On Emotional Space

The first thing I read completely was "Being and Time, part 5: Anxiety" by Simon Critchley (Links to an external site.). I haven't read philosophy recently or very in-depth, so it took some effort for me to parse it at first. Critchley in this post tries to explain anxiety as a feeling in an "ontological" sense, and also in reference to Heidegger's work.

He tries to explain anxiety, I think, as a kind of self-awareness and separation of you and reality. It is less a fear of something physical and actual, and anxiety a feeling towards something undefined or general. I think I can relate to this- the feeling of anxiety about nothing in particular, such that you need to dig into your brain and thoughts to determine what could be bothering you. I think anxiety can often manifest itself in a physical pain, too, like a pressure in your chest. Here below is his comparison of fear and anxiety. Maybe one fears a specific test, and has anxiety about their future career, or something.

"Matters are very different with anxiety. If fear is fearful of something particular and determinate, then anxiety is anxious about nothing in particular and is indeterminate. If fear is directed towards some distinct thing in the world, spiders or whatever, then anxiety is anxious about being-in-the-world as such. Anxiety is experienced in the face of something completely indefinite. It is, Heidegger insists, "nothing and nowhere"."

He also discusses further how anxiety is not always "darkness and despair" but can come about in mundane ways. 

"Anxiety does not need darkness, despair and night sweats. It can arise in the most innocuous of situations: sitting in the subway distractedly reading a book and overhearing conversations, one is suddenly seized by the feeling of meaninglessness, by the radical distinction between yourself and the world in which you find yourself. With this experience of anxiety, Heidegger says, Dasein is individualised and becomes self-aware."

Maybe it can come about from your personal sense of self in relation to the world, and whether you feel "connected" to it- a younger me was anxious often about being connected or a part of the world. When you feel yourself as an individual, and you have all the responsibilities of being an individual, to yourself and others, there is maybe some anxiety there.