Phenom Cogn Sci

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-018-9559-x

Temporal experience in anxiety: embodiment, selfhood,

and the collapse of meaning

Kevin Aho 1

# Springer Science+Business Media B.V., part of Springer Nature 2018

Abstract This essay explores the unique temporal experience in anxiety. Drawing on
first-person accounts as well as examples from literature, I attempt to show how anxiety
not only disrupts our physiological and cognitive timing but also disturbs the embodied
rhythms of everyday social life. The primary goal, however, is to articulate the extent to
which human existence itself is a temporally structured event and to identity the ways
that anxiety disrupts this structure. Using Martin Heidegger’s account of human
existence (or Dasein) as a point of departure, I show how the mood of anxiety has
the power to alter our self-interpretations by closing down or constricting our experi-
ence of the future. I argue that a constricted future impedes our ability ‘to be’ because it
closes off the range of projective meanings that we would ordinarily draw on to create
or fashion our identities.

Keywords Anxiety . Befindlichkeit . Death . Embodiment . Moods . Narrative identity .

Emotions . Phenomenology . Temporality . Heidegger

One of the initial difficulties in addressing the psychopathologic aspects of ‘anxiety’ is

getting clear about what we mean by the term. The heterogeneity of the experience is clear
in the latest incarnation of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
(DSM-5) which lists a wide range of anxiety disorders each with its own distinct
diagnostic criteria including: selective mutism, separation anxiety disorder, social anxiety
disorder, panic disorder, agoraphobia, substance and medication-induced anxiety disorder,
and generalized anxiety disorder (American Psychiatric Association 2013, 189–233).
Among these disorders, there is the further question of how to classify them as affective
states. Is anxiety, for instance, an emotion or a mood? The mental health professions
generally regard emotions as being acute, episodic, and short-lived experiences that have
determinate causes and are intentionally directed at specific objects or events. The fleeting

* Kevin Aho
[email protected]

1
Florida Gulf Coast University, Fort Myers, FL 33965, USA
 K. Aho

and situation-specific responses characteristic of panic disorder, agoraphobia, and social

anxiety disorder appear to fit this category. Moods, on the other hand, are regarded as
more indeterminate, diffused, and enduring. They are better understood as atmospheric or
global affects. Like generalized anxiety disorder, it is not a discrete episode that is caused
by or directed at a specific object. It is more like a fog that negatively envelops everything.
This allows us to make a distinction between people who are anxious about something on
the one hand and those who are existentially or globally anxious on the other. (e.g.
Ratcliffe 2002; Stanghellini and Rosfort 2013) In this essay, I am primarily concerned
with generalized anxiety as a mood, and argue that those who suffer from the emotion of
anxiety in a chronic way generally experience the mood of anxiety as well. In these latter
instances, anxiety captures the background sense of worry, threat, and dread that affec-
tively shades one’s experiential horizon as a whole.
Although the DSM is comprehensive in offering descriptions of diagnostic criteria,
risk factors, differential diagnoses, and the functional consequences of anxiety, it offers
little insight into the first-person experience, into ‘what it means’ or ‘what it feels like’
to be anxious. The methods of phenomenology are uniquely suited to address these
limitations by attending to the experiential or lived aspects of the ‘illness’ rather than
the objective or causal characteristics of the ‘disorder’. The aim of the phenomenologist
is to bracket out or suspend the causal and explanatory assumptions of medical science
in an effort to describe ‘the things themselves,’ that is, the underlying structures of
human experience as they are lived. This method makes it possible to access the ways
psychopathologic experiences disrupt and modify these structures. This essay explores
the unique temporal aspects of this disruption. Drawing on first-person accounts as well
as literary examples, I attempt to show how anxiety not only disrupts our physiological
and cognitive timing but also disturbs the embodied rhythms of everyday social life.
The primary goal, however, is to explore the ways in which human existence itself is a
temporally structured event and to see how anxiety can alter or reconfigure our self-
interpretations by closing down or constricting our experience of the future. Drawing
on Martin Heidegger’s account of existence (or Dasein) in Being and Time, I argue that
a constricted future impedes our ability ‘to be’ because it closes off a range of projective
meanings that we would ordinarily draw on to create or fashion our identities.

1 Temporal disturbances of embodiment

Beginning with the pioneering work of psychiatrists such as Eugène Minkowski (1970)
and Erwin Strauss (1966) and more recently with figures such as Thomas Fuchs (2001,
2006, 2010), Matthew Ratcliffe (2012, 2014), and Martin Wyllie (2005), there has been
growing interest in drawing on the methods of phenomenology to examine how
psychopathologic experiences disrupt the structures of temporality. Although I will
turn to some phenomenological tools from Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Edmund
Husserl, I will draw primarily on Heidegger and his analysis of human existence.
This analysis is especially helpful for the purposes of this essay because temporality is
already built into his account of ‘moods’ (Stimmungen). One of the signature aspects of
Heidegger’s analytic is the recognition that we are structured by ‘care’ (Sorge),
meaning that our primary orientation in the world is rooted not in ‘knowing’ about
things but in ‘caring’ about them (Guignon 1984). For Heidegger, one of the
Temporal experience in anxiety: embodiment, selfhood, and the...

constitutive features of the care-structure is, what he calls, Befindlichkeit, a term

sometimes translated as ‘affectedness’ but is perhaps best rendered as ‘situatedness’,
conveying how human beings invariably ‘find’ (finden) themselves in socio-historical
situations where things affectively count and matter in particular ways. This means we
are structurally situated or attuned to the world through our moods. And the fact that we
are ‘mooded’ (stimmungsmässigen) reveals a temporal aspect of our being, namely the
past, what Heidegger calls, ‘thrownness’ (Geworfenheit) or ‘having-been-ness’
(Gewesenheit). It is only against the mediating backdrop of our affective situation that
we can press forward or ‘project’ (entwurfen) ourselves into the future, into possibilities
that are not yet. This is why Heidegger refers to the temporal structure of Dasein in
terms of ‘thrown projection’ (geworfen Entwurf). We exist in the possibilities we
project for ourselves, and these possibilities mean something to us on the basis of the
situation into which we have been thrown (1962, 185).
Here, of course, Heidegger is rejecting the ordinary view of time as a measurable
duration or impersonal sequence of ‘now’ points by forwarding the idea of time as
lived, that human existence is time. It is not something we ‘have’; it is who we ‘are’.
(1992, 22) Temporality, on this view, is the lived-horizon of existence that simulta-
neously stretches forward into the future and backward into the past, and it is the
coherence and unity of this movement that opens up a space of meaning, a ‘there’ (Da),
which enables anything to affectively count or matter for us. BThe unity of
temporality,^ he writes, Bis the condition for the possibility that there can be an entity
which exists as its ‘there’.^ (1962, 401) When we are healthy and absorbed in the acts
and practices of everyday life, we generally embody this temporal unity in a smooth
and transparent way. And, although Heidegger largely fails to give an account of
Dasein’s embodiment in Being and Time (cf. Aho 2009), it could be argued that this
unity is initially grasped in the inconspicuousness of our own bodily rhythms, as
respiration, heartbeat, and body temperature as well as systems of motility and posture
work in the background to structure, organize, and mediate our experience.
On the phenomenological view, what we mean by ‘body’ is not to be understood in
terms of a measurable object or ‘corporeal thing’ (Körper) that the therapist examines
from a perspective of cool detachment. It is, rather, a lived-body (Leib), a reference not
only to my own body and my subjective experiences, feelings, and perceptions as they
are lived, but to the mediating activity of my physiology and the perceptual and
postural systems that orient and situate me in the world. Thus, Bbodying forth
(Leiben) always belongs to being-in-the-world. It always co-determines being-in-the-
world, openness, and having a world.^ (Heidegger 2001, 97) And, like the horizon of
temporality, the body is not something I ‘have’; it is who I ‘am’. BWe do not ‘have’ a
body,^ says Heidegger, Brather we ‘are’ bodily.^ (1979, 99) In the seamless flow of
being-in-the-world, I am largely unaware of my body because I am already living
through it as I negotiate various practical contexts, handle equipment, and engage in the
lives of others. Indeed, the inconspicuousness of the body is indicative of health as the
synchronized tempos of our bodily organs and motility systems do their work behind
my back, maintaining, what Hans-Georg Gadamer (1996) calls, their ‘enigmatic’
character by remaining hidden or concealed.
In psychopathologic experiences, these concealed rhythms often undergo, what
Fuchs (2003) calls, ‘desynchronization’, indicating a disruption in this mediating
activity and the conspicuous emergence of bodily functioning. In clinical depression
 K. Aho

this temporal disruption generally results in sluggishness, a slowing down or retarda-

tion of bodily tempos. And, although it is often co-occurring with depression, anxiety is
generally experienced in terms of speeding up or acceleration. 1 Sufferers experience
this temporal quickening through a number of bodily sensations including ‘palpitations,
‘accelerated heart rate’, ‘sweating’, ‘trembling or shaking’, and ‘shortness of breath’
(American Psychiatric Association 2013, 208) Physiological functions that were pre-
viously mediating my experience in a smooth and inconspicuous way now surge into
explicit awareness, where I now notice my body as Körper, as something other than
me, an obtrusive and resistant object. In desynchronization, I am now aware of my
heart pounding, my lungs constricting, my hands shaking, my body temperature
rising. In this state of temporal disruption, even the taken for granted activity of
breathing seems foreign and strange. BYour airways ignore you,^ writes Khaled
Hosseini (2013). BThey collapse, tighten, squeeze, and suddenly you’re breath-
ing through a drinking straw. Your mouth closes and your lips purse and all you can
manage is a croak… You want to scream. You would if you could. But you have to
breathe to scream. Panic.^ (p. 128).
In addition to the acceleration of physiological functioning, anxiety may also speed
up cognitive rhythms with ‘racing’ or ‘crowded’ thoughts (American Psychiatric
Association 2013), where ideas, perceptions, and memories erupt in disjointed and
uncontrolled ways. These rapid-fire cognitions undermine the basic temporal unity and
coherence of the thought stream. This unity is constituted by the ways in which our
present awareness is always structured by, what Husserl (1966) calls, ‘protention’
(intentional directedness towards the future) and ‘retention’ (intentional directedness
towards the past). The stream of consciousness is unified and bound together because,
as Husserl writes, in our present cognitions, Bwe have retentions of the preceding and
protentions of the coming… [And it] is through these retentions and protentions [that]
the content of the stream is joined together.^ (p. 110–11) With anxiety, this self-
organizing unity is broken as the mind jumps from one random thought to another,
resulting in speech patterns that are sped up, disorganized, and incoherent. In describing
the experience, individuals refer to being Beasily distracted and constantly [losing the]
flow of thoughts,^ of having Bthoughts [appear] at a rate faster than can be articulated,^
and feeling as if they were Bwatching two or three television programs simultaneously.^
(Piguet et al. 2009, 5)2 In these states, as David Foster Wallace (2004) writes:

1
The pervasive co-occurrence of depression and anxiety means that temporal acceleration and retardation can
occur simultaneously in the same individual. As one woman writes, BIt’s like I’m in a fog and can’t fully
concentrate. My words are slurred and I feel like I’m in a dream… I feel extra slow like I’m moving in slow
motion, but at the same time I can’t hold still. My thoughts are scattered, yet I can’t put them into words… I
get nervous to talk to co-workers because I just know my words will come out faster than my brain can put it
together to make sense.^ (Schuster 2017) This is one of the many reasons that the DSM’s separation of the
disorders into two distinct categories is highly problematic. Anxiety and depression not only share common
physiological characteristics, hereditary factors, and genetic etiologies (e.g. the production of neurotransmitters
such as serotonin and dopamine); they generally respond to comparable pharmacological and psychothera-
peutic treatments and have symptomatic similarities, especially in regards to feelings of guilt, shame, and loss
of self-control. To this end, I agree with Scott Stossell (2015) who suggests, BThe dividing line between this
set of disorders… seems to be an artifact as much of politics and culture (and marketing) as of science.^ (p. 40)
2
As a DSM criteria for generalized anxiety disorder, this cognitive impairment may contribute to, among
other thing, ‘irritability’, ‘sleep disturbances’, ‘difficulty concentrating’ and ‘[the] mind going blank’
(American Psychiatric Association 2013, 222)
Temporal experience in anxiety: embodiment, selfhood, and the...

Thoughts and associations fly through your head… What goes on inside is just
too fast and huge and all interconnected for words to do more than barely sketch
the outlines of at most one tiny little part of it at any given instant. The internal
head-speed or whatever of these ideas, memories, realizations, emotions and so
on is even faster… exponentially faster, unimaginably faster… (p. 150-151)

The acceleration and disunity of the thought stream makes it difficult to manage and
control anxious thoughts. Without the structuring unity of protention and retention,
thoughts take on an unrelenting life of their own. And, paradoxically, the more we try to
control the thoughts the more powerful they become. One ends up trapped in ‘the
present’ (Fuchs 2005), in a crippling helix of worry and ‘what ifs’. Foster Wallace
captures the absurdity of this ruminating cycle in the following way:

Don’t think about [the thought]… yeah but except if I’m consciously not thinking
about it then doesn’t part of me have to think about it in order for me to remember
what I’m not supposed to think about?... shut up, quit thinking about it….except
how can I even be talking to myself about not thinking about it unless I’m still
aware of what it is I’m talking about not thinking about. (2006, 154, my
emphasis)

The cognitive disruption of the thought stream that Foster Wallace is describing has
broader implications for psychomotor rhythms related to posture and motility, often
resulting in agitation, restlessness, and impulsive behavior.
Again, the lived-body is not an object or an assemblage of organs and parts that
occupies a spatial location. And it is more than a reference to one’s own subjective
experience. It is, what Merleau-Ponty (2012) calls, a ‘body-schema’ (schéma corporel),
a reference to the unified sensory-motor systems that anchor me to the world, consti-
tuting the spatiotemporal background or ‘phenomenal field’ that makes it possible for
me to encounter and handle intra-worldly things in the first place. When I am healthy,
the body-schema seamlessly situates and coordinates my movement and position in
relation to the vertical (‘up and down’), the horizontal (‘front and back’), and other
spatial and temporal axes. (p. 100–103) In this way, it pre-reflectivity orients me in a
world, in a familiar situation or milieu where I embody a tacit sense of ‘I can’ as I
engage in the tasks and projects of everyday life (p. 139). Anxiety interrupts this
sensory-motor grip, pulling me out of the habituated condition and leaving me feeling
Brestless, keyed up, [and] on edge.^ (American Psychiatric Association 2013, 222) In
this agitated state, as Carver (1998) puts it, BI can hardly sit still. I keep fidgeting,
crossing one leg and then the other. I could throw off sparks, or break a window—or
maybe rearrange all the furniture.^ (p. 375) These disruptions help to illuminate the
ways in which the orienting rhythms of our embodiment do not take place in isolation;
they are relational and social, already bound up in the wider rhythms of a world that is
fundamentally intersubjective or intercorporeal.
The intercorporeality of the lived-body reveals the fact that I am not an autonomous
and self-enclosed entity. Rather, I am already open and receptive to the bodies of others
and can make sense of who I am only in relation to these embodied ways of being.
Indeed, it is only on the basis of being engaged and involved in the shared practices and
concerns of others that things can reveal themselves as meaningful. This is why
 K. Aho

Heidegger claims that B‘being-in-the-world’ is always ‘being-there-with-others’^ (Mit-

dasein) (1962, 152). I understand myself only through the ways in which I have been
habituated and absorbed into the bodies, practices, and concerns of others. Thus,
Dasein cannot be viewed as an encapsulated ‘I’ or ‘subject’. In fact, B‘the they’ (das
Man) is the ‘realist subject’ of everydayness^ (p. 166). Caught up in the temporal
rhythms of public life, my body is transparently geared and synchronized to the
gestures, expressions, and movements of others. This transparency is evident in any
number of shared activities, as we shuffle in unison boarding an airplane, collectively
wait in line at a crowded shopping mall, share a meal in concert with others, or sync
ourselves in the flow of a group conversation. Anxiety creates a sense of ‘time urgency’
(Levine 1997) that disrupts these public rhythms, as they are generally per-
ceived as being too slow. Characteristics of time urgency can be identified in
‘speech patterns’ that are excessively hurried and rushed combined with feel-
ings of frustration when someone takes too long to make a point; ‘walking
speed’ that is faster than others accompanied by a sense that others are always
slowing you down; ‘eating habits’ where one inhales one’s food and is usually
the first at the table who finishes a meal; ‘driving habits’ that involve needless
annoyance when caught in slow moving traffic and aggressive or rude gestures
to speed up other drivers; and an ‘inability to wait’ that manifests in restless irritation
when stuck in lines at stores and restaurants and even walking out after waiting only a
short time (pp. 20–21).3
Although this kind of nervous agitation may be out of synch with ordinary social
rhythms, taken on their own, the behavior does not constitute a psychopathology. But
when the agitation becomes extreme, it can shatter the flow of intercorporeal time,
resulting in attacks of intense fear and anxiety in public situations. This is especially
apparent in cases of agoraphobia, panic disorder, and social anxiety disorder, where
using public transportation, for example, standing in line at the grocery store, or being
in an enclosed space with others such as a theater or a shopping mall can trigger panic
and the paralyzing feeling that BI’m trapped^ or BI can’t get out of here.^ (American
Psychiatric Association 2013, 218) When these experiences become chronic it often
results in avoidance behavior where the sufferer actively seeks to minimize contact with
public situations or events that might be triggering. Such patterns can narrow and
constrict existence by closing out a range of possible undertakings and projects. One
may, for example, refuse to take a promotion at work if it involves relocating or using
public transportation; avoid visiting family and friends because it requires air travel; or
arrange for food delivery to avoid entering crowded shops and supermarkets. In severe
cases, an individual may be completely homebound or incapable of leaving the house
without being accompanied by a partner or health care professional. (American
Psychiatric Association 2013, 218–19) A mother describes this experience of existen-
tial contraction in the following way:

3
Interestingly, in Being and Time, Heidegger identifies this aspect of public life in terms ‘curiosity’ (Neugier),
referring to a pervasive sense of ‘restlessness’ (Unruhe). (1962, 216) He sees it as being symptomatic of the
larger socio-cultural upheavals of modernity, where technologically mediated speed, busy-ness, and distract-
ibility creates a situation of chronic sensory arousal and time pressure where BDasein Bnever [dwells]
anywhere… [and is] constantly uprooting itself.^ (p. 217) He will later refer to it as ‘acceleration’
(Schnelligkeit), identifying it as one of the signature features of modernity embodied in a kind of ‘mania’
where Bone is unable to bear the stillness^ of their own lives. (1999, 83; cf. Aho 2007)
Temporal experience in anxiety: embodiment, selfhood, and the...

I avoid taking the elevator at work just to avoid possible interactions with people.
I keep my head down when I pass through the office. Avoid and put off phone
calls because I’m too anxious about how the person on the other line will be or
what they want to discuss. I jump when phones ring, when doors slam. My
daughter misses out on spending time with other kids because I’m too anxious to
meet the other parents. My husband misses out on many opportunities because of
my anxiety; he backs out of plans or doesn’t make any because he knows it will
probably make me anxious to either be alone or meet new people. It impacts my
family, my career, myself. (Schuster 2017)

This kind of contraction can fray social relationships and the emotional connections
that nourish and sustain our self-interpretations, resulting in a ‘downward spiral’ of
isolating behavior and associated feelings of shame and guilt that can further exacerbate
anxiety. (Fuchs 2003) It can also create a sense of affective ‘barrenness or emptiness’
that makes it difficult to identity any worldly projects, choices, or commitments that
stand out as significant or meaningful (Ulmer and Schwartzburd 1996). To this end,
chronic anxiety can erode away the temporal structure of existence itself, where the
future is disclosed not as a horizon of accessible and worthwhile possibilities but as
region that is fundamentally hostile and threatening. In these states, as one woman
writes, BI put off everything in any way possible, I stay in bed as long as I can or spend
hours pointlessly scrolling through social media because I feel anxious about doing
anything for fear of being judged.^ (Schuster 2017) In Being and Time, Heidegger
examines the ontological consequences of this structural erosion by illuminating how it
undermines one’s capacity ‘to be’, that is, to understand and make sense of
who one is as a person. This is why he says, Banxiety takes away from Dasein
the possibility of understanding itself^ (1962, 187). We can now turn to an exploration
of the meaning of this temporal collapse and the role it plays in disrupting the narrative
constitution of the self.

2 Ontological death and the collapse of meaning

According to Heidegger, one of the things that distinguishes humans from animals is
the fact that our being ‘is an issue’ for us. (1962, 67) The implication here is that there is
no essential or pre-given nature that fundamentally determines who we are. Human
existence is a self-creating or self-making activity; it is always ‘on the way’ (unterweg)
as we fashion and refashion our identity (or being) on the basis of the issues and
choices that matter to us. But Heidegger makes it clear that these self-constituting
choices do not emerge ex nihilo from a free upsurge of will. They are always limited
and constrained by the structure of Befindlichkeit, by the mooded social situation that
we invariably find ourselves in. Moods, on this view, are Balready there… like an
atmosphere in which we first immerse ourselves in each case and which then attunes us
through and through.^ (Heidegger 1995, 67) Thus, unlike emotions, which are short-
lived, situation specific, and directed at particular objects or events in the world, moods
are directed at the world as a whole; they are the affective atmospheres within which
we dwell, disclosing the emotional significance and meaning that our worldly projects
have for us. Moods, as Heidegger (1962) puts it, provide the answer to ‘How are you
 K. Aho

doing?’ in your life (p. 173). They reveal why the choices, relationships, and commit-
ments we undertake ‘matter’ to us in the ways that they do. (p. 176).
We can see now how moods fit into Heidegger’s account of temporality as ‘thrown
projection’. Dasein is always already thrown into a mooded situation, and it is this
situation that opens up a range of meaningful possibilities that we can project for
ourselves and through which we understand and interpret who we are. This is what
Heidegger means when he says, Dasein is Bahead-of-itself-being-already-in-(the-
world)^ (1962, 237). Dasein is both ‘ahead of itself’ (future) and ‘what it was’ (past),
and it is the unity and coherence of this temporal structure that constitutes the Da of
Dasein, that is, the horizon of meaning that allows things—including ourselves—to
reveal themselves as such. (Heidegger 1982, 265) My self-interpretation as a hard
working professor, for example, affectively matters to me in the way that it does
because of the particular socio-historical situation into which I have been thrown,
disclosing it as a identity that means something to me and that I can project myself
towards. From this, it could be argued that Heidegger is forwarding a ‘narrative’
conception of the self, one that suggests we exist in the interpretations and stories that
we create or fashion for ourselves (Guignon 1993). The integrity of the self, on this
view, is constituted by its narrative unity, by the way in which our future projects and
commitments fit or cohere with the meanings of our situation. The capacity to create a
story that unifies and holds together this narrative structure is essential for selfhood. But
anxiety can undermine this capacity for narrative self-creation.
For Heidegger, what distinguishes anxiety from other kinds of moods is that it
doesn’t open up a range of meaningful possibilities that I can press into; rather, it closes
off possibilities by disclosing a world that is fundamentally meaningless. Thus, in
anxiety, Bthe world collapses into itself; [it] has the character of completely lacking
significance.^ (1962, 231) On this account, the world is still there; it is not absent but
appears to us now as ‘uncanny’ (unheimlich), as threatening and unfamiliar because it’s
meaning and value have been drained away. (cf. Svenaeus 2011) With anxiety nothing
stands out as significant anymore; my job, my relationships, my commitments, the very
things I rely on to construct a coherent and unified life-story, are stripped of their
import. And this undercuts my own ability ‘to be’. This is a kind of ontological death or
what Heidegger calls, ‘dying’ (Sterben), a technical term he employs to capture the
Bpossibility of the im-possibility of existence.^ (1962, 307).4
The experience is analogous to what Mark Freeman (2000) calls ‘narrative foreclo-
sure’, where the interpretive resources required in fashioning a coherent life-story are
affectively closed off, dimming one’s capacity for narrative self-creation. Although this
kind of closure occurs on a spectrum, and in Being and Time Heidegger is describing an
extreme case, that of total world-collapse, we can see how it might pertain to a common
criterion for generalized anxiety disorder, specifically ‘apprehensive expectation’; the
pervasive worry that something bad will happen. (American Psychiatric Association

4
In § 49 of Being and Time, Heidegger makes it clear that ‘dying’ (Sterben) refers to an inability ‘to be’. It is
not to be confused with ‘perishing’ (Verenden) or ‘demising’ (Ableben). Verenden refers to the physiological
death of the kind we share with animals, and Ableben refers to the uniquely human anxiety that accompanies
the subjective awareness of our impending physiological perishing. Sterben, on the other hand, refers to the
dying of our ability to exist, that is, to understand or make sense of who we are. This is an event that belongs to
the temporal structure Dasein itself. Our identity or self-understanding, on this view, is fragile and always
vulnerable to collapse. (cf. Aho 2016; Blattner 1994; Thomson 2013)
Temporal experience in anxiety: embodiment, selfhood, and the...

2013, 222) The future-directedness of this state invariably narrows the range of
possibilities that one can draw on to construct a life-story because it exposes future
endeavors as threatening and bereft of any positive meaning or pleasure. And the
atmospheric quality of the mood means that is not directed at specific events or objects;
it is generalized and diffused; it is, as Heidegger says, Balready ‘there’, and yet
nowhere.^ (1962, 231) Scott Stossel (2015) describes the ubiquity of the condition in
this way:

I am buffeted by worry: about my health and my family members’ health; about

finances; about work; about the rattle in my car and the dripping in my basement;
about the encroachment of old age and the inevitability of death; about everything
and nothing. (p. 6, my emphasis)

Narrative unity is structured by some sense of, what Heidegger calls, the ‘for-the-
sake-of-which’ (das Worumwillen), referring to the background sense we have of our
own ‘futurity’ (zukünftig), that is, of who we want to be based on where our life-story is
heading. (1962, 239)5 But if the future is shaded by pervasive apprehension, doubt, and
worry about everything, then there is a sense that one’s story is not going anywhere;
that it is already finished. Freeman refers to this phenomenon as the ‘death of narrative
desire’ (2005, 90), a death that both drains away the meaning of one’s life-story as well
as the desire for narrative self-creation itself by disclosing future projects and commit-
ments as fundamentally futile.
Moreover, if existence is structured by ‘thrown projection’, then the affective
shading of anxiety does more than close off the future; it also moves backward into
the past. Memories, past relationships and experiences that once stood out as pleasur-
able and significant are bleached out, revealing themselves as barren markers of failure,
missed opportunity, and unfulfilled promise. When anxiety infects the past and future in
this way, the world-disclosing power of our temporal constitution can shut down,
leaving the sufferer frozen in self-doubt. BAnxiety whispers doubt into every action I
take,^ writes one woman. B[It tells] me that nothing I do will be good enough and uses
every past action as a reminder that if I was only better the result would have been
better too.^ (Schuster 2017).
Although the DSM neglects this aspect of temporal collapse as a characteristic of
anxiety, Ratcliffe et al. (2014) identify an applicable version in the symptomology of
post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), what DSM-IV-TR refers to as a Bsense of
foreshortened future,^ (American Psychiatric Association 2000, 468), described more
generally in DSM-V as a Bpersistent and exaggerated negative expectation regarding
important aspects of life applied to… the future.^ (American Psychiatric Association
2013, 275) These descriptions convey an atmospheric sense of negativity and threat,
that Bthe world is dangerous^ and that Bno one can be trusted.^ (p. 271) When one
projects this sense of danger, doubt, and lack of trust, it invariably distorts the way time
is experienced; it reveals a constricted future with diminished possibilities for narrative
self-creation. This is akin to the ‘apprehensive expectation’ that characterizes chronic
anxiety, where the world reveals itself as a site of breakdown and failure and, therefore,

5
As Freeman (2000) explains, BThere can be no story without an ending, and there can be no ending without a
story.^ (p. 88)
 K. Aho

is Bincompatible with the possibility of an open and progressive life story.^ (Ratcliffe
et al. 2014, 8) This sense of foreshortened future raises unique challenges regarding
treatment. The temporal disturbances related to physiological functioning, cognition,
and behavior discussed earlier appear to respond to clear treatment options, usually a
combination of antidepressants and short-term cognitive-behavioral therapy. But, as we
have shown, when anxiety is generalized and disrupts the horizon of ‘thrown projec-
tion’ it disrupts the very structures or conditions that make it possible ‘to be’.
In these situations, it is not enough to address the physical and behavioral symptoms.
The therapist needs to engage in a dialogue that opens up new narrative possibilities for
the client, possibilities that help create a discursive space that allows the client to
reinterpret him or herself, in the face of world-collapse, in order to recreate or reimagine
a new identity. This kind of dialogical work can illuminate interpretive resources and
meanings that were initially concealed or closed off, giving the client the capacity for,
what Heidegger calls, ‘poetizing’ or ‘projective saying’, a way of speaking that Bbrings
the unsayable as such into the world.B(1993, 198–199) In this way, a future previously
darkened by anxiety begins to gradually light up again, revealing new meanings and
possibilities that the client can project for him or herself (Aho and Guignon 2011). But
there is a risk involved in this narrative reconfiguration that emerges out of the all-too-
human longing for an identity that is fixed and stable, one that provides some sense of
completion to what has been opened up in the process of self-creation.6 This inclina-
tion, what Paul Smith (1988) calls ‘claustrophilia’, creates the illusion of closure, that
we have regained control and mastery of our identities in the wake of world-collapse
(cf. Freeman 2000). This is a familiar theme in cancer narratives, where sufferers
stubbornly refuse to see themselves as ‘victims’ but as ‘warriors’ who never gave up,
whose story is one of ‘fighting’ and ‘defeating’ the disease until the new identity of
‘survivor’ is claimed. (Ehrenreich 2009, 26–27) The therapist needs to remind the
client that clinging to a new identity as if it were the end of the story invariably fails, not
because the cancer may metastasize and destroy the survivor narrative, but because the
structure of existence itself is finite and always vulnerable to collapse. This is what
Heidegger means when he says, BDasein is dying factically… as long as it [exists].^
(1962, 303) As anyone who has suffered from anxiety knows, the collapse of meaning
does not have to have a cause or a reason—cancer, job loss, divorce, etc.—rather, Bit is
possible at any moment.^ (p. 302).
One of the enduring insights of Being and Time, in this regard, is the recognition that
our self-interpretations are always ‘on the way’, always in the process of becoming.
This means that the answer to the question ‘Who am I?’ is ceaselessly being revised
and reimagined as our choices and actions run up against the constraints and upheavals
of our mooded situation. On this account, our narrative identities can and will die any
number of times throughout our lives. For Heidegger, the proper attitude is to not to
recoil from this awareness but to be ready for it, that is, to anticipate the possibility of

6
Although it is beyond the scope of this paper, it is important to note that this longing for narrative stability
emerges not just at the temporal but at the spatial, bodily, and intersubjective level as well. The experience of
anxiety can disrupt our sense of Bontological security^ (Laing 1960), that is, our unconscious and taken for
granted state of being ‘at home’, of being habitually integrated, engaged, and bound up in the world. On this
view, my identity and experience of reality as a whole is largely held together by this pre-reflective, embodied
connection. The erosion of the self emerges when this connection breaks down and the public world reveals
itself as unreliable, insecure, and, in severe cases, ‘unreal’. (cf. Aho 2014, 126–132)
Temporal experience in anxiety: embodiment, selfhood, and the...

our own dying. He refers to this attitude in terms of ‘resoluteness’ (Entschlossenheit), a

word that contains the literal sense of ‘being open’ or ‘unlocked’ and is meant to
capture the importance of remaining flexible and open with our own self-interpreta-
tions. (Aho 2016) Resolute Dasein, says Heidegger, Bcannot become rigid as regards
the situation, but must understand that resolution… must be held open and free for the
current factical possibility.^ (1962, 355) Crucial to the therapeutic process, then, is
helping the client own up to the structural vulnerability of any narrative identity they
happen to project for themselves, and this requires letting-go of the tendency to
stubbornly cling to the illusion that our identities are somehow grounded and secure.
Treating anxiety requires opening the client up to discursive meanings and possibilities
that were initially concealed by the mood. But as Heidegger reminds us, it also
demands a willingness to give up on identities that are no longer livable, that is, to
remain resolutely open and free for the possibility of Btaking it back.^ (p. 355).
To conclude, we see how a phenomenological analysis of anxiety can disclose the
ways in which the experience accelerates our physiological and cognitive timing and
distorts the embodied rhythms of everyday social life. But more importantly, the
analysis illuminates the extent to which human existence itself is structured by time
as ‘thrown projection’ and the ways in which anxiety can warp this structure by
shortening or constricting our sense of the future. I argue that this constriction disrupts
our ability ‘to be’ by closing off a range of social meanings and possibilities that we
would ordinarily draw on to narratively create or fashion our identities. Essential to the
therapeutic process, then, is engaging the client in a dialogue that opens up new
meanings and possibilities for self-creation.

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