existential dread: why we all have it and what to do about it

i think most of us fall into dread when we start treating life as a problem we’re supposed to solve. it’s subtle at first: a recurrent voice in your head that asks what you’re doing with your days, whether you’re on the right track, whether you’re doing enough. then, without warning, it turns into a spiral. suddenly every decision becomes a referendum on your existence. you replay choices as if your life is an exam paper that someone, somewhere, is going to mark. and because the stakes feel impossibly high, you freeze. dread convinces you that life is a puzzle with one correct solution, and you’re behind on finding it.

but living was never meant to be solved. living was meant to be tasted. to walk into the woods and not name every tree. to hold someone’s hand without knowing how long they’ll stay. to make coffee in the morning, watch the steam curl, and not immediately analyze the meaning of your routine. the ordinary courage of being alive is letting yourself experience something without forcing it into a tidy conclusion.

when dread presses down, it often disguises itself as responsibility. you think you’re being diligent, thoughtful, even moral, by worrying about the future. you tell yourself you’re planning, preparing, anticipating. but beneath it is a desperation for control — the craving to know the ending before you’ve lived the middle. and because certainty never arrives, dread keeps tightening its grip.

the truth is, dread feeds on abstractions. it thrives when your mind leaves the room you’re in and goes wandering into every possible version of the future. you’re lying in bed but already thinking about whether you’ll be alone in ten years. you’re cooking dinner but also calculating whether you’ve wasted your potential. your body is in one place; your mind is running ahead like a nervous scout who doesn’t know how to return.

i’ve noticed dread gets loudest when i look around and assume everyone else is fine. everyone else seems to be moving with confidence. they’re posting their weekend trips, making career moves, getting engaged, buying houses. dread tells you that you’re the only one who can’t get it together. but the thing about dread is that it’s private by nature. people rarely admit to it in public. you don’t see the person at the grocery store suddenly overcome with a fear of death in the produce aisle. you don’t hear your coworker cry in their car before walking into the office. dread is everywhere, but it camouflages itself.

and that is why it feels so isolating. you think your dread is a sign of personal failure, when really it’s part of the shared condition of being conscious. kierkegaard called it the dizziness of freedom — that overwhelming awareness that you could choose anything, go anywhere, become anyone. camus called it the absurd — the clash between our longing for meaning and the silence of the universe. but you don’t need philosophy textbooks to understand it. you only need one long night, staring at the ceiling, wondering if you’re wasting the one life you have.

the mistake is assuming dread has to be eradicated before you can participate in life. but dread isn’t an enemy you defeat once. it’s more like background static you learn to live alongside. it doesn’t have to vanish for you to enjoy a meal, laugh with a friend, or write something down. it can sit in the corner of the room while you do ordinary things. when you treat dread like a permanent condition of being human rather than a crisis to solve, it loses some of its power.

one way i quiet dread is by pulling myself back into the physical world. dread thrives on the abstract — “will i be happy in twenty years?” — and abstract questions have no satisfying answers. the antidote is concrete detail. i chop onions and focus on the sound. i fold laundry and pay attention to the fabric. i call a friend and talk about a TV show instead of my existential crisis. dread hates specificity. the more you ground yourself in small, physical acts, the harder it is for dread to drag you away.

sometimes dread is trying to tell you something about what you want. spirals aren’t always meaningless. often they reveal longing: the desire to slow down, to connect more deeply, to live with more attention. when you reframe dread as a signal instead of a defect, you can start asking gentler questions. not, “why am i spiraling?” but, “what is this spiral pointing me toward?” usually the answers are humble and human: i want to feel less alone. i want to take better care of myself. i want to do something that matters to someone. those aren’t impossible cosmic tasks. those are choices available in the small, ordinary hours of life.

philosophy has always circled around dread, but it also reminds us that dread coexists with love, beauty, and meaning. the same self-awareness that makes you panic at 2 a.m. also allows you to appreciate a song so deeply it makes you cry, or notice how sunlight through the window makes your kitchen feel holy for a second. if you erased dread entirely, you’d probably erase half of what makes life vivid.

so the task is not to get rid of it, but to make space for it without letting it run the show. you let dread sit quietly while you keep living. you let it ride in the backseat while you go for a walk, while you cook dinner, while you kiss someone goodnight. dread doesn’t have to disappear before joy is allowed to enter. both CAN coexist.

and when dread insists you’re falling behind, you can remind yourself: you’re not here to solve the world. you’re here to taste it. you’re here to step into the woods without naming every tree. you’re here to love without needing to know if it will last forever. you’re here to build a life from small details — a coffee you enjoy, a book that makes you think, a friendship that feels like home. dread will always whisper that you should be doing more, knowing more, securing more but the real measure of being alive is how present you are for the fleeting, ordinary details that, in retrospect, turn out to be everything.