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" Because it is possible to create — creating one’s self, willing to be one’s self, as well as creating in all the innumerable daily activities (and these are two phases of the same process) — one has anxiety. One would have no anxiety if there were no possibility whatever. Now creating, actualizing one’s possibilities, always involves negative as well as positive aspects. It always involves destroying the status quo, destroying old patterns within oneself, progressively destroying what one has clung to from childhood on, and creating new and original forms and ways of living. If one does not do this, one is refusing to grow, refusing to avail himself of his possibilities; one is shirking his responsibility to himself. Hence refusal to actualize one’s possibilities brings guilt toward one’s self. But creating also means destroying the status quo of one’s environment, breaking the old forms; it means producing something new and original in human relations as well as in cultural forms (e.g., the creativity of the artist). Thus every experience of creativity has its potentiality of aggression or denial toward other persons in one’s environment or established patterns within one’s self. To put the matter figuratively, in every experience of creativity something in the past is killed that something new in the present may be born. Hence, for Kierkegaard, guilt feeling is always a concomitant of anxiety: both are aspects of experiencing and actualizing possibility. The more creative the person, he held, the more anxiety and guilt are potentially present. "
― Rollo May , The Meaning of Anxiety
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" But are we not at the point where we can no longer make the distinction between normal and neurotic? Do we not all have these conflicts, in greater or lesser degree? And do not all conflicts move into contradiction at some point? When all is said and done, all anxiety arises from conflicts, with its origin in the conflict between being and nonbeing, between one's existence and that which threatens it. All of us, no matter how 'neurotic' or 'normal,' experience the gap between our expectations and reality. This distinction becomes less important, and I believe we must look at all anxiety, preferably without special labels, as part of the human condition. "
― Rollo May , The Meaning of Anxiety