In this research, starting from the beliefs about the first existence of anxiety, the place of anxiety in psychology, how people experience this concept of anxiety, what its main sources are, and finally the issues about the concept of anxiety that can be accepted will be discussed. While looking at the emergence moments of anxiety, it will be tried to be explained by considering the definitions of many approaches from a psychological point of view, while looking at its existence, especially taking into account philosophy and existential thoughts. The point we want to reach is actually to encourage more research on how we experience anxiety in this life where anxiety exists. strong>
If we have decided to do research on anxiety, we need to go back to the first philosophers who put people in the center. The desire to try to understand the human, which started from Socrates, continued in different cultures throughout the periods. Anxiety has been the subject of discussions and researches for centuries, on which philosophers, thinkers and paicologists talk. The fact that psychosis and neurosis created by human psychology, which started with Freud, tried to be explained in terms of cognition is actually not far from the topics discussed throughout the history of philosophy. Soren Kierkegaar, one of the religious existentialist philosophers, mentions the emergence of anxiety for the first time in cognition with the concept of prohibition in his book The Concept of Anxiety. The existence of anxiety is actually mentioned when the formation of humanity's self arises at the moment when the right to choose arises. Every person who knows that he has the right to choose is faced with the fact that the consequences belong to him, and this confrontation is the emotion created by the moment. Anxiety prevails only when judgment is actively preached. (kierkegaard, 1944, p.60). Here, without making a choice, a person can oscillate for a long time in purgatory and become a surviving existence there. This is where the science of psychology comes into play and works on the thoughts, behaviors and emotions of the person on the feelings of the person in that spiritual war and the inability to take a step back and forth. Anxiety can be confused with dizziness. Anyone who looks down into the gaping pit of hell his head turns. (Kierkegaar, 1944, p.68). This feeling of dizziness, perhaps, reveals feelings such as anxiety, anxiety. Being able to choose is also what separates us from other living things, says Kierkegaar, for people who have never experienced anxiety, the following can be said: In the case of Adam as a mere animal, he never felt anxiety. (Kierkegaard, 1944, p.60). Here we need to keep in mind that anxiety is not conceptualized as a neurotic/pathological mode of existence but as an experience inherent in the human condition. The greater an individual's potential for freedom, the greater his anxiety will be. While we cannot talk about emotion for every living thing that exists in a biological sense, the only condition of being human is emotions. Anxiety, one of the basic emotions, is often confused with fear. There is no source of anxiety in psychology. The person is experiencing anxiety, which is caused by a non-existent intellectual dimension. Fear has a source. The person may experience fear of being harmed in an accident. However, when there is no threatening environment in anxiety, the person feels a suffocation in the sense of being harmed. They use the "fight or flight" technique when they perceive a threat to human life, an ontogenetic entity. As a gazelle in nature's food chain, I have a constant fear of being eaten by a lion. But to feel this fear while the gazelle is drinking water, grazing or living in the herd. The moment he feels the presence of the lion, he experiences it. “as soon as it senses its presence” is the important word for us here, but if I were a gazelle with anxiety problems, I would live on the alert with the thought that the lion could hunt me down at any second without feeling its presence and end my life.
According to existential approaches (without forgetting that Kierkegaard is the person who laid the foundations of existentialism), there are three levels of relationship in our world as human beings. Unwelt, mitwelt and eigenwlt. (Göka, 1999, p. 172). These relationship styles talk about our relationships with nature, our relationships with others, and our relationships with ourselves. At the very base of these relationship types, balance is achieved. where we can speak of an authentic person, an authentic existence. However, it is believed that the biggest obstacle in front of this comes from our existential concerns. The first of these is knowing that we are destined to die at an unknown time (Göka, 1999, p.172). A person who exists in a limited time lives with the fact that his existence will come to an end. The probe here carries the information that not only it is related to itself, but all living things with which it is in contact will perish. The second source is our being conscious beings, where there is more than one path, where I have a choice, to take responsibility for the good or bad in the outcome of every decision I make. The final source of anxiety is our sense of meaninglessness and our constant exposure to threats in such a way that everything can suddenly become bullshit. Within these choices and values that I have established, everything can suddenly turn around and disappear. Let's remember the following sentences we heard around us many times: "I vacuumed my hair for him, what will I do now", "I don't know who I am in a life without him", "I didn't do anything other than cooking at home but taking care of him". We've all met people. Whatever his existence defines, it can sometimes be a spouse, a job, a child, the feeling of emptiness he experiences when he loses them, that loss is exactly the result of the relationships he cannot establish with his existence. We can say that all these sources of existential anxiety are related to the fact that human beings exist in a limited time. Our time of death; accidents are our strength; The decisions to be made reflect the concerns about the meaninglessness of our knowledge, our values, the possibility of isolation and rejection, and the limitation of our control over other people (Göka, 1999, p.173). When we learn to live with this existential anxiety we encounter and accept it, we can live as an authentic personality (being open to nature, others and ourselves, gathering them in a whole without conflict) or we choose to stay away from existential concerns without being authentic and live with neurotic anxieties. Our neurotic anxieties are our loss of relationships with others, our relationships with nature, and our relationships with ourselves, as we try to define ourselves. we are living now Perhaps one of the biggest problems of the century is the complete disappearance of people here. Human beings, who are so much trying to exist somewhere, are always in a hurry to catch up with something, and we do not observe a peaceful soul in this state of trying to catch up. The person is always in a hurry, late, running. Dialogues are always lived in the same way. We're just running around, whatever the job is, etc... A person who gets lost in the concept of success, money, beauty, wealth becomes a workaholic, an alcoholic. He does not think about what beauty is, he strives for what is thought, what is marketed. It is exposed to so many stimuli that in the social media and the globalizing digital world, the person forgets the integrity of being in the world. In Maslow's observation of those who have most successfully coped with existential anxiety, "It was as if the self-consciousness was disappearing: all separations and distances from the world disappeared and they felt one with the world, identified with it, belonged to it. But perhaps the most important thing was to tell them that they perceived the absolute truth during these lives and that they felt the secret of life as if a veil had been lifted from their eyes.” he says. One experiences every emotion with enthusiasm. In the concept of enthusiasm here, what we mean is the state of the human soul transcending itself and exalting itself. Being able to embrace every emotion, what is in human existence is authentic, self-realized, anyone who has been able to exist in the world gets angry, excited, worried because that is exactly what he needs to live. Being able to accept every emotion.
Anxiety in the psychopathological context is the effort to control the emotions that one does not want to feel in the face of an event and what they will experience as a result of the event. Social anxiety can occur in various forms such as post-traumatic anxieties, separation anxiety and obsessions, phobias, fear of death, hypochondriasis (illness), panic attacks. Physiological symptoms may accompany the pathological anxiety experienced by the person. Conditions such as heart palpitations, sweating, shortness of breath, feeling of suffocation, eating disorder, fatigue, exhaustion can be seen. For example; A person with post-traumatic anxiety disorder says “the person is waiting for me to talk, as if I have to say something to him, but what the hell? I don't know how to eat, it hurts to be silent. I think you'll think I'm crazy because I can't speak. I want to say something, but it doesn't happen.”, "the voices in my head don't go away, or if it happens to you, if you can't do anything at that moment or if you have a heart attack", "it's like a knife is stuck right in the middle of my chest". According to the psychoanalytic theory, anxiety triggers In order to avoid the threat, the human self resorts to various defense mechanisms, and in fact, the excessive use of these defenses lies at the source of all the psychopathologies that human beings can experience. (Freud, 1915). Melanie Klein developed Freud's theory of self-relationship between breast and child and put forward the theory of good breast and bad breast. The baby is in desperate need of care because he cries. If there is a breast that comes to him immediately when it is open, the world is a safe place, the formation of self is safe, but if that breast (caregiver) does not come when he cries, the world is perceived as an unsafe place. My person has no choice but to exist with anxiety in this world and self where he does not feel safe. develops (Horney, 1950). Sullivan, on the other hand, drew attention to the "interpersonal" nature of anxiety. While the young child has an interpersonal anxiety for his mother's affection, the adult person experiences this interpersonal anxiety in search of acceptance and approval in all of his social relationships (Ailen, 1994). Fromm thought that in the process of independence and individuation, the developing human being is increasingly confronted with the problem of loneliness (and related anxiety), and in the face of its intolerability, most of us choose addiction and "escape from freedom." This anxiety, which is related to sinfulness, brings people closer to theology (Kierkegaard, 1844). On the other hand, Martin Heidegger, who is regarded as one of the founders of the existential philosophy of our age,
Read: 0
