Kierkegaard isn't saying anxiety *prevents* freedom or that we'd be calmer without choices—he's identifying anxiety as the *feeling* that accompanies genuine freedom itself. The moment you realize you could actually do something different, that the path ahead is unmade, the ground can feel unsteady. A person who quits a stable job to start a business doesn't feel anxious because freedom is absent; the vertigo arrives precisely because they now own their decisions in a way they didn't before, and that ownership is both exhilarating and destabilizing. Understanding this reverses the usual mistake: instead of waiting to feel confident before acting freely, we learn to recognize anxiety as a reliable companion to any choice that truly matters.