The relationship between existential anxiety, attachment styles and hopelesiness in adults

In this study, it is aimed to investigate the relationship between the four main returns of existence, death, freedom, isolation and meaninglessness anxiety with attachment styles and hopelessness. One of the issues that existentialist psychology deals with is how one responds to the circumstances of the family in which he or she is born and raised. It can be thought that the attachment style, which affects the way an individual establishes a relationship and is laid in the family in which he or she is born, is one of these answers. The object of anxiety is nothingness. Nothingness is not a phenomenon that can beaten. Therefore, one falls into despair and tries to get rid of despair. In this context, this research arises from the idea that existential anxiety may be related to the attachment style and hopelessness level of the individual. The main goal of this study was to investigate the relationship between anxious attachment, avoidant attachment, hopelessness and existential anxiety which contains the four ultimate concerns of existentialism. The sample of the study consisted of 289 adult; 159 women which was the 55% of this study group and 130 men which was the rest of this study group. Existensial Anxiety Scale, Experiences in Close Relatiınships Scale and Beck Depression Inventory were utilized as the instruments of this study. In order to find out the difference between participants it independent sample T-test, one way variance (ANOVA) analyses were used. On the other hand, to find out the relation between variables Pearson correlation was applied. In addition to these methods, there was also one statistical analysis that explains the meaning of independence variables relating with existentially anxiety which is the hierarchical regression analysis. The results of the t-test analysis showed that death anxiety and freedom anxiety differed in terms of gender. On the other hand, meaningless anxiety and isolation anxiety of participants significantly differed with regard to their ages. The results also indicated that death anxiety, isolation anxiety and freedom anxiety significantly and positively correlated with avoidant attachment. According to hierarchical regression analysis results, avoidant attachment and hopelessness were found as significant predictors of existential anxiety. The variables of anxious attachment, avoidant attachment, hopelessness, age and gender significantly explained 39 % of the variance in anxiety. Participants significantly differed from each other in existential anxiety with regard to their gender and age. However, no significant difference occurred in existential anxiety of participants in terms of their education level. Women experience more existential anxiety than compared to men and the results indicated that existential anxiety decreases as the age of the participants increases. In this study, existential anxiety was examined by considering young, middle and late adulthood. It is suggested for future studies to examine existential anxiety among adolescents and elders as well. Keywords: Existential anxiety, meaninglessness anxiety, death anxiety, isolation anxiety, freedom anxiety, attachment styles, despair