I am not normally the kind of person to comment, but seeing as you just posted a few weeks ago and also your name shares a similarity with mine, I felt like it was the right thing to do! 🙂

You are far from alone in feeling this way. I’m in my early 30’s and started having nighttime panic attacks as early as~4 or 5, and have been dealing with depression since my teens. I know how hard it is to find comfort when even a hug from your mom can’t hide you from the movement of the universe. I’m so sorry you are also feeling the weight of this existence, but I hope that knowing others out here understand what you’re going through brings some comfort. You are not alone on this journey. We are sharing this grief and pain with you.

For me at least, it seems to have gotten a little easier to carry as I’ve grown. I don’t get as overwhelmed by the feelings as often, and have begun directing my efforts into deciding what I want my life to mean. I decided want to leave this world a little kinder than when I first entered it. How I spend the rest of my life is up to me, and I’m choosing to fill it with things and people and hobbies and memories that make me happy. Maybe life doesn’t have a meaning on its own, but deciding for myself what purpose I want to strive for has helped me overcome most of my depressive thoughts. Nothing else about my living circumstances have changed, but it all feels more bearable now and I’m learning to look forward to the future, instead of trying to go back.

I wish I could go back in time and tell my younger self that it will be ok. Time doesn’t seem to work that way, but the next best thing I can do is pass along that comfort to someone else who feels the same way I did at 14. You’ll continue to make it through, and it will be alright ♥

My entire life has been spent with no one understanding me. I can remember in second grade when I started thinking about these kinds of things. I remember thinking about how my life had no meaning. My entire life has been spent with nobody understanding me, and all I’ve wanted my whole life is just somebody who finally understands and listens. This is why I felt I had to reply to you, because for the first time in my whole life I felt I had found someone who finally understood. I know you have felt it too, the feeling of wanting more than anything in the world for someone to finally understand, so that finally you won’t be alone. I feel this so much and I am so tired of being alone and having no one. I would love it sometime if you guys Carmen or Max Gerber or Mark would be willing to talk sometime as I feel it would help both of us so that finally we wouldn’t be alone and finally have someone who understands. I have struggled with this my whole life and just want someone who to talk to who knows what it is like. I know I have come into this article late but if any of you see this please respond even if it is just to say you would not like to talk.

I’m walking into this comment section a little bit late but I do have some thoughts for you. If you are able, starting by reading about positive disintegration may help. Bu to summarize why it may be of use to you, Dąbrowski suggests that that this feeling you are suffering from is a ‘level’ of existence. You’ve proven you can think outside of your peers and are now experiencing a crisis of how to live in a world that is hypocritical and blind to this. Dąbrowski recognizes this is a pain to be felt and so I want to express: you are right to feel agony.

Now, what to do about it. That’s the hardest part. Dąbrowski goes onto suggest that higher levels of developed folk try to express what the world could or should be through art and self study. So, unfortunately, you have more questions to ask yourself:

What is wrong with the World, really? What about the way people are being developed isn’t working? What do I dislike about living/life/society? How would an ideal world for someone like me look like?

And then express the answers to these questions as art. ‘Art’ in this case is all-encompassing. It could be high levels of mathematical theory, physical artwork such as painting or writing, or even intense levels of playing sports. It’s all in how you can use it. I obviously would not suggest a dancer with zero math background decide to express a better world through theorical physics, you know? So find whatever hobby you like most/hate least and develop it for artistic/expressive purposes.

The lifelong solution, or level five, is acceptance and harmony. Life may never look the way you want it, but you can accept having genuinely attempted to fix it and others(friends and potential lovers) will respond to that.

I hope you are still here to see this message. If so, I hope you have an easier day

Max, Thank you. You are not alone! You gift me and others by giving witness to reflections, feelings, experiences that many of us have but have not named or shared with others. I am 87 years old. I experience existential sadness often in the period of my morning meditation — as I did this morning. In the past few minutes I decided to see if there were some writing on “existential sadness.” I have long known know of the name, though had not applied it to any self-understanding. Because I pastor a UCC church for which I write a monthly newsletter and need now to find something to write about I went to the website…. Here I am. As I believe that many others like you and me contend with existential sadness — have the experience but not the name or understanding of it, I plan to describe and talk about it in the May newsletter. Max, as we humans are interconnected, forming one web of existence, as others have said, and you may well know, I as a fellow human want you to know that you are SEEN and appreciated. Others have said and I support the understanding that we humans MAKE meaning, create projects that give meaning, meaning is not given. Meaning is created. I trust that your existential sadness, a way of being in the world, is a blessing to you, a door that leads and facilitates compassion for others — other suffering humans.

If you guys have any socials we could talk about this, I suffer too.

However, I’ve never been an angry person, the trauma has caused this, and the ‘useless anger’ comment was also a hard hitting point, as my depression begins with these episodes.
I do want to say that God has filled the answer of ‘purpose’ in my life though. Truly knowing who Jesus is and what He has done for us. It took many years for me to grasp this unearthly amount of Love one can have, and that life here is not the end. There was a day I truly felt His love, His compassion, physically, and I knew in my hear and my gut that He was real. I could finally look back on my life and understand why He took me to certain places. Still He brings me awareness every day. the Bible was confusing at first, until reading the New Testament, and asking for the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Churches tend to simplify and water down the Christian belief, which I believe is why so many ‘gifted’ people see it as a farce, and why so many others follow blindly nonsensical and hurtful teachings misconstrued by a well-spoken narcissist on a stage. My mother raised me to be confident in asking questions, and I am glad she did, as I too would have fallen for the lies about God from the other side. They made more sense until I asked enough questions, read the Bible myself, and found the Truth. I see the Bible as a kaleidoscope, always connected to one circle/design, but if you simplify it too much, and only trace it’s outline, you miss the beauty of the perfectly formulated chaos and the connections it makes. You cannot take one line out without it collapsing the whole image.

But many other questions, specifically the unfairness and hypocrisy of those in leadership, and the blind following of their orders, way me down on a daily; not to mention the lack of transparency in communication between knowledgable adults, everyone assuming the other is not apt enough to understand.

Why does this exist and why do they not feel the need to do right by someone, treat people equally and not equitably.

Hi Dan, I read your words and heard my own voice. I mean that quite literally. I sense from the way that you write that you are someone, like me, who benefits from verbal release. I’ve recently started writing my thoughts in a journal. Mostly about existence etc. I don’t feel cured, but it stops me from sinking into insanity. At least when words are written on paper we don’t have to look despairingly into the empty gaze of those who don’t and won’t understand.