“Completed life” – A matter of existential anxiety? Creating an in- depth understanding through an existential psychological perspective.

Attention for the phenomenon “tiredness of life”, “weariness of life”, or “completed life” – relatively healthy older adults experiencing their life as completed and not worth living anymore – is rising in Dutch and Belgian media and fuels the debate about broadening the possibility of assisted suicide. The pressure to address this issue contrasts sharply with a lack of empirical knowledge on the conceptualization and measurement of the phenomenon as well as on its development.

We aim to clarify the conceptualization of the phenomenon and develop a scale to capture its experience. Furthermore, we aim to provide potential clarifications for the phenomenon. Based on experimental- and cultural-existential psychology, we therefore hypothesize that a decrease in anxiety buffer functioning due to aging processes leads to heightened levels of existential issues as observed in tiredness/weariness of life.

The project uses a mixed methods approach. First, a systematic review on the terminology, definitions, and interpretations of the phenomenon aims to clarify the phenomenon theoretically. A phenomenological interview study is employed to clarify the lived experience of older adults feeling tired of life. Second, by use of conceptualization, expert review, cognitive interviewing, and a psychometric evaluation we will develop a self-report scale of tiredness/weariness of life. Third, the adoption of a quantitative longitudinal approach elucidates whether and when indications of a decrease in anxiety buffer functioning are associated with tiredness/weariness of life.

Thereby, the project will delineate a conceptualization of the phenomenon, enable its measurement, deepen our understanding of its lived experience, and create novel insights into the stability of and interrelations between anxiety buffer dysfunction and tiredness/weariness of life.