Spiritual Anxiety and Spiritual Depression

I know some people who have given up on life. They became perplexed at why they should keep doing things when they feel that none of their actions matter in the ultimate sense.

I have also seen other people who go about their day intensely completing tasks as if their life depended on every little small thing on their to-do list. For example, some get caught in their job – in the daily grind of making their presentation or report at work really pop.

The energies of these two people seem like polar opposites – one skeptical, slow, and maybe even despondent, and the other frantic and frenetic. But both types of responses seem to emulate from a similar source: not taking the time to find satisfying meaning in their lives (or find a new source if their previous source of meaning has since broken down).

They are responding in opposite ways to this underlying problem. The first person is exhibiting what I call a depressed spiritual response (not to be confused with emotional depression, though they may be experiencing that too). Overwhelmed by this meaninglessness, they feel like nothing matters.

The second person is trying to satiate their need for meaning by doing more and more. As if that would satisfy them, or at least prevent them having to face their own existential angst.

I call this the anxious spiritual response: the attempt to do more, often trivial things in order to satisfy or avoid finding deeper meaning in life. This is not the same as psychological or emotional anxiety, as it relates more to one’s ability (or inability) to find meaning for one’s life rather than one’s momentary mood or emotional state.

Neither solution is ultimately satisfying, and just like psychological anxiety and depression often occur at the same time, spiritual anxiety and spiritual depression tend to coexist. Despite being opposites, one person may go between them in cycles: building superficial meaning they anxiously hold onto it, only to fall into purposeless depression when it fails. This can become a cycle, where the person consistently rushes towards another vapid way to ground meaning only for what they created to fall apart.

Having either can be a sign that you need to pause and do the work to determine how to effectively build meaning into your life.