Understanding Anxiety and Depression and What Is Really Going On

Written by Lance Allan Kair, Licensed Professional Counselor

Lance Kair is a licensed professional counselor, founder of Agency Matters Mental Health, and published philosopher integrating trauma-informed care with existential and postmodern insights. He brings depth, compassion, and decades of lived experience to the evolving landscape of mental health.

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Are you struggling with anxiety or depression? You’re not alone, and yet the way we talk about these conditions might be missing something important. If we take seriously the accounts of those who suffer from anxiety and depression, alongside our own lived experiences, one thing becomes clear: these are not just medical conditions or diagnostic labels. They are profound emotional states that defy easy explanation. At their core, anxiety and depression may simply be described as experiences we don’t want to have. Any further meaning we attach to them might, in fact, be artificial – constructed after the fact.

The desire to end the feeling, without understanding it

Most people aren’t necessarily looking to “understand” their depression or anxiety. They just want the feelings to stop. And so, treatments are judged mainly by their ability to remove the discomfort, often regardless of how or why they work.

For instance, in the U.S., one can legally use medications like Bupropion or cannabis (in some states) but not cocaine, even if the latter might technically alleviate depressive feelings. This paradox reveals an important truth: what counts as a legitimate solution is governed by ethical and social norms, not just medical science. Our understanding of mental health is already deeply influenced by what society deems acceptable, not necessarily what works best.

The paradox of knowing what you don’t want to know

Here’s the conundrum: many people experiencing anxiety or depression already know something is wrong. But the experience itself resists understanding. They want it to go away, not to be dissected or analyzed.

This creates a strange feedback loop: the person is aware that they are suffering, but that awareness is precisely what makes the suffering intolerable. They know, but they don’t want to know. This tension itself can deepen the distress.

Anxiety: Fear of nothing and everything

Anxiety is often described as dread without a clear object. Fear, by contrast, has a focus – we fear a specific thing. But anxiety can feel like fear of everything and nothing all at once.

Modern psychology has developed categories like social anxiety, generalized anxiety, and more. But even these attempts to label the experience don’t fully capture its root quality: a need to assign meaning to a feeling that resists meaning. We search for causes, for reasons, but often what we find are stories we’ve attached after the fact.

Depression: More than symptoms and behaviors

When we think of depression, we often focus on visible behaviors: lack of motivation, oversleeping, poor hygiene. These symptoms, however, may not reflect the full picture.

In therapy, clients often describe their depression by repeating the diagnosis itself: “I can’t get out of bed because I’m depressed.” But when asked to explain further, the reasoning becomes circular: they do things because they’re depressed, and they’re depressed because they do these things.

This circular logic reveals how diagnosis can obscure rather than clarify. It becomes a stand-in for real understanding – a socially agreed-upon explanation for something still not well understood.

Psychology as a double-edged sword

Psychology aims to help people by labeling and categorizing their experiences. But this very process can sometimes reinforce the problem it seeks to solve.

A person may wake up feeling “off” or unable to function. They want to act, they know they should act, but they can’t. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) might suggest this is due to “core beliefs” or distorted thinking, but this too may be an attempt to explain something that resists explanation.

Psychology, then, fills in the blanks. It gives us a narrative that makes suffering seem manageable, understandable, even when it’s not. This can be helpful, but it can also make people feel they have even less control over their experiences.

The real task of mental health work

This isn’t to say psychology is wrong. On the contrary, it plays an essential role in modern mental health care. But we must recognize its limits.

Psychological models are built on abstraction, using behaviors and brain activity as evidence. Yet the actual experience of mental suffering is raw, immediate, and not always reducible to theory. When we label, diagnose, and treat, we might also, unintentionally, strip the individual of the ability to make sense of their own inner world.

The challenge, then, is not just to fix or remove anxiety and depression, but to help people regain agency over how they understand themselves. That means going beyond diagnosis, beyond behavior, and into the difficult but vital work of meaning.

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Read more from Lance Allan Kair

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Lance Allan Kair, Licensed Professional Counselor

Lance Kair is licensed professional counselor and founder of Agency Matters Mental Health, he blends trauma-informed therapy with deep philosophical insight drawn from thinkers like Zizek Badiou, and Kierkegaard. Formerly immersed in 1990s psychedelic and rave culture, his lived experience with addiction, grief, and harm reduction drives his radically compassionate care. He's the author of multiple philosophical works, including The Moment of Decisive Significance, and is a leading voice in the emerging field of Mental Health Philosophy.