Research involving the complicated phenomenon of anxiety in the face of misfortune can be carried out in various academic disciplines. Such anxiety can be examined conceptually in three general fields - psychology, existential philosophy, and metaphysical ontology - each of which has a different conceptual understanding of anxiety. The psychological treatment of psychopathological anxiety understands anxiety as an emotional obstacle to personal growth arising from the unconscious self. Existential philosophy understands it rather as an existential state rooted in the freedom of human existence itself. For its part, ontology speaks of the profound principle of anxiety that is exposed in the tension between ‘being’ and ‘nothingness.’ Freud and Heidegger are among the few thinkers from these different academic disciplines who have the same conceptual understanding of anxiety. Still another academic field, philosophical anthropology, understands anxiety as a matter of a root relationship at the heart of human existence. In the Bible, the Book or Genesis states that the first human being became divided into two, himself (Adam) and his new partner (Eve) and thus came to experience ‘the otherness of one’s self’ or the ‘the self of otherness’. Genesis implies that human beings thus are uncertain beings that have to shoulder the existential loneliness experienced in this awareness of otherness. In any case, these various interpretations of anxiety all indicate that it is not a response to misfortune that must necessarily give rise to agony. Rather, it can be a key trigger for obtaining happiness after overcoming agony. Moreover, the philosophical anthropological understanding of anxiety can be a great help in discerning the correct healing methodology of philosophical counseling.