Quote
“When I am mentally healthy, I am integrated and woven into the world to such an extent that my body and my feelings remain largely hidden from me. They disappear in the practical flow of my daily life because I am already geared to my situation, seamlessly living through the medium of my body without explicitly reflecting on it. In this state of everydayness, there is no separation between self and world; the world appears spontaneously to me as something that I understand, that I belong to, and am 'at home' in. It shows up as real, secure, and reliable, and others show up for me as equally real, secure, and reliable. In this state, I have what Laing calls "ontological security". Secure in my being, I can pre-reflectively move through the world, handle various situations, and affectively involve myself in the lives of others. From the perspective of existential therapy, psychopathology begins to emerge when this embodied connection breaks down, shattering my sense of self. Without the unified bond of being-in-the-world to integrate and hold my identity together, I feel as if I am losing myself, as if I am becoming nothing. Existentialists usually refer to this uncanny dissolution of the self in terms of 'anxiety' or Angst.”
― Kevin Aho, Existentialism: An Introduction