Anxious

Anxiety, Freud said, relates to the state itself, and disregards the object that elicits it, whereas fear draws attention precisely to the object.

Fear states occur when a threat is present or imminent; states of anxiety result when a threat is possible but its occurrence is uncertain.

its Freudian themes in High Anxiety (1977).

What makes us each have his or her own individual anxiety level?

Søren Kierkegaard, who at the time was a little-known Danish theologian and philosopher, conceived of anxiety as the key to human existence: a sense of dread over our freedom to choose. It began, Kierkegaard said, when Adam struggled between Eve’s apple and God, and remains a factor in every choice that humans make.

Kierkegaard argued that anxiety (dread) was caused by “nothingness”: the despair that comes from the realization that we are not grounded in the world and are defined only by the practices in which we engage. It is through choice that we prevent the return to nothingness.

In Freud’s view anxiety is born out of a need to keep impulses based on stressful thoughts and memories, mostly about childhood, out of consciousness.