Recovery
So I'm relatively young and I had my first experience of existential anxiety late last year and I'd say I'm recovering but it keeps coming back. Basically I fell into a hole of 'Why was I born as me and no one else?', 'Why is this the POV I live from?', 'What will I see when I die?', It took a while but I did get to the conclusion that I just am - chance and my life is good but I remember feeling so disorientated when I also realised everyone around me also sees like through a 'first person perspective' but I cannot see through their eyes I am simply stuck as me.
I first had this whole anxious existential experience when my life was going a little too well, since 2023 I've been struggling with anxiety and low mood and my life started looking up last year - good friends, good life partner but that's when I began questioning the meaning and purpose of everything and I just fell into that spiral. It was worse than being anxious and having low mood as I felt so numb and no one could tell, everything around me felt unreal and shaky.
But recently my life has gotten really good as I got over the wave of existential dread and told myself to just live and it won't feel so scary. But late at night it all comes back:all the questions, all the dread. It's only come back the past couple of nights and I'm trying to tell myself that I only feel this when I have bad anxiety and it's a way my body is trying to help me by dissociating my mind from my body, I know it's a natural anxiety response but it makes me MORE nervous, I just want to live my life with ignorance rather than have these constant deep thoughts and it's hard to support other people with their struggles as this existential fear looms over me. I'm trying to be more present and I just hope this goes away again. The things that ground me are:
-You are here for a reason, you are just you and always have been you and that's okay you just have to learn to accept that
-You have people around you that love you and that's all you need
-There is no purpose to 'life' so just live it
-Everyone is on the same boat, they've also got to navigate through life and then... Die, so therefore there is someone out there who understands you
But sometimes... Just sometimes those morals seem pointless, I hope through hearing my story you can relate and maybe you'll use these grounding techniques but also I'd love a little support😓 I'm also currently reading this FANTASTIC book 'You Will Get Through This Night' by the WONDERFUL Daniel Howell which actually talks about this and how it worsens at night!