The Quiet Panic of Being Alive

You’ve done everything right. You’ve shown up. You’ve taken care of people. You’ve made it through the day. And now, finally, it’s quiet. There’s no immediate crisis pulling at you, no emergency to fix, no one urgently needing your attention. But instead of peace, you feel… off. Not panicked. Not depressed. Just… unmoored. Restless. Like something’s missing, but you can’t quite name what.

That feeling? It might be existential anxiety.

In this episode of The Psychology of Us, we explore one of the most misunderstood emotional experiences of modern life: the low hum of unease that settles in when the noise stops. Unlike clinical anxiety, existential anxiety isn’t about fear of failure or fear of people. It’s not triggered by deadlines, trauma, or social situations. It’s not about something. It’s about everything.

This is the ache that surfaces when we confront the raw facts of being human: that we are mortal, alone in our inner experience, free to choose but responsible for the shape of our lives, and ultimately tasked with making meaning in a world that doesn’t hand it to us. These are what existential psychologists call the “ultimate concerns”—and most of us feel them more than we realize.

This kind of anxiety isn’t pathological. It’s not a sign that something’s broken. It’s a sign that something in you is awake.

Over the course of this 20-minute episode, we walk through:

• Why existential anxiety tends to show up in stillness, transitions, and even moments of success

• How modern culture mislabels it as burnout, depression, or dysfunction

• The emotional defenses we unconsciously build—busyness, distraction, perfectionism, over-control—to outrun the discomfort of being

• Four fundamental truths we’re all quietly reckoning with: mortality, freedom, isolation, and meaninglessness

• Why existential anxiety isn’t a glitch in your system, but a call toward meaning, alignment, and presence

You’ll also hear the story of someone you’ve probably met in different forms: a woman in her 50s, post-divorce, post-childrearing, post-career scramble, trying to reclaim her life—and struggling to understand the ache that’s arrived in the silence. Her story may sound a lot like yours.

This episode doesn’t offer false comfort. It doesn’t promise to fix the ache or erase the ambiguity. Because existential anxiety isn’t something to be solved. It’s something to be honored. Understood. Walked with.

We end by asking different questions—more honest ones. Not “How do I make this go away?” but “What is this asking me to face?” “What kind of life do I want to live, if I stop performing and start choosing?”

If you’ve ever felt like something is wrong with you because you can’t shake that strange internal drift—even when everything looks fine on the outside—this episode is for you.

Because maybe the ache you’re feeling isn’t a breakdown.
Maybe it’s the beginning of something real.

RJ Starr

http://profrjstarr.com