Angst

So it is said that Angst, or existential anxiety is our feeling when we relate to our own death or understanding of groundlessness that is the other side of freedom.

So this comes from Heidegger and Van Duerzen

Im slightly troubled by this, now anxiety I understand as fear without an object of fear, so I get a sinking feeling in my stomach, a sort of dread but I dont know what of. My best understanding of this is that something that I have repressed , something quite deep in me is getting affected. So for instance when there was a possibility of deep intimacy with a woman that was then taken away I had a feeling of anxiety, and indeed this was repeated in the same situation when there were feelings of jealousy and humiliation around this. They were all followed by anxiety. As I understand this, I have a desire that I wont acknowledege, then when this desire is engaged with in a negative way, let down, humiliated etc, then anxiety arises as I have pain but I dont know where its coming from. This pain being the original fear of this desire that sought it to be represssed.

I have been existentially engaged with my own death. This was for a short period maybe a few days and happened when my mother and when my sister died. I felt what it would like for me not to be alive to not be, it was a very strange feeling certainly but it had non of the shape of a feeling of anxiety.

Now with feelings of groundlessness, or understanding our ultimate freedom. Here I theroretcially understand this to be true, but existentially I act on the axiom that I have created for myself, my values.

The thing it seems with both these positions on death and freedom, is that they are taken ontically, from the position of myself as a being. This is to say that given myself I think about death and freedom as if they were things in the world, rather than my possibilities. So would it be better to experience angst therefore if I could engage with them outside of my ego. Well when Im depressed my ego shatters, but the ability to engage with anything as abstract or complicated as freedom goes out the window. Now its certainly possible that I could experience the engagement with death that I had with my sister and mother in a depressed state, but firstly that would be a very bad afternoon and secondly it hasnt happened.

So my question is what does angst feel like?
Id also like to ask, how can you engage with the being of death and the being of freedom, but I realise too many questions can put people off so I'll leave that for another time

References
Deurzen, E. van (2002) Existential Counselling and Psychotherapy in Practice, 2nd edition, London: Sage Publications.