Өмір мағынасы жоқ деген ойдың тудырған ішкі қайшылықтар мен адамзаттың өмір сүруіне қауіп төндіруі

Inner conflict due to perceived meaninglessness
threats to the existence of humanity

In psychology and psychotherapy, existential crises are inner conflicts characterized by the impression that life lacks meaning or by confusion about one's personal identity. Existential crises are accompanied by anxiety and stress, often to such a degree that they disturb one's normal functioning in everyday life and lead to depression. This negative attitude towards life and meaning reflects various positions characteristic of the philosophical movement known as existentialism. Synonyms and closely related terms include existential dread, existential vacuum, existential neurosis, and alienation. The various aspects associated with existential crises are sometimes divided into emotional, cognitive, and behavioral components. Emotional components refer to the feelings they provoke, such as emotional pain, despair, helplessness, guilt, anxiety, or loneliness. Cognitive components encompass the problem of meaninglessness, the loss of personal values or spiritual faith, and reflections about one's own mortality. Outwardly, existential crises often express themselves in addictions, anti social and compulsive behavior. The specific symptoms vary from case to case. Theorists try to address this by distinguishing between different types of existential crises. Categorizations are usually based on the idea that the issues at the core of existential crises differ with the individual's stage in life and personal development. Types commonly found in the academic literature include the teenage crisis, the quarter life crisis, the mid life crisis, and the later life crisis. They all have in common a conflict about the meaning and purpose of one's life. The earlier crises tend to be more forward looking: the individual is anxious and confused about which path in life to follow, especially concerning education and career as well as one's identity and independence in social relationships. Crises later in life are more backward looking. They are often triggered by the impression that one is past one's peak in life, and are often characterized by guilt, regrets, and a fear of death. The individual's age does generally correspond to the type of crisis they experience, but not always since there is a lot of variation on the level of personal development. Some people may only experience some of these types or none at all. If an earlier existential crisis was properly resolved, it makes it usually easier for the individual to resolve or avoid later crises. The problem of meaninglessness plays a central role in all of these types. It can arise in the form of cosmic meaning, which is concerned with the meaning of life at large or why we are here. Another form concerns personal secular meaning, in which the individual tries to discover purpose and value mainly for their own life. The issue of meaninglessness becomes a problem because of the discrepancy between the desire of humans to live a meaningful life and the apparent meaninglessness and indifference of the world, sometimes termed the absurd. Various sources of meaning have been suggested through which the individual may find meaning. They include altruism, or trying to benefit others; dedicating oneself to a cause, such as a religious or political movement; creativity, for example by creating art; hedonism, or the pursuit of pleasure; self actualization, which refers to the development of one's inborn potentials; and finding the right attitude towards one's hardships. Existential crises have various negative consequences, both on the personal level, such as anxiety and the formation of bad relationships, and the social level, such as a high divorce rate and decreased productivity. They may also have positive effects by pushing the affected to address the underlying issue and thereby develop as a person. Some questionnaires, such as the Purpose in Life Test, can be used to measure whether someone is currently undergoing an existential crisis. Because of the primarily negative consequences, it is important that existential crises are resolved. The most common approach is to help the affected find meaning in their life. This can happen through a leap of faith, in which the individual places their trust into a new system of meaning, or through a reasoned approach focusing on a careful and evidence based evaluation of the sources of meaning. Some theorists believe in a nihilistic approach, in which the individual accepts that life is meaningless and tries to find the best way to cope with this belief. Other approaches include cognitive behavior therapy and the practice of social perspective taking. Outside psychology and psychotherapy, the term "existential crisis" is sometimes used to indicate that the existence of something is threatened.

In psychology and psychotherapy, the term "existential crisis" refers to a form of inner conflict. It is characterized by the impression that life lacks meaning and is accompanied by various negative experiences, such as stress, anxiety, despair, and depression. This often happens to such a degree that it disturbs one's normal functioning in everyday life. Different authors focus in their definitions of existential crisis on different aspects. Some argue that existential crises are at their core crises of identity. On this view, they arise from a confusion about the question "Who am I?" and their goal is to achieve some form of clarity about oneself and one's position in the world. Some stress the spiritual nature of existential crises by pointing out how outwardly successful people may still be severely affected by them if they lack the corresponding spiritual development.

Existential crises are usually seen as complex phenomena that can be understood as consisting of various components. Some approaches distinguish three types of components belonging to the fields of emotion, cognition, and behavior. Emotional aspects correspond to what it feels like to have an existential crisis. It is usually associated with emotional pain, despair, helplessness, guilt, anxiety, and loneliness. But on the other hand, there is also often an impression in the affected that they are in some sense responsible for their predicament. This is the case, for example, if the loss of meaning is associated with bad choices in the past for which the individual feels guilty. But it can also take the form of a more abstract type of bad conscience as existential guilt. It is associated with the question of why one is doing what one is doing and why one should continue. It is a central topic in existentialist psychotherapy, which has as one of its main goals to help the patient find a proper response to this meaninglessness. This aspect is of particular relevance for existential crises occurring later in life or when the crisis was triggered by the loss of a loved one or by the onset of a terminal disease. For example, one's communication to one's housemates may be limited to very brief responses like a simple "yes" or "no" in order to avoid a more extended exchange or the individual reduces various forms of contact that are not strictly speaking necessary. Addictive behavior is also seen in people going through an existential crisis. Some turn to drugs in order to lessen the impact of the negative experiences whereas others hope to learn through the non ordinary drug experiences to cope with the existential crisis. While this type of behavior can succeed in providing a short term relief of the effects of the existential crisis, it has been argued that it is usually maladaptive and fails on the long term level. Existential crises may also be accompanied by ritualistic behavior. But researchers have additionally discovered various other existential crises belonging to different types. There is no general agreement about their exact number and periodization. Because of this, the categorizations of different theorists do not always coincide but they have significant overlaps. On this view, an existential vacuum is a rather common phenomenon characterized by the frequent recurrence of subjective states like boredom, apathy, and emptiness. This concerns specifically the relation to one's family and often leads to spending more time with one's peers instead. Various rebellious and anti social behavior seen sometimes in this developmental stage, like stealing or trespassing, may be interpreted as attempts to achieve independence. It can also give rise to a new type of conformity concerning, for example, how the teenager dresses or behaves. This conformity tends to be not in relation to one's family or public standards but to one's peer group or adored celebrities.

The term "quarter life crisis" is often used to refer to existential crises occurring in early adulthood, i. e. roughly during the ages between 18 and 30. Some authors distinguish between two separate crises that may occur at this stage in life: the sophomore crisis and the adult crisis. The sophomore crisis affects primarily people in their late teenage years or their early 20s. It is the first time that serious questions about the meaning of life and one's role in the world are formulated. At this stage, these questions have a direct practical relation to one's future. The adult crisis usually starts in the mid to late 20s. The issues faced in it overlap to some extent with the ones in the sophomore crisis, but they tend to be more complex issues of identity. As such, they also circle around one's career and one's path in life. But they tend to take more details into account, like one's choice of religion, one's political outlook, or one's sexuality. This may be combined with the sense that there is a significant distance between one's achievement and one's aspirations. In contrast to the earlier existential crises, it also involves a backward looking component: previous choices in life are questioned and their meaning for one's achievements are assessed. In these stages, the individual first adapts to changed external demands, then addresses the distance between their innate motives and the external persona, next rejects their previously adaptive persona, later adopts their new persona, and lastly becomes aware of the external consequences associated with these changes. In this personal sense, it is often connected with a practical confusion about how one should live one's life or why one should continue doing what one does. This can express itself in the feeling that one has nothing to live for or to hope for. Sometimes this is even interpreted in the sense that there is no right and wrong or good and evil. The issue of meaninglessness becomes a problem because humans seem to have a strong desire or need for meaning. This expresses itself both emotionally and practically since goals and ideals are needed to structure one's life. The problem can be summarized through the question "How does a being who needs meaning find meaning in a universe that has no meaning?". It has been argued that altruism can be a strong source of meaning in one's life. Dedicating oneself to a cause can act as a closely related source of meaning. This aspect is especially relevant in the field of art, where it is sometimes claimed that the work of art does not need an external justification since it is "its own excuse for being". It has been argued that for many great artists, their keener vision of the existential dilemma of the human condition was the cause of their creative efforts. These efforts in turn may have served them as a form of therapy. For this perspective, it is relevant that hedonism is not understood in a vulgar sense, i. e. as the pursuit of sensory pleasures characterized by a disregard of the long term consequences. While such a lifestyle may be satisfying in certain respects, a more refined form of hedonism that includes other forms of pleasures and considers their long term consequences is more commonly recommended in the academic literature. The purpose of life then is to develop oneself to realize this potential and successfully doing so increases the individual's well being and sense of meaningfulness. Most of the approaches mentioned so far have clear practical implications in that they affect how the individual interacts with the world. The attitudinal approach, on the other hand, identifies different sources of meaning based only on taking the right attitude towards life. This concerns specifically negative situations in which one is faced with a fate that one cannot change. This can lead all the way to depression if existential crises are not resolved. On the social level, they cause a high divorce rate and an increased number of people being unable to make significant positive contributions to society, for example, due to a lack of drive resulting from depression. In the sophomore crisis, for example, this can happen by planning ahead and thereby making more conscious choices in how to lead one's life. It can provide a temporary alleviation by helping the individual drain their energy and thus distract them from the threat of meaninglessness. Being unable to find good reasons for making an effort, such a person remains inactive for extended periods of time, such as staying in bed all day. If they engage in a behavior, they may do so indiscriminately without much concern for what they are doing. Having a positive sense of meaning, on the other hand, is associated with deeply held religious beliefs, having a clear life goal, and having dedicated oneself to a cause. The Purpose in Life Test is widely used and consists of 20 items rated on a seven point scale, such as "In life I have: (1) no goals or aims at all (7) very clear goals and aims" or "With regard to death, I am (1) unprepared and frightened (7) prepared and unafraid". The different approaches to resolving the issue of meaninglessness are sometimes divided into a leap of faith, the reasoned approach, and nihilism. In the case of existential crises, the commitment involves the faith that life is meaningful even though the believer lacks a reasoned justification.

According to Peter Wessel Zapffe, life is essentially meaningless but this does not mean that we are automatically doomed to unresolvable existential crises. Instead, he identifies four ways of dealing with this fact without falling into an existential depression: isolation, anchoring, distraction, and sublimation. Isolation involves a dismissal of destructive thoughts and feelings from consciousness. Physicians and medical students, for example, may adopt a detached and technical stance in order to better deal with the tragic and disgusting aspects of their vocation. Anchoring involves a dedication to certain values and practical commitments that give the individual a sense of assurance. This often happens collectively, for example, through devotion to a common religion, but it can also happen individually. These problematic core beliefs may lie dormant for extended periods. But when activated by certain life events, they may express themselves in the form of recurrent negative and damaging thoughts. This can lead, among other things, to depression. This enables the individual to step outside their own immediate perspective while taking into consideration how others see the individual and thus reach a more integral perspective. Friedrich Nietzsche extended his views to suggest that the death of God—the loss of collective faith in religion and traditional morality—created a more widespread existential crisis for the philosophically aware. Existential crisis has indeed been seen as the inevitable accompaniment of modernism (1890–1945). Whereas Émile Durkheim saw individual crises as the by product of social pathology and a (partial) lack of collective norms, others have seen existentialism as arising more broadly from the modernist crisis of the loss of meaning throughout the modern world. Its twin answers were either a religion revivified by the experience of anomie (as with Martin Buber), or an individualistic existentialism based on facing directly the absurd contingency of human fate within a meaningless and alien universe, as with Sartre and Camus. Irvin Yalom, an emeritus professor of psychiatry at Stanford University, has made fundamental contributions to the field of existential psychotherapy. Rollo May is another of the founders of this approach. Fredric Jameson has suggested that postmodernism, with its saturation of social space by a visual consumer culture, has replaced the modernist angst of the traditional subject, and with it the existential crisis of old, by a new social pathology of flattened affect and a fragmented subject.

Existential crises are often seen as a phenomenon associated specifically with modern society. One important factor in this context is that various sources of meaning, such as religion or being grounded in one's local culture and immediate social environment, are less important in the contemporary context. The increased difficulty is described in Barry Schwartz's law, which links the costs, time, and energy needed to make a well informed choice to the number of alternatives available.