Existential crisis

• 1. Introduction

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  An existential crisis can be picked up by a questionnaire that asks people to place their own life between two opposite statements. One item on the Purpose in Life Test stretches from "In life I have: (1) no goals or aims at all... (7) very clear goals and aims". Another asks about death, running from "(1) unprepared and frightened" to "(7) prepared and unafraid". A person who keeps landing at the low end is probably caught in a state where life seems to have lost its point.

  The phrase has a second life far from the therapist's office. A country, a company or a social institution faces an existential crisis when political tensions, military threats, high debt or social change could end its existence. The crisis in this documentary is personal. It is an inner conflict, bound up with confusion about who one is, and it brings anxiety and stress. The strain can grow severe enough to disturb everyday functioning and lead to depression.

  Several questions run through what follows. What does such a crisis feel like from the inside, and what does it make a person do? Why do these crises seem to cluster around particular moments in a life? Why might modern society be especially prone to them? Where do people find meaning when it slips away, and what actually gets someone out? And what happens when nothing does?

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• 2. Inside the Crisis

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  Researchers often sort an existential crisis into three strands: what a person feels, what they think and what they do. Every case shows all three, though the proportions differ a great deal. Some scholars have even suggested that the trio could support a more unified definition of the whole phenomenon.

  Despair and helplessness sit at the emotional center. The despair grows from failing to find meaning, and it comes with weak motivation and a lack of inner joy. Helplessness follows because the person can find no practical response. The feelings also seem to lie outside their control. That sense of vulnerability can feed fresh distress and sometimes tips into panic or deep mourning.

  Guilt pulls in the opposite direction. Many sufferers feel partly responsible for their plight, especially when the loss of meaning follows bad choices in the past. Others carry existential guilt, a free-floating bad conscience tied to no particular wrongdoing. Fear of death can take a similarly vague shape, an unspecific anxiety attached to a sense of deficiency.

  Integrity rests on close relationships with oneself, with other people and with the world, and the loss of meaning wears down all three. Insecurity, alienation and self-abandonment can follow. The damage to relationships with others is usually felt as loneliness. Yet loneliness can also teach a person what relationships are made of and why they matter.

  Viktor Frankl gave the central cognitive state a name in his logotherapy: the existential vacuum. It is the impression that nothing in our actions or in the wider world has higher significance, direction or purpose. The sufferer keeps returning to why they do what they do and why they should continue. Many forms of existentialist psychotherapy aim to help the patient rediscover meaning.

  Values can collapse alongside meaning. A bond with one particular person, or success in a career, may suddenly look insignificant. If the crisis is resolved, new values can be found in their place.

  Death changes character once it stops being an abstract fact. A terminal disease or the loss of a loved one makes it concrete, and crises later in life feel this most. For many people it brings anxiety. Yet it has also been argued that facing mortality can help resolve a crisis. Limited time raises the value of what remains and makes the big issues easier to tell from everyday distractions. Religious outlook, self-esteem, social integration and future prospects all shape how well imminent death is faced.

  The behavioral strand begins with small withdrawals. A person might answer housemates with nothing but "yes" or "no" to avoid a longer exchange. Contact that is not strictly necessary gets dropped, and relationships deteriorate over the long term. Some people turn hostile or aggressive. The same impulses can be turned inward, leading to self-injury and, in the worst case, suicide.

  Drugs enter in two ways. Some people use them to dull the pain, while others hope the unusual experiences will teach them to cope. Either route can bring short-term relief. It has been argued, though, that this behavior is usually maladaptive and can deepen the crisis. Sufferers also often struggle to tell the need for pleasure and power from the need for meaning. The addictions and the stress can damage health, from high blood pressure to long-term organ damage and a higher likelihood of cancer.

  Not every behavior is destructive. Ritual can help someone move toward a new outlook on life, although it can also harden into compulsion that distracts rather than solves. Seeking therapy counts as a behavior too. It shows that the person grasps how grave the problem is and wants to resolve it.

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• 3. Early Crises

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  Theorists have never agreed on how many existential crises a life contains. One scheme names five: the early teenage crisis, the sophomore crisis, the adult crisis, the mid-life crisis and the later-life crisis. Another recognizes only the sophomore, adult and later-life crises and defines them more widely. The stages track rough age groups, but two people of the same age can stand at very different points in their development. Earlier crises tend to look forward, anxious about which path to follow. Later ones look backward, toward guilt and regret.

  The early teenage crisis centers on the move from childhood to adulthood and on building independence. Teenagers often spend more time with peers and less with family. Rebellious acts such as stealing or trespassing may be read as attempts to assert independence. A new conformity can appear, aimed not at family or public standards but at a peer group or adored celebrities. That may be a temporary step before independence from those influences too. Independence without a new identity leaves a teenager feeling lost and possibly depressed.

  Parents can help by watching for signs of depression. A changed appetite, more or less sleep, grades that fall quickly, withdrawal from friends and easy irritation are all examples. Parents who talk with their teenagers regularly and ask questions are more likely to notice a crisis.

  The quarter-life crisis covers early adulthood, roughly between the ages of 18 and 30. Some authors split it into the sophomore crisis and the adult crisis. The sophomore crisis hits people in their late teens or early 20s, and among students it is called the sophomore slump. It is the first time serious questions about life's meaning and one's own role are asked, with a direct bearing on future careers and relationships. High achievers are especially vulnerable, since they fear missing their potential without a secure plan.

  People who settled on a career very early may skip the sophomore crisis. The choice may still cause trouble later, because it usually reflects the outlook of the social environment more than personal introspection. A large gap between the two can provoke a more severe sophomore crisis down the road. James Marcia calls this early commitment without sufficient exploration identity foreclosure.

  The adult crisis starts in the mid- to late 20s. Its questions overlap with the sophomore crisis, but identity grows more complex, taking in religion, political outlook and sexuality. Resolving it means having a good idea of who one is and feeling comfortable with that idea. That usually coincides with full adulthood: school finished, full-time work, a home of one's own and financial independence. An unresolved adult crisis can bring disorientation, shaky confidence in one's identity and depression.

  How well these early crises are settled matters beyond their own years. Someone who resolved them properly finds it easier to resolve or avoid the crises that come later.

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• 4. Midlife and Beyond

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  Around the age of 40, the mid-life crisis sets in for many people, and it is the most widely discussed of all. Its trigger is often a feeling that personal growth has been blocked. A wide distance between what one has achieved and what one hoped for makes this worse. Previous choices come under review, including career, partner, children, social status and missed opportunities. Regret and dissatisfaction can follow, often tied to the impression of being past one's peak.

  Some accounts divide the crisis into five intermediary stages: accommodation, separation, liminality, reintegration and individuation. The person first adapts to changed outside demands. Next they address the distance between their innate motives and their outward persona. Then they reject the persona that served them before, adopt a new one and finally notice the external consequences of the change.

  Specific events can set the crisis off. The list includes losing a job, forced unemployment, extramarital affairs, separation, the death of a loved one and health problems. Symptoms range from stress, boredom and self-doubt to compulsivity, rumination, insecurity and changes in the libido and sexual preferences. Public discussion links the mid-life crisis mainly to men and their careers. Women are affected just as much. For them, the limited time left in the reproductive period or the onset of the menopause adds to the strain.

  Between 8 and 25 percent of Americans over the age of thirty-five have experienced a mid-life crisis. People who resolved their earlier crises tend to feel more fulfilled with their past choices. Even so, a good resolution earlier does not guarantee that those choices still look meaningful from the present.

  The later-life crisis tends to arrive around the late 60s. Retirement, the death of a loved one, serious illness or imminent death can trigger it. At its core is a backward look at how one has lived. The person wants to have led a valuable life but is unsure of having done so. Memories of past wrongdoing may bring a wish to make amends while there is still time. Others ask whether their life made a positive difference to their immediate surroundings or to the world, and hope to leave a legacy.

  Looking backward leaves less to fix. This is especially true for people who judge their lives harshly. Older people also often lack the energy and youthfulness needed to make real changes. Some suggest that accepting the reality of death may help. Other advice aims less at resolution and more at limiting the damage, for instance by caring for physical, economic and emotional well-being and keeping up a social network of support.

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• 5. Meaning Under Pressure

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  The exact phrase "existential crisis" is rare in traditional existentialist philosophy. That literature speaks instead of existential dread, existential vacuum, existential despair, existential neurosis, existential sickness, anxiety and alienation. Some authors treat the crisis as one of identity, centered on the question "Who am I?". On this view the person confronts existence, death, freedom and responsibility and questions the foundations of their life. Others stress human limits such as death and lack of control. Still others point out that outwardly successful people can be badly hit if their spiritual development has lagged.

  Most theorists nonetheless put meaninglessness at the center, so these are crises of meaning. The widest version asks why we are here at all. Religious answers traditionally describe a world created by God for His purpose, so that each thing matters through its role in that plan. This is called cosmic meaning. It contrasts with the secular personal meaning someone seeks when asking how their own life is valuable. It has been argued that in a secular age, finding personal meaning to hold onto is enough to resolve the problem.

  The difficulty is a mismatch. Humans seem to need goals and ideals to structure their lives, while the world appears contingent and indifferent. Existentialist writers call this the absurd. The problem has been framed as a question: "How does a being who needs meaning find meaning in a universe that has no meaning?" Practitioners of existential psychotherapy report that loss of meaning plays a role for most of their patients. They see its most characteristic expression in existential crises.

  Thomas Carlyle wrote in the 19th century about a crisis he called the "Centre of Indifference". In it, the loss of faith in God leaves the world cold and unfeeling, and the individual feels worthless. Søren Kierkegaard held that angst and existential despair arise when an inherited or borrowed world-view, often a collective one, fails against extreme and unexpected experiences. Friedrich Nietzsche widened the point. In his view the death of God, meaning the loss of collective faith in religion and traditional morality, produced a more widespread crisis for the philosophically aware.

  The modernist period, circa 1890-1945, is often seen as the era when existential crisis became inevitable. Émile Durkheim read individual crises as by-products of social pathology and a partial lack of collective norms. Others saw a wider loss of meaning across the modern world. Two answers emerged. One was a religion revived by the experience of anomie, as with Martin Buber. The other was an individualist existentialism that faces the absurd fate of humans in a meaningless and alien universe, as with Sartre and Camus.

  Fredric Jameson proposed that postmodernism changed the picture again. In his reading, a visual consumer culture that saturates social space replaced the old modernist angst with flattened affect and a fragmented subject.

  Modern life also loosens older anchors. Religion, a profession and the immediate social environment grounded people more firmly in premodern times. For a long stretch of history, a son simply followed his father's profession. Today's schools present students with many areas of study and a wide range of careers. This freedom has been called the agony of choice. Barry Schwartz's law links the costs, time and energy needed for a well-informed choice to the number of alternatives on offer.

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• 6. Sources of Meaning

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  Many studies link religious faith to self-reported meaning in life, and social relationships are another major source. The need for meaning is usually held to be met by whatever source is within reach. Losing it can bring on a crisis. A religious person confronted with vast death and suffering may see their faith in a benevolent, omnipotent God shattered. A concrete threat of imminent death, such as from a breakdown of social order, can do much the same. If the person cannot absorb, reinterpret or ignore the threat, their whole system of meaning may need rebuilding from the ground up.

  The literature sorts the alternatives into six: altruism, dedication to a cause, creativity, hedonism, self-actualization and the right attitude.

  Altruism means acting from a desire to benefit others. It can be small, such as being kinder to people nearby and trying to help with their problems. It can be impersonal, such as donating money to charities. Effective altruism is a contemporary movement that offers concrete advice on living this way. Altruists tend to report higher well-being and better physical and mental health.

  Dedication to a cause is a close cousin. The cause might be religious, political, institutional, scientific or philosophical. The common thread is devoting oneself to producing something greater than oneself. It need not rest on a wish to help others, and a person's life gains meaning to the extent that they work toward the cause and help realize it.

  Creativity can supply meaning even without an obvious purpose. In art, it is sometimes said that a work is "its own excuse for being". It has been argued that for many great artists, a keener vision of the human predicament drove their creative efforts, which then worked as a form of therapy. Creativity is not limited to art. Science, cooking, gardening, writing, ordinary work and romantic relationships all offer room for it.

  Hedonism qualifies as a source only in a refined form. The academic literature does not mean the pursuit of sensory pleasure with no regard for long-term consequences. It means a wider range of pleasures, including looking at fine art or joining a stimulating intellectual conversation. Life then becomes a gift that evokes astonishment at its miracle and appreciation for it.

  Self-actualization starts from the image of an acorn that has the potential to become an oak. An infant likewise carries the potential for a fully developed adult with virtues and skills rooted in inborn talents. Realizing that potential raises well-being and the sense of meaning. It is sometimes pictured as a hierarchy in which lower potentials must be realized before higher ones.

  The attitudinal approach differs because it asks for no outward action. It applies to fates that cannot be changed, where helplessness is the usual feeling. Meaning can still be found by meeting suffering with a virtuous or admirable attitude, for example by staying courageous.

  Available sources shift with a person's stage in life. Self-actualization and hedonism, which focus on one's own well-being, are associated with earlier stages. Altruism and dedication to a cause turn up more in later years, for example when an older generation wants to pass on knowledge and improve life for a younger one.

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• 7. Counting the Cost

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  Stress, anxiety and strained relationships are the first personal costs of an existential crisis, and unresolved ones can end in depression. On the social level the crisis is linked to a high divorce rate and to people who cannot contribute much to society, for instance through lack of drive caused by depression. A crisis resolved well can have the opposite effect. It pushes people to address the underlying issue, find new sources of meaning and improve their way of life. In the sophomore crisis, that can mean planning ahead and making more conscious choices.

  Therapists need an accurate diagnosis, and symptoms differ widely between people. Some become overly adventurous and zealous. Desperate to escape meaninglessness, they throw themselves into any cause with little regard for its content or their own safety. It has been argued that this pattern appears in some hardcore activists. It works as a defense mechanism against purposelessness. A quieter form is compulsive activity such as workaholism, the obsessive pursuit of prestige or the hunt for material goods. This is called false centering or inauthenticity, because the activity is a distraction rather than a source of fulfillment.

  A declared nihilism is another response. Such a person discredits whatever others claim gives life meaning. They may dismiss altruism as disguised selfishness or insist that every leader is driven by lust for power rather than vision. In more extreme crises the picture is aimlessness and apathy with depression. Without good reasons to make an effort, the person may stay in bed all day.

  Severity can be graded. Some theorists use the term existential vacuum for a common condition in which boredom, apathy and emptiness keep recurring. Some people feel it only in their free time, a pattern often called "Sunday neurosis". The vacuum becomes an existential neurosis once it comes with overt clinical symptoms, such as depression or alcoholism.

  Job satisfaction and the quality of relationships are indirect indicators. Physical violence or constant fighting in a relationship may be read as outward signs of a serious crisis. Empirical studies tie a lack of meaning to psychopathology. A positive sense of meaning goes with deeply held religious beliefs, a clear life goal and dedication to a cause.

  The Life Regard Index is a second questionnaire alongside the Purpose in Life Test. Such tools show therapists and counselors whether a client is in crisis and how severe it is. Theorists also use them to study how existential crises correlate with depression, gender and poverty.

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• 8. Ways Out

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  Some resolutions look outward. Crises about sexual identity or independence may ease when a person finds a partner matching their character and preferences. Positive indicators of marital success include similar interests, shared activities and a similar level of education. Crises about a professional path may call for the right career, one that fits both interests and skills, so that work is neither unfulfilling and disengaging nor overwhelming.

  The more common approach changes inner attitude and thinking. Existential psychotherapists usually help patients rediscover meaning, sometimes through a spiritual or religious purpose such as dedicating oneself to an ideal or discovering God. Other therapists stress creating meaning, on the idea that it does not exist apart from the person but must be made and maintained. Some forms of existentialist psychotherapy accept that the world is meaningless and teach the best way of coping with that fact.

  One scheme names three routes: a leap of faith, a reasoned approach and nihilism. A leap of faith means affirming a new system of meaning without first understanding how secure it is. It may be the fastest bypass, for people oriented toward intuitive processing. It has been argued to be robust, because meaning that does not rest on empirical evidence is less vulnerable to contrary evidence.

  More rational people weigh the sources of meaning against solid evidence and rebuild a justified system. The result can be very idiosyncratic, shaped by the person's own values, preferences and experiences. Someone who decides family life matters most can concentrate there and take a less involved stance toward success at work. The drawback is time, and success is not certain. Even after a long search, a person might fail to find a significant source of meaning.

  Acceptance of meaninglessness is the third route, nihilism, in a local version aimed at one area of life or a global version aimed at life as a whole. At first it may seem intolerable. Frankl saw the will to meaning as the primary motivation of all individuals. Nihilism also offers little practical guidance for living. On the positive side, it can bring a heightened sense of freedom from any predetermined purpose, and it shows the virtue of truthfulness.

  Peter Wessel Zapffe held that life is essentially meaningless, but that this need not lead to existential depression. He named four coping mechanisms: isolation, anchoring, distraction and sublimation. Isolation dismisses destructive thoughts from consciousness, as when physicians and medical students adopt a detached, technical stance toward the tragic and disgusting sides of their work. Anchoring means dedication to values and commitments, often collectively through a shared religion. Distraction is a temporary withdrawal of attention. Sublimation, the rarest, turns the pain of living into a work of art or another creative expression.

  Cognitive behavioral therapy takes a different path by adapting treatments for depression. Its starting idea is that psychological problems come from inaccurate core beliefs, such as being worthless, helpless or incompetent. Such beliefs can lie dormant until a life event activates them, producing recurrent negative thoughts. Therapy raises awareness of these patterns and trains the person to change them. Social perspective-taking is a close relative. The person views their own situation and character from the standpoint of someone else, and so reaches a more integral perspective.

  Some crises fade without being resolved. Other concerns can push the issue into the background, where it stays masked or dormant. Even then it can quietly steer decisions such as career choices, and it raises the chance of another crisis later in life. It has been argued that many contemporary crises go unresolved because people lack a clear awareness of their nature, importance and possible treatments.

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