The Anxiety of Meaninglessness and Emptiness

This week I’ve dug Paul Tillich’s “The Courage to Be.” I’m surprised by how much I love it, considering that Tillich is a Christian. But Tillich’s thought is not rooted in fundamentalism but existentialism. His writing has the ring of truth in it, unlike a lot of modern religious movements. Tillich grapples with the questions of life with unflinching honesty. His thoughts on anxiety are particularly helpful for not only me but in how I consider my patients.

Tillich writes about 3 forms of anxiety: the anxiety of fate and death, the anxiety of meaninglessness and emptiness, and the anxiety of guilt and condemnation. As you can imagine all of these categories can be written about ad nauseam. But today I’d like to focus on the anxiety of meaninglessness and emptiness.

In short: the modern world feels empty for many of us. We seem to be living in a narcissistic, spiritually dead age and we cannot find meaning in the cultural expressions given to us. Tillich, of course, has lots to say about this:

“​​The anxiety of emptiness is aroused by the threat of nonbeing to the special contents of the spiritual life. A belief breaks down through external events or inner processes: one is cut off from creative participation in the sphere of culture, one feels frustrated about something which one had passionately affirmed, one is…