New research reveals why your anxiety isn’t your enemy. Here’s how you can use it to break yourself out of living life on autopilot.
Nothing can rattle your sense of invincibility and security quite like a rupture in normalcy: losing a job, getting a life-changing medical diagnosis, experiencing a breakup, losing a loved one. The reactions these crises spur may differ between you and the next person, but the feeling of existential dread they offer is almost universal.
Unfortunately, modern culture doesn’t make much room for the discomfort of these events. We’re told to just “stay positive” and that we’ll quickly “bounce back.” But no matter what we or others tell ourselves, the sadness and unease they bring always lingers in some way or another.
This unease, however, is not the problem. Rather, it’s likely that we expect not to feel it.
Instead of pushing past the discomfort, she suggests that we should instead start using it as a doorway into what she calls “existential authenticity.” Here’s how, according to her 2025 study.Existential Authenticity
Existential authenticity is the act of being true to existence in and of itself, rather than “being true to yourself” in a trite sense. Russo-Netzer puts it plainly: “Existential authenticity is about living with a clear awareness of the fragile, finite and uncertain nature of human existence, and still taking responsibility for one’s choices.”
Although we cannot escape these themes in our lives, nor the dread they may instill within us, we can nevertheless choose how we respond to them.
Russo-Netzer refers to Martin Heidegger in her study, one of existentialism’s central figures. He described two central states of “Being” within life: “forgetfulness of Being” — in which we operate on autopilot, absorbed in routines and cultural expectations — and “mindfulness of Being” — in which we step back, confront life’s uncertainties and deliberately choose our lifepath.Transformative Life Experiences
If being “existentially authentic” sounds abstract, then you can start by imagining a moment in which life seemingly pulled the rug out from under you.
