I experienced a moment of existential death anxiety recently, during a movie I was watching (Nomadland, for the curious). I don’t think it was due to anything particularly poignant in the scene or the film (as good as it was), but rather just a somewhat coincidental product of the context and my mental state at the time. I felt an overwhelming sense of fear at the inevitable arrival of my death, of the permanent loss of agency in the world, and the eternal darkness of oblivion that awaits. It was fleeting, lasting maybe a couple of minutes at most. During that time, I was genuinely terrified with despair and powerlessness. For the first time, I was able to truly internalize the meaning of those words.

This wasn’t the first time I have experienced this. It happens to me occasionally, seemingly randomly, once every few years or so. It’s always brief (thankfully), and never really leaves any long-lasting negative residual effects. However, this is the first time that I’ve tried to reflect on the experience shortly afterwards.

It seems that existential angst isn’t a mental state that I can get into at will. This is somewhat surprising to me, because the inescapable nature of death is so obvious that I expected to be reliably filled with anguish if I simply followed the thought process of contemplating it. But it isn’t the case for me. Even as I am writing this paragraph and actively thinking about the subject matter, I feel normal, without any of the visceral experience of those “special occasions”. Is this the power of the self-defence mechanism of the mind, as described in terror management theory?

According to TMT, the conflict between our self-preservation instinct and our conscious awareness of the inevitability of death is so great, that without a powerful mental defence mechanism against that terror, we would be unable to function normally. I have never thought much of this theory in the past, but after this experience, I feel that there might be something important here. Maybe this “terror management” mechanism is so effective that most of the time we are oblivious so its existence. Like everything else we take for granted, be it fresh water or good health, it is only through loss that we gain appreciation for what we’ve always had all along.

I sense that death anxiety is similar in nature to some forms of depression. I can’t imagine how my life would be like had such experiences lasted more permanently for me. One thing I’ve realized is that this kind of existential anxiety is completely different in nature from stress, at least the typical stress that I encounter at work and in life. Of course, stress or mental burnout feels absolutely terrible, and at times can take a serious toll on both mind and body. But in my experience, it never feels truly hopeless. There is always a way out, an escape, someone to talk to for help, and so it never imbues me with the sense of utter despair that existential dread does.

According to some research done in the 1980s, occasional episodes of death anxiety is normal, especially among young adults. It seems to get worse in the middle age years, before it declines in the later years. However, this work had a fairly low sample size (around 20 or so people in each age group), so its validity is questionable at best. I do sincerely hope that such moments of despair at least does not become more prevalent as we age.