Can anxiety be positive?

“As Beckett said: ‘You’re on earth, there’s no cure for that.’ Klimt and his circle didn’t believe that, which I find very haunting and wonderful. They were probably less pessimistic than we are.”

John Malkovich – about portraying artist Gustav Klimt – from the page Existential Dread.

In her article A Brief Outline of Existential Anxiety, Anne Ahira declares that anxiety is often viewed negatively, but “One of the types of anxiety that is considered to be positive in one form or another is existential anxiety.

“Individuals that experience this form of anxiety often have a heightened awareness that they have personal freedoms.

“They know and understand that each decision that they make has both responsibilities as well as consequences.

“Therapists that discover that their patients have this condition often determine it to be positive to self-growth.”