There are questions that can stop you cold: What does any of this mean? Does it matter? What am I actually doing with my life? Existential dread is what happens when those questions feel less like interesting puzzles and more like ground shifting underneath you. It can show up as a persistent low-grade unease, or it can arrive suddenly and knock the wind out of you.
Talking this through with a therapist isn't about arriving at tidy answers. It's about learning to sit with uncertainty without it swallowing you whole. Therapy can help you examine the stories you've been living by, notice where you've outsourced meaning to external markers like achievement or approval, and begin to build a sense of what actually matters to you. That process can be unsettling. It can also be a relief.