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New Blog Post From Kirk Schneider on Life Enhancing Anxiety

Kirk Schneider, PhD, Psychologist, EHI President and Instructor, has a new article on his PsychologyToday blog, Awakening to Awe. The post is entitled, “What the World Needs Now Is ‘Life-Enhancing’ Anxiety” in which he posits that “one of our great problems today is too little of a certain kind of anxiety.”

KEY POINTS

  • Anxiety is a fear of the unknown. But it is also a call to the unknown. 
  • What I term “life-enhancing” anxiety is a signal that we are not only called to the unknown, but that it is urgent to explore it. 
  • Without life-enhancing anxiety, we are in danger of personal and collective collapse; life without aliveness. 

Essentially, anxiety is a fear of the unknown. But it is also a call to the unknown.

While it may seem counterintuitive, one of our great problems today is too little anxiety, at least of a certain kind. As the psychologist Rollo May and before him philosophers Paul Tillich and Soren Kierkegaard contended, a modicum of anxiety is necessary—and indeed urgent—to live a vital and fulfilled life; at least for many of us.

Read the whole article, “What the World Needs Now is Life Enhancing Anxiety,” on PsychologyToday.

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Related Posts:

Becker, Rank, and Existential Psychotherapy

By Kirk Schneider, PhD

PsychologyToday.com
May 22, 2023

Kirk Schneider has a recent article on the topic of Ernest Becker, Otto Rank and Psychotherapy as “an intimate trio.”

Key points:

We must understand our relationship to existence, not only to our parents, culture, cognition, or physiology.

Life-enhancing anxiety is the ability to live with and make the best of the depth and mystery of existence.

A key result of life-enhancing anxiety is awe-based consciousness—a sense of adventure toward all living.

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