Existential Death Anxiety at Midlife: A Doorway to Deeper Living

At some point in midlife, an unsettling awareness can creep in: time is moving faster, the body is aging, and the future is no longer an open-ended expanse but a finite reality. A restless unease sets in, sometimes surfacing in insomnia, health anxieties, or an unshakable sense of loss. This is existential death anxiety—the deep, often unconscious fear of mortality that becomes harder to ignore as we move into our 40s, 50s, and beyond.