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Existential Fear At The Root Of All Anxiety
With Dr. Agapi ErmidesThis course aims to help students understand anxiety as a natural response to awareness and vulnerability, recognize existential fear as a root layer of anxiety, and reduce self-blame and pathologizing interpretations. Students will learn how to stay present with fear rather than immediately trying to eliminate it, while exploring the deeper links between anxiety, love, attachment, and uncertainty. Students can expect short teaching segments followed by brief embodied meditations, with an emphasis on understanding first and then allowing space for direct experience. The course focuses on presence and one’s relationship to anxiety rather than quick relief, uses trauma-aware and non-pathologizing language, and unfolds at a slow, non-linear pace with permission to return to lessons as needed.
A compilation of insights and meditations on awareness, vulnerability, and being alive.
About this course
This course aims to help students understand anxiety as a natural response to awareness and vulnerability, recognize existential fear as a root layer of anxiety, and reduce self-blame and pathologizing interpretations. Students will learn how to stay present with fear rather than immediately trying to eliminate it, while exploring the deeper links between anxiety, love, attachment, and uncertainty. Students can expect short teaching segments followed by brief embodied meditations, with an emphasis on understanding first and then allowing space for direct experience. The course focuses on presence and one’s relationship to anxiety rather than quick relief, uses trauma-aware and non-pathologizing language, and unfolds at a slow, non-linear pace with permission to return to lessons as needed.
Meet your Teacher
I’m Dr. Agapi Ermides, a physician with training in anesthesiology and hospice and palliative medicine, and a background in contemplative practice, psychedelic therapy in mental health settings, and end-of-life support. My work has focused on accompanying people through moments of uncertainty, suffering, grief, and existential distress. In addition to my medical background, I work as a death doula and facilitate Death Cafés, creating spaces where people can speak openly about mortality, existential fears, love, and meaning. These experiences have deeply informed my understanding of anxiety as something that often arises from awareness of impermanence rather than from immediate danger. Through years of clinical and non-clinical presence with individuals and families facing serious illness, dying, and loss, I’ve come to approach anxiety not as a problem to suppress, but as a meaningful response to vulnerability and being human. This course reflects that integration of medical experience, contemplative inquiry, and sustained presence at the edges of life. It offers practices grounded in understanding as well as embodiment, for those who sense that their anxiety is tied to the deeper realities of being alive.