Does your life feel as though it is spinning out of control?
Have you been wondering if there is a way to stop this ride and get off?
Do you find yourself wondering what will happen if you don’t?
“To exist is an art”. S. Kierkegaard
Are burnout and exhaustion regular experiences for you?
Struve et al. (2024) state that our individual and collective angst about the fraying of our social fabric is contributing to anxiety becoming the defining mood of our age.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) has doubled the number of pages devoted to anxiety disorders with every new edition. According to the US National Institute of Mental Health, over 30% of the population will experience an anxiety disorder in their lifetime.
Our experience of anxiety is meant to be protective; offering a wake-up call, “Pay attention, this is important!” The challenge is when our over-aroused system can’t reset to neutral once the threat has passed.
Currently, our individual concerns are being scaled up to ‘iatrogenesis’, a term coined in the 1970’s by Ivan Illich (Austrian philosopher, educator and social critic) and becoming social and cultural phenomena (Struve et al., 2024). Because of the cultural and environmental scale, they aren’t the kind of threats that are easily identifiable and quickly addressed with immediate action.
Call it free-floating anxiety; it exists without a well-defined anchor for its cause.
The words anxiety and angst find their roots in the Indo-Germanic word angh or anghu, defined as a narrowing, constricting or tightening feeling, frequently felt in the chest or neck, and most often experienced as a response to danger, threat or fear.
Anxiety alerts us to a potential threat. If I am anxious about an exam, I can reflect and understand that I feel my anxiety because passing this test is important to me. When I understand why this matters, it is straightforward to decide what actions to take that will support me to do well: study and prepare.
As I act on the message, the cycle is completed, and my anxiety quiets.
Anxiety becomes existential angst when the questions of why it matters and what to do about it are not so easily answered.
This is not the first time that humans have faced collective angst on this scale.
Each time, often through existential philosophy and psychology, we expand our understanding of meaning, purpose and values in our lives, especially in relation to existential crises, angst, courage, freedom, and most importantly authenticity.
Existential theory permeates our art, literature, drama, theology and psychology. At its essence, existentialism is the tenet that personal freedom, individual responsibility and expression of our agency through conscious choice are the essential elements that move us toward self-awareness, growth and the determination of our life’s meaning.
Two of the giants of existentialism, Kirkegaard (1813-1855, Danish theologian and philosopher) and Heidegger (1889-1976, German philosopher), explain that our anxiety is the central instigator to our personal growth. It is an environment of sweeping freedom and unconventional insecurity that triggers our existential angst so that we might be disrupted just enough…just for long enough…to ask ourselves the important questions about our life…and preferably while we have enough life left in us to do something about it!
The Danish word for suffering is lidelse (from the root lide), and means to go on a journey, to move, to travel. When we experience the suffering of existential angst passively, we think, “Why me? I am helpless”. To face and accept our suffering is to activate our agency, “I can shape my experience and potentially have an impact on the external circumstances as well.” Accepting this challenge leads to courage, self-development and maturation, key elements of post traumatic growth (Struve et al., 2024).
To embrace our existential angst, both individual and collective, is to heed the wake-up call and recognize that our lives can be different. We can shed the routines created by functioning only to meet the obligatory expectations from others and ourselves, and move towards authenticity. This requires stepping into and through our angst, hence the need for a bit of courage! Our authenticity is earned.
Kazimierz Dabrowski (1902-1980, Polish psychiatrist and physician) developed the Theory of Positive Disintegration. Dabrowski believed that our anxiety is not a disorder or disease to be cured, but a vital step in our psychological growth and development. We build resilience and a more complex world view for having endured the contradictions and doubt of our angst (Schnell, 2022).
Tedeschi & Calhoun (1996) describe walking into the dark space of our angst to invite the transformation of our existence. To prevent our suffering from becoming chronic and paralyzing, we must remain aware and willing to return with faith gained, just as dawn returns us to day.
Doing this work with a caring, experienced leader and fellow companions provides a protective social buffer, regulating our discomfort and allowing a thoughtful and organized approach to these questions. The collective rituals ground us in symbolic and social meaning as we experience the embodied existential and psychological questions of meaning, purpose and values in our lives (Furchert, 2012).
This is the work of Calibrating True North. With caring leadership and good company, we set off on our journey, exploring the questions that reveal our values and purpose, and clarify the meaningfulness of our lives.
“I was going through a very dark time in my life, and I took up Kristina’s offer to participate in Calibrating True North. I believe this program was responsible for me not only making it through this difficult time, and also coming out the other end stronger and with a direction to follow. Kristina has carefully crafted exercises to help bypass the outside voices and forces that so often cloud our intuitive wisdom.
Her program helps you connect with your authentic self and inner compass to determine what is most important to you. And she doesn’t just stop there, her program provides practical help to put your direction into action and meet your goals.
For those seeking freedom and a life congruent with their values, this program is an essential. I can honestly say that I do not know where I would be without it. Kristina is a gifted facilitator; her vibrant and warm personality will guide and support you through the process of finding and calibrating to your true north.” L.S. participant
References if you are interested in learning more:
Furchert A. (2012). Das Leiden fassen: Zur Leidensdialektik Søren Kierkegaards. Alber.
Schnell, T. (2022). Suffering as meaningful choice. An existential approach. Ta vare. En bok om diakoni, sjelesorg og eksistensiell helse, 3-14. https://vid.brage.unit.no/vid-xmlui/bitstream/handle/11250/3001282/240622_HSH_elektronisk.pdf?sequence=1#page=15
Struve, K., Schapira, M.I., Hoinkes, U., & Allegrante, J.P. (2024). Anxiety Culture: The New Global State of Human Affairs. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. https://muse.jhu.edu/book/123255.
Tedeschi, R. G., & Calhoun, L. G. (1996). The Posttraumatic Growth Inventory: Measuring the positive legacy of trauma. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 9(3), 455-471.
Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism
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