Being a Rebel in a Chaotic World: How Existential Therapy Helps When Nothing Feels Stable
Living in Uncertain and Anxious Times
Many people feel like the world is unraveling. Political conflict, climate anxiety, economic instability, social division, and constant exposure to bad news create a sense that nothing is solid anymore. Even people who are functioning well on the outside often feel overwhelmed, disconnected, or emotionally exhausted.
The world feels increasingly uncertain due to the rise of authoritarianism and the growing discrimination of minority communities. As power consolidates and empathy erodes, many people are left feeling unsafe, unseen, and unsure of their place in society. This kind of uncertainty does not just exist at a political level; it seeps into mental health, relationships, and one’s sense of meaning. Feeling anxious, angry, or hopeless in response to this reality is not a personal weakness. It is a human response to a world that feels less predictable and less just. natural response to prolonged uncertainty and loss of control.
Why Traditional Coping Advice Often Falls Short
Common advice like “stay positive” or “focus on what you can control” can feel dismissive when the world genuinely feels unsafe. Many therapy approaches focus on symptom reduction without addressing the deeper existential fear beneath the anxiety.
Staying positive or keeping ourselves busy is often encouraged as a healthy response to stress, but it isn’t always helpful. These behaviors can become coping mechanisms that keep us from slowing down and acknowledging what we’re actually feeling. Avoidance may offer temporary relief, but unresolved emotions tend to resurface as anxiety, irritability, depression, or exhaustion. Emotional health requires space to feel, reflect, and make meaning, not just movement or optimism.
Existential therapy does not ask you to deny reality or force optimism. Instead, it helps you face uncertainty honestly while finding ways to live meaningfully within it.
What Existential Therapy Focuses On
Existential therapy centers on the core realities of being human:
Uncertainty and lack of control
Freedom and responsibility
Meaning and purpose
Isolation and connection
Mortality and impermanence
Rather than treating anxiety about the state of the world as pathological, existential therapy recognizes it as a reasonable reaction to living in a complex and fragile world.
Finding Meaning When Things Feel Broken
One of the central goals of existential therapy is helping people create meaning even when circumstances cannot be fixed. Meaning does not require certainty, comfort, or safety. It can be found through values, relationships, creativity, and purposeful action.
When the world feels like it’s falling apart, existential therapy asks:
What matters to you, even now
How do you want to show up in difficult times
What kind of life feels worth living despite uncertainty
These questions can help people feel grounded when external stability is lacking.
Freedom and Choice in Times of Chaos
To be a rebel doesn’t mean chaos or defiance for its own sake. True rebellion comes from embracing your freedom and the responsibility that comes with it. It means recognizing that, even when the world feels oppressive, unstable, or overwhelming, you still have choices—choices about how to think, how to respond, and how to live in alignment with your values. Choosing authenticity over conformity, curiosity over fear, and honesty over comfort is an act of rebellion. Each small, intentional decision to live deliberately pushes back against systems, expectations, and circumstances that try to define or limit you. In therapy, we explore what freedom looks like for you personally and how embracing it can transform anxiety, uncertainty, and despair into purposeful action.
Choosing compassion, connection, honesty, or rest becomes an act of resistance against despair.
Existential Therapy and Mental Health Struggles
When the world feels unsafe, many people experience increased anxiety, depression, substance use, or emotional numbness. Existential therapy helps by addressing the root fear underneath these symptoms rather than just managing surface-level distress.
For some, substances become a way to escape overwhelming reality. For others, anxiety becomes constant vigilance. Existential therapy creates space to explore these responses with curiosity instead of judgment.
Who Existential Therapy Can Help Right Now
Existential therapy can be especially helpful for people who:
Feel overwhelmed by the state of the world
Struggle with climate anxiety or existential dread
Feel disconnected or numb
Are questioning purpose, identity, or direction
Feel that traditional therapy has not gone deep enough
This approach meets people where they are without offering false reassurance.
My Approach to Existential Therapy: Fuck Positivity
In my work, existential therapy is about honesty, presence, and compassion. I believe many people are not broken. They are responding normally to an abnormal amount of stress, uncertainty, and change.
My approach to therapy is simple: fuck forced positivity and embrace reality. I don’t believe healing comes from pretending everything is fine or reframing pain until it disappears. Life can be brutal, unfair, and deeply uncertain, and denying that reality often creates more suffering, not less. In therapy, we make room for the truth of what you’re experiencing, even when it’s uncomfortable. From that honesty, real growth and meaning can emerge.
Therapy becomes a space to slow down, reflect, and reconnect with what matters most. It is not about fixing the world, but about helping people live meaningfully within it.
Final Thoughts
Life in a chaotic world can feel overwhelming, unfair, and unpredictable. But being a rebel means refusing to surrender to fear, distraction, or false positivity. Existential therapy reminds us that even when the world feels unstable, we still have the power to choose—how we respond, who we want to be, and what gives our lives meaning. Freedom and responsibility aren’t burdens; they are the tools of rebellion. By embracing them, we move from mere survival to living deliberately, authentically, and fully. The world may remain uncertain, but your life can be grounded in purpose, choice, and truth. Rebellion isn’t about controlling the chaos—it’s about standing firmly in your own reality, making conscious decisions, and finding meaning where you are.
