5 Things to Do in an Existential Crisis
“The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.” - Bob Dylan
“To be, or not to be: that is the question…” - Hamlet
“I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.” - U2
“Meaningless! Meaningless!... Everything is meaningless.” - Ecclesiastes 1:2
The moment hits us all in different ways. For some, it comes from experiences of great pain and suffering—everything that once was “normal” now seems so absurd in wake of how much we’re hurting. For others, monotony gets us—it becomes clear that one day will look exactly like the next, with little variation, until suddenly there are no more days to live. Even the deepest joys of life can bring it to our attention—the birth of a child shifts everything else into focus, all the goals we had at work, the list of to-dos around the house, or the amount of money we hoped to have in the bank. Now, these all seem so unimportant in comparison to how much joy and love we’ve felt.
This is an existential crisis. This is when our aliveness—and subsequent impending end—punches us in the gut.
My own existential crisis
I first felt an existential crisis in my late teens and early 20s. Through new and unknown experiences, I suddenly felt like my mind wasn’t big enough to make sense of the world. I became painfully aware that I am an individual, born in a certain place and time, with inherited proclivities and biases, with ideas given to me by culture, society, and family. How could I know I had any trustworthy understanding of the world? It was a frightening realization, and it took months to even know what was happening to me. But I later saw how my mind was expanding and I was changing. I was having an existential crisis.
I also saw it’s not just me. Poets, artists, and philosophers have pondered existence for centuries. It’s part of being a person. We come to some awareness of our finitude, our limitation, our spot in the greater expansive universe, and we wonder what is even going on.
What to do in an existential crisis
If you’ve had an experience like this, you might know how difficult it can be to manage. Here are a couple of ways to go about it.
1. Ignore it
Existential crises can cause considerable anxiety, and many of us in fact choose to ignore and repress this anxiety. Some people pour themselves even harder into work and making money, others escape to a beach town to start a new life, others become obsessed with vanquishing their enemies. There are lots of ways to ignore an existential crisis, and they often end up in alienation from who and what you love.
I don’t recommend this method, so let’s look at another.
2. Acknowledge it
This method is much harder—though I would say it’s worth it.
When life is scary or seems to make no sense, we must do the hard work to acknowledge it. Turn your focus to the feelings, thoughts, fears, and anxieties that come up with it. Knowing “what we’re dealing”—bringing to light all that comes up within us in view of our place in existence—is half the battle. It enables us to start to work through this crisis, as opposed to neglecting it (which, as we said, can cause trouble.)
3. Find support
It’s important to note that acknowledging and engaging the anxiety of an existential crisis can be very difficult, and I’m not taking it lightly. Lean on a trusted friend, depend on your supports, talk to a curious and understanding counselor. These can help you navigate the inherent difficulties of managing an existential crisis.
4. Examine your priorities
With our place in existence suddenly up for investigation, we have the opportunity to decide what’s truly important to us. Perhaps you’ve spent too much of your life trying to get ahead at work, and you choose to put loving your family higher on your list. Maybe there are people toward whom you’ve harbored bitterness and you wish to reconcile.
Sometimes existential crises turn people’s lives upside down, and this mustn’t be a bad thing. Allow this curious place to help you adjust your priorities to do what you want to with your life, including (I hope) showing love to those you care about.
5. Be brave and be vulnerable
An existential crisis is many things, and one of those things is an invitation. Coming to an awareness of our inherent limitations invites us to be humble, curious, and understanding. It invites us to try to understand how others are experiencing their existence. And perhaps most of all, it’s an invitation to be brave and be vulnerable.
It takes bravery to look mortality in the face. It causes us to ask difficult questions and take our worldview seriously. By extension, this leads us to a place of vulnerability—or perhaps more accurately, shows us how vulnerable we were to begin with. It is a vulnerable thing to be a person; here for a time, born in a place and situation over which we had no control, and the felt expectation to make the most of our time here.
In an existential crisis, be brave to look at your own experience, including the fears, anxieties, and fulfilled or unfilled hopes within. This is a place of vulnerability, which gives us the opportunity to grow, to give love and acceptance—and this is a truly brave thing.
Finding God in an existential crisis
Existential crises can be terrifying. There’s no healthy way to avoid it. But there is some comfort in knowing you’re not alone. In asking the questions of what’s important in life, what’s worth living for, and how to find love and contentment in life, we join the great discourse of human history. We join a multitude of the greatest (and worst) of humanity, longing for significance, relief, and meaning.
Here, in this place of vulnerability, we also get the opportunity to meet God. God waits for us in our release, our humility, and our giving-up of “having it figured out.” We may even come to understand more fully Jesus’ words, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
Allow this to give you some relief as you weather the difficulties of an existential crisis.
