Existential anxiety/crisis

LegacyUser

I think that's the name for what i've been experiencing for years every few days. I'm only 23 and my life is far from perfect. I suffer from anxiety and have yet to successfully manage it. I'm not popular by any measure although I do have friends. I type this post as a single guy in my early 20's who is at home on a Saturday while 99% of people my age are out.
Yet I do love the whole experience of being alive. Sometimes I'll be enjoying myself with friends or looking at a nice sunset or enjoying good food and then it hits me - this all has to end! My very existence will be reduced to a pile of dirt in the ground. I'll get old and die and never experience all the things I enjoy again. I get anxiety out of it aswell. The thought that I will suddenly stop being alive for the rest of eternity scares me. I can't ever imagine not being alive.
Apologies if I come across as morbid or bat**** crazy but these thoughts run through my head sometimes and I guess it would be nice for some reassurance that i'm not the only one who gets them?

AnonMouse

Hello there,

Like you, I too love the whole experience of being alive. Life is truly a blessing, and it took me a very long time to realise that. I have been through massive bouts of depression, and one of the main things that got me down was the passage of time. I used to spend hours and hours in my room, trying to define time and wondering what it is. In hindsight, I realise that my thoughts were actually a massive fear of death, and I found it hard to cope with the fact that my time on Earth, as me, would end at some point. The thing is though, by dwelling on these thoughts, and being so consumed by the thought of death, I actually prevented myself from living.

I believe in an after life and re-incarnation, so I don't share the view that your existence will be reduced to a pile of dirt in the ground. When you die though, your physical body will rot in the ground, but that doesn't mean your spirit won't live on. By the way, I am not trying to force my beliefs on you; i'm just writing from my heart about the topic you brought up, and this is what is coming out. We will die when we are supposed to, and we never know when that will be, so we may as well enjoy life while we have it. I have found that it really is the simple things in life that give the most pleasure - watching a sunset, walking among nature, talking to animals etc.

You don't come across as morbid, or bat**** crazy, so no need to apologize I never apologize for being morbid, as those things need to be talked about some times as well. I'm not sure if this post is of any benefit to you, but I wish you well and always know, that no matter what happens, everything will be OK

peckerhead

Live in the now.

Btw, 99% of people your age are certainly NOT out having the great time you imagine.

Go well.

Ocean Blue

peckerhead wrote: »

Btw, 99% of people your age are certainly NOT out having the great time you imagine.

100% this. More often than not people live a far quieter life than they/society/media would have you believe. Try not to compare yourself.

Calibos

As Epicurus said, "When I Am, Death is Not. When Death is, I Am Not"

That's the 14 billion years before and after my life and death sorted.

As Dawkins said, "there is is an unbroken line of decent between you and a primordial amoeba billions of years ago every one of which had to live and die for you to even exist. In every generation there where trillions of Sperm/Ova combinations that didn't get to exist at all. It's amazing and such un fathomable luck that you exist at all."

I feel lucky to be alive at all.

As Confucious once cursed,"May you live in interesting times"

We live in one of the safest parts of the world at one of the safest times in the history of humanity in terms of crime, violence, war, health, wealth etc

It's a blessing to even be able to live a quiet life if that's what one desires. Each to his own. I'd be the same. I actually prefer to sit in on a Saturday and learn about the world and then explore it and wonder at it on a Sunday for example.

eegah123

Have to say as another person in their early 20s - who would have thought himself as having gone through enough personal evolution to be over this sort of existential angst (including a stint in a mental hospital a few years back) - I still get hit with these feelings, and do ponder death and grief on a daily basis...I have a lot of time on my hands though - having only a weekend job which is not in my chosen field (and seriously want to make a change) and so don't feel as engaged in life as I might other wise. I do subscribe to the notion that we are all spiritual beings having a human experience and must take it for what it is without burdening ourselves with all the problems in the world that we are aware of simply because of the information-saturated age we live in. Try your best, because why not? and hopefully we find yourself on the right path soon.

Azwaldo55

Have you ever heard of Nando Parrado?

He and 15 other Uruguayan men survived a plane crash in the Andes in the early 1970s. Nando lost his mother and kid sister and many friends in the crash while others were killed when the wreck of the plane was buried by an avalanche days later. The survivors had no food and were forced to eat the bodies of the dead - their friends and relatives - but were gradually wasting away due to the huge demands on their systems from the cold, the howling winds and the high altitude which made every breath and every step they made a torture. Some of the young men succumbed to despair gave up and died. Nando and the others refused to die and planned to strike to the west from the crash site over the mountains and head for Chile.

Nando and a comrade struggled against all the odds to climb a nearby mountain in subzero temperatures and escape the cauldron that contained the crashed plane. They descended the slope and followed a valley that ultimately led them down into the foothills of the Andes where they finally met a farmer who alerted the authorities and the survivors were rescued by helicopters after 72 days in the Andes. They had been given up for dead and Nando had believed when he and his comrade headed out across the mountains their chances of survival were practically nil.

Nando and his friends realized that human beings were insignificant in the face nature which was trying to kill them every minute of every hour of ever day. Death was tapping them on the shoulder. The only thing that sustained them was love and comradeship and shared suffering. Nando had never been very religious but he became conscious that love in the face of death was the only way to make life livable and to make sense of what was happening.

We are all going to die so it is up to us to fill each moment with love - love others and make the world a better place when he leave it. Life is full of suffering and misery and unhappiness but in even the darkest moment there is always hope. Even if life appears to have no meaning it still does.

Call Me Jimmy

I was just thinking about this today but here's my thoughts at the moment:

Go up to death's door and see if he's in. Go in for a chat, sit with it and see how you feel.

I use death to my advantage in the sense that I find really projecting my mind forward to the moments where I am in a hospital and it's kind of a couple of days left, how light I will feel. All the insights I will get, the outpouring of emotion and truth. I use my full imagination to try and feel all this, and then imagine I'm there and they say 'hey, you can go back', and I'm like 'I can go back and I don't have just days to feel all this, I don't have just days to feel emotion and see beauty and be truthful with everyone?'.

Then I open my eyes and I'm here now.

I know it sounds REALLY naff, but it helps me to deal with death.

Jeefff

I feel exactly the same, every couple of days I have major panics over it, then I forget about it, focus on my van or something then bang, it's back..
Mainly at night, that's when it strikes hard, loose sleep over it too, that's why I'm up at 2:10

The whole thing is unbelievable really, the size of the universe, and everything going on in it, but my van can distract from all of that for a day or two..
I'm not sure there's a 'cure' either, once you wig out, you've gone too far to forget all the major pondering you've done..

userod

Jeefff wrote: »

I feel exactly the same, every couple of days I have major panics over it, then I forget about it, focus on my van or something then bang, it's back..
Mainly at night, that's when it strikes hard, loose sleep over it too, that's why I'm up at 2:10

The whole thing is unbelievable really, the size of the universe, and everything going on in it, but my van can distract from all of that for a day or two..
I'm not sure there's a 'cure' either, once you wig out, you've gone too far to forget all the major pondering you've done..

It has always been easier for a man with a van, the 'ould game of life.