The term «existential crisis» refers to a common midlife crisis, when a person who has achieved a lot in both professional and personal life loses interest in everything that previously inspired him. Neurophysiologist Vadim Rotenberg — about the crisis of goals that cease to be adequate to the individual.
Once I received a letter from a stranger, excerpts from which I want to quote and comment to clarify this problem.
“I am 47 years old, I have two diplomas. All my life I considered myself successful and self-confident, but recent years have forced me to reconsider this position. Any problem causes fear and paralysis of the mind and will. I’m trying to find reasons and excuses to do nothing. When, having overpowered myself, I still do it, I often fail the task and even feel relieved: “thank God, it didn’t work out.”
There is not enough own message to activity, an external impetus is needed, moreover, from someone significant. I do it under pressure, sometimes it works. But it seems to me that my failures have formed in me uncertainty and passivity, the expectation of spurring from outside.
In addition, I showed an inability to communicate with people. There is a lack of understanding of the other, the ability to feel it. If I can isolate my «I» from the situation, then I manage to see the situation and the world as multifaceted, but this rarely happens.
In my dreams I often climb huge peaks. As soon as I climbed in, they begin to crumble under me. I jump from one to another, but as a result I still fly down.
I am confident in my potential, I know that I can change. When I manage to get rid of these complexes, I admire myself. But now these are rare and local successes against the dull background of numerous failures.”
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The author of the letter very accurately describes his ambivalent (ambivalent) attitude towards problems that he cannot cope with. Of course, the search for excuses before starting a business can be explained by the fear of failure, but the feeling of relief after failure (“thank God it didn’t work out”) does not agree well with this. If excuses are invented in order to avoid failure, then the failure itself should not cause a feeling of relief, on the contrary, it increases the feeling of helplessness. The absence of one’s own motivation for action and the expectation of an external impetus does not mean uncertainty due to «numerous failures», but a lack of internal motivation for activity, a desire to avoid attempts at a solution.
What is happening with the author of the letter can be explained as follows: due to the inertia of past experience, he is set to achieve as such, to achieve any goal in principle, and not at all for every specific goal, which in itself leaves him indifferent and can even cause a feeling of protest (“again something needs to be done.)
This is the essence of the existential crisis that occurs in middle age, when the energy potential is still preserved. This is not a crisis of will and not a crisis of personality — this is a crisis of goals that cease to be adequate to the individual.
The dreams described do not contradict this explanation. A person climbs to the top (climbs, and does not stand at the bottom in a state of helplessness), and it begins to crumble. The dreamer actively jumps from one to the other, but they also collapse. Not because some inept person jumping — these are not the same peaks. Others are needed, but a person clings to these because they are familiar.
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We do not always understand that we just «grew» out of our usual lives. It seems that we, as they say, have “lost our value”, and we are trying to prove to ourselves and others that we are “still alive” and that we can do something. This misunderstanding can cost both the person and others dearly.
It is not a defect in a holistic view of oneself as a person that interferes, but a concept developed by oneself, which requires us to achieve achievements where, in fact, we no longer need them.
This means that you need to stop looking for strength in yourself in order to achieve what you have lost interest in, to free yourself from inadequate goals imposed on yourself. Then it will be possible without fuss to look around in search of other targets.
A midlife crisis (existential crisis) is a revision at a new level of personal development of those goals and attitudes that have lost value for the person himself, have been crushed and do not lead him anywhere. But they are habitual, and the new ones are not yet formed and unconscious, and there is an underlying fear that instead of the usual, but unnecessary, a void will arise …
Do not be afraid of this — looking for new values is much better than gradually losing value in your own eyes.