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Face of a troubled woman

Angst

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Angst is used in English to describe general anxiety, which may have no specific cause, and may be about the general state of the world. It tends to suggest doom and gloom and unmanageable feelings of helplessness in the face of a cloud of problems.  The term is nowadays often used, possibly disparagingly, to refer to the worries and concerns adolescents face in growing up.  While fear and anxiety may be a response to a stimulus or environmental factor, Angst in English suggest more a fundamental condition of worry and unease that is part of the human condition – perhaps explaining the need to import a simple foreign word meaning fear to describe a more precise condition.