The modern person has the means to live, but often has no meaning to live for. Meaning can be found in suffering, work and love. Anxiety arises from our personal need to survive, to preserve our being, and to assert our being. Anxiety can be used as a motivation for change. We can also blunt our anxiety by creating the illusion that there is security in life.
Existential therapists distinguish between normal anxiety and neurotic anxiety.
Being mentally healthy is living as much as possible without neurotic anxiety and accepting and tolerating existential anxiety. If we have the courage to face life and ourselves we may be frightened, but we will be able to change. Existential anxiety is a constructive form of normal anxiety. This anxiety is experience when we become aware of our freedom and the consequences of accepting or rejecting freedom. Anxiety is associated with the excitement accompanying the birth of a new idea.