five of his six siblings had already passed away engulfing his child and early adult life with the unsettling shadow of tragedy and transience reminding him five times over that life is synonymous with

uncertainty and that the worst case might be just around the corner around and following this time of his mid-twenties kicker guard began writing at an immensely productive rate producing many books during his lifetime under various pseudonyms as well as his own name before dying in 1855 at the age of 42 likely from a horrible case of spinal tuberculosis in terms of his philosophical work one of kierkegaard's most notable and profound contributions the one that we will be mostly focusing on here was what he would term angst in his book the concept of anxiety he would

describe this term as a particular feeling of anxiety and dread not any sort of anxiety disorder but rather the underpinning existential anxiety that pervades the entire human condition in general generally anxiety is the heightened emotional response to a perceived threat or challenge especially one that is unknown or uncertain and so anxiety of this existential sort which moving forward will just be referred to as anxiety is the response to the threat challenge or fear of the unknown and uncertainty of existence as a whole more specifically it is the feeling of freedom and responsibility that one has

within this uncertainty in the words of kierkegaard anxiety is the dizziness of freedom in every moment we are possessed by an awareness of our freedom or at least the sense of freedom to choose and be accountable for how the nearly infinite unknowns and possibilities of life become known and real through our choices and actions but yet we are given very little if not none of the insights and information needed to do so properly worse yet there is perhaps no way of ever truly making decisions correctly in the way we hope even when we do make

them so called correctly in large part we are driven by our anxiety to make choices that will eliminate our anxiety but arguably if we have lived and thought long enough about this we realize we have and will remain condemned to a life inescapably pervaded by at least some form of it it is as if we are always at an intersection of the past and future given a steering wheel a dashboard of dials and a kill switch but not given a break an accelerator a reverse gear a map or a navigation system we are continually forced

to drive through the world in this vehicle but the world is covered in an immense thick fog naturally we hope that in some directions the ones we choose the fog will clear but it never does not completely at least anyone who really knows mankind might say that there is not one single living human being who does not despair a little who does not secretly harbor an unrest an inner strife a disharmony an anxiety about an unknown something or something he dare not even try to know an anxiety about some possibility in existence or an anxiety

about himself kierkegaard wrote recognizing the inevitability of anxiety and dread kierkegaard sought to make sense and use of it despite how bleak everything might sound up until this point he didn't believe anxiety was totally a bad thing rather he believed anxiety was a necessary part of life and our response to it was what made the difference between a life lived fully and a life of emptiness and despair understandably the dizziness felt by anxiety can often be paralyzing walking forward while your head is spinning is hardly ideal and so this feeling of the freedom to choose

and do anything in life can sometimes keep us from choosing or doing anything at all if we imagine how the anxiety of a large intimidating item on our to-do list might keep us from ever getting to it the anxiety-induced paralysis felt by the to-do list that is our entire life one with a deadline not yet revealed and the consequence literally being our existence is certainly understandable but our head will never really stop spinning and if we wish to achieve a potentially more fulfilled life and actualize who we really are and could be we must not

succumb to the inaction of this anxiety in order to retain any sense of power over our life and derive any meaning of self we must retain an ability to move forward and act in the face of this anxiety moreover it is arguably this anxiety or perhaps the source of this anxiety that allows for any possibility of developing and deriving a unique meaningful self at all without any possibility there would be no anxiety but without anxiety there would be no possibility gigger suggested that in order to best make use of anxiety and live well with it

the individual must pursue what he would refer to as passion this could take the form of things like a love a creative endeavor a family personal growth a career an ideology a belief and so on what's important for kierkegaard however is that one orients their passions based on subjective truth in other words truths that are deemed to be true by the individual not truths with which there is necessarily objective merit or ultimate reason to ground them in it is not purely a matter of intellectualization but also a matter of emotional subjective experience the crucial thing

is to find a truth which is truth for me to find the idea for which i am willing to live and die kierkegaard wrote the individual must discover their subjective truth and then throw the full weight of their being in its direction committing to it fully regardless of reason or intellectual certainty to do something for the sake of itself to take a leap of faith often through conformity distractions addictions and any other forms of escapism individuals attempt to avoid the anxiety and responsibility of their existence by universally conforming to the status quo one attempts to

absolve themselves from the responsibility of their choices and by means of things like substance abuse chasing social status superficial action materialism and so on one attempts to distract themselves away from the fact that there is no way to truly absolve themselves for kierkegaard the development of self is dependent on the ability to face up to the anxiety of existence and move with and through it for him in an otherwise meaningless existence this is where the meaning can potentially be found the consequences rather of succumbing to anxiety and inaction for kicker guard is much much worse

it results in despair a depressed apathetic state a failed lost and unrealized self a frictional experience of existence in the words of modern psychoanalyst james hollis anxiety is the price of the ticket to life intrapsychic depression is the byproduct of the refusal to climb aboard one must realize that life will never become more sturdy or less scary there will never be a perfect optimal time to climb aboard if life is a sequence of impossible decisions veiled by uncertainty we might as well attempt to justify it by at least making decisions that pursue the greatest and

most interesting heights and depths of the unknown we are capable of traveling gigergard's framework and solution to this problem was faith in the christian god but his philosophy and some part can arguably provide a premise that is applicable to any subjective view of meaning and purpose especially nowadays anxiety is often seen as something wrong and negative a weakness or an illness but anxiety is arguably a fundamental ingredient entrenched in the experience of human consciousness to feel and to think is to be anxious perhaps added to the list of terms we ought to be called is

homo anxietatum anxious man how could we not be anxious it is a natural response to an intensely disquieting confusing and uncertain existence that we are given an unrequested role in and the more choices we garner access to in the modern world we are only left with even more reasons to fret and turn in anxiety over more ways we hope we can quiet it as well as more ways to feel responsible when we inevitably don't but we must like kicker guard suggested try our best to learn how to live with and through it to keep moving

forward into the unknown and take our leaps of faith into what we truly and personally believe makes it all worth living and dying for this video was sponsored by blinkist savannah was a regular reader she especially enjoyed learning about psychology and cognitive science she read about a book every month on these subjects one of her closest friends christine also shared in this interest and routine with her at 20 years old however savannah was introduced to the book summary app blankist which condenses over 5 000 non-fiction books into around 15-minute summaries having some of her favorite

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