Existential Psychology on Anxiety: The Cost of Being Free

There is a quiet tension many people live with, often without naming it. A part of us wants to move freely, express something real, act without overthinking. Another part immediately begins to calculate: what will be accepted, what will be safe, what will be “correct,” what will not lead to loss or rejection. Between these two movements, opposites we trying to integrate  — aliveness and control — appears: anxiety.

In existential psychology, this is not seen as a problem to eliminate, but as a natural signal of being in contact with freedom itself. Rollo May explored this paradox deeply: the more alive a person becomes, the less predictable their inner world feels — and the more anxiety becomes part of the experience. This text is about that hidden relationship between freedom, anxiety, and creativity.

Rollo May, in existential psychology, radically reframes how anxiety is usually understood. He doesn’t treat it as a malfunction to be fixed or eliminated, but as a natural background condition of a living, free human existence.

From this perspective, freedom is not a comfortable state. It is a form of pressure. Because freedom always carries uncertainty: you cannot fully predict outcomes in advance, and you cannot rely entirely on external roles, structures, or guarantees. And it is precisely this openness that gives rise to anxiety.

Freedom as a source of anxiety

In Rollo May’s logic, a person ends up in a paradoxical position:

• the more freedom one has, the more responsibility appears

• the more responsibility there is, the fewer external supports remain

• the fewer external supports, the stronger the experience of anxiety becomes

  
  

As a result, a very natural psychological movement takes place: a person begins to reduce their freedom in order to reduce their anxiety.

This doesn’t usually happen in an obvious or dramatic way. More often it is subtle, almost invisible:

• choosing predictable roles instead of genuine self-expression

• living according to ready-made scripts of what is “right”

• replacing inner impulses with expectations from others

• holding back from the risk of being fully seen or expressed

May describes this as a form of “safe unfreedom.”

Safe unfreedom

This is not simply external compliance. It is an internal agreement:

“If I reduce my spontaneity, I gain the illusion of safety.”

But the cost of this safety is a reduction in aliveness.

Because for May, spontaneity is not chaos or impulsiveness. It is closer to a direct movement of being — a moment when a person acts from within rather than from fear, expectation, or pre-written identity.

And here a central tension emerges:

Freedom = aliveness + anxiety

Unfreedom = stability + diminished aliveness

Creativity and anxiety are inseparable

One of May’s key ideas is that creativity is impossible without anxiety.

Not because anxiety is helpful in itself, but because:

• creativity always steps beyond what is already known

• any genuinely new act disrupts familiar predictability

• the unknown automatically activates anxiety

In other words, a creative act is always a movement into uncertainty.

And therefore:

• if a person is completely free of anxiety, they are likely staying within the familiar

• if a person is truly creating something new, they will inevitably meet inner tension

Spontaneity as the risk of being alive

In this framework, spontaneity is not ease or relaxation. It is closer to an authentic action emerging from an inner center.

And it always carries a subtle sense of risk, because:

• it does not guarantee approval

• it does not rely on a known outcome

• it can disrupt a stable sense of identity

Because of this, the psyche often prefers not “to be spontaneous,” but “to be correct.”

Yet May emphasizes that this is not a personal flaw. It is a basic existential mechanism.

The core idea

Anxiety, in this view, is not an enemy and not a symptom. It is an indicator that a person is approaching a real choice — something alive, not predetermined.

And from here his paradox becomes clear:

less anxiety → less freedom → less life

more freedom → more anxiety → more creative potential

The task is not to eliminate anxiety, but to develop the capacity to stay with it at a tolerable level without abandoning one’s own aliveness.

Seen from this perspective, anxiety is not a sign that something is going wrong. It is often a sign that something is becoming real.

When a person moves closer to their own freedom, they inevitably move away from fixed certainty. And in that space, something new can emerge — but it cannot emerge without tension.

This is why creativity is never purely comfortable. It asks a person to tolerate not knowing, not being guaranteed, not being fully protected by roles or identities.

The question is not how to remove anxiety completely, but how much of it can be held without closing back into a smaller, safer version of life.

Because in the end, the choice is rarely between anxiety and no anxiety.

It is usually between a smaller, controlled life — and a wider, uncertain one that feels more alive.