Which frame of reference states that anxiety and illness arise from confronting ultimate existential concerns such as death, freedom, isolation, and meaninglessness?

• A. Behavioral
• B. Existential
• C. Psychoanalytic
• D. Humanistic

Answer: (B)

Existential therapies treat anxiety as a natural response to facing the ultimate questions of human existence—death, freedom and responsibility, isolation, and the search for meaning. When a person confronts that life may lack guaranteed meaning and that choices have real, sometimes heavy consequences, distress can intensify into illness if they can’t find a way to cope or make meaning. This approach focuses on helping clients acknowledge mortality, own their choices, and create authentic meaning in their lives, which often reduces the weight of anxiety and distress.

Compared to other approaches: the behavioral frame wouldn’t attribute anxiety to inherited or learned patterns and would focus on changing observable behaviors; the psychoanalytic frame would look for unconscious conflicts driving the anxiety; and the humanistic frame would emphasize self-actualization and congruence, but existential therapy specifically centers on how confronting existential concerns underpins the experience of anxiety and illness.