Do adults have permission to feel angst?

Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines the noun to mean, “a feeling of anxiety, apprehension, or insecurity.” 

Yet this word becomes synonymous with teenage angst. Upon hearing it, I immediately picture sour faced teens – in full 90s grunge uniform – who slam bedroom doors in their parents’ faces. I hear, “Go away!” and alt rock playing so loudly it echoes throughout suburbia.

We rarely use the word angst outside of this context. It feels akin to a phase – something you grow out of and you’re not supposed to come back to. But judging by its textbook definition, don’t we all experience anxiety, apprehension, and insecurity beyond our teenage years?

Personally, I don’t believe that “anxiety, apprehension, and insecurity” accurately summarize angst. There’s so much nuance to this emotion. With it written off as a temporary experience, we miss the opportunity to explore it; to truly understand it. I do agree that “anxiety, apprehension, and insecurity” are at the heart of angst, but it’s also so much more. Angst is also anger and anguish.

There is a fire in angst; one not easily extinguished. An itch that can’t be scratched.

I don’t know that there is a solution for this feeling, like there might be to sadness or anger. Angst feels somewhere in between melancholy and rage. There’s also a hopelessness about it, or perhaps a helplessness. Angst is feeling a certain amount of animosity towards an unclear source, but not knowing what to do about it.

Honestly, the more I try to describe the word, the less I feel I understand it. Angst is ambiguity. It’s a feeling that you can’t quite “put your finger on.”

It’s funny that we reserve this emotion for adolescents. I’d like to think my theory is true – that we subconsciously believe we grow out of the capacity to feel it. One of those unspoken rules. Yet, how foolish is it to deny ourselves the right to feel angst? It represents our human ability to feel so many different emotions all at once. We rarely feel single emotions at a time. We have only been taught to believe so. Go over your day so far – I’ll bet you’ve already held two different feelings at the same time today. 

I mean, have you ever performed in front of a live audience? It can be terrifying and exhilarating. 

Leave somewhere you loved? I’ll bet it was bittersweet – sad, but a little bit exciting, too. 

What about lose someone you loved? I’m sure it was devastating, but there was also the relief that they were no longer suffering…

We feel different emotions simultaneously all the time. We pretend that having multiple feelings is something wrong – like being an angsty teen is the equivalent of being a dysfunctional robot who’s working out the bugs in their emotion software.

We don’t grow out of this – and that’s okay. I don’t really know who benefits from this idea that we do, (The pharmaceutical industry? Therapists? Oops, maybe…) but I’m here to let you know that your human propensity to feel a cocktail of emotions at any given moment is completely normal. It should, in fact, be a sign that you are functioning just as intended.

How do you experience angst?