The 4 Crises of the Soul

It’s not unusual for us as thoughtful, conscious, emotional human beings to experience a deep existential crisis of the soul.

Some have referred to the phenomenon as “The Dark Night” (St. John of the Cross), others as “The Wall” (Hagberg and Guelich, The Critical Journey).

Whatever you prefer to call it, the fact of the matter is that all of us will face a perplexing realisation that causes us to question the very nature and purpose of our existence.

If you’ve already been there, you will know that the experience can be deeply unsettling, and it can lead us into dark and disorientating places.

That said, it need not be a detrimental experience.

A crisis can be a powerful catalyst for positive and necessary change if we respond to it wisely.

That’s because crisis forces us to be truthful. It requires us to deal honestly with reality, to be resourceful, and to be proactive.

I want to suggest to you that there are four types of existential crisis that all of us will likely face at some point in our journey of life and faith.

Usually, these play out in the following order, but not always.

1. The Reality Crisis: What is true?

The first crisis we tend to face is generated by the realisation that not everything we were told by those we love and respect is true or certain. At least not as definitively certain as they made it out to be.

Some of what we were taught by our parents, teachers, and pastors as “fact” may only be “possibility” after all, maybe probability at best.

While this realisation can be quite liberating at first and evoke excitement at the possibility of new discoveries, it does inevitably cause us to question what else might not be as factual as we have been led to believe, and this can lead to deep uncertainty.

It’s probably worth pointing out here that those who loved us, raised us, and educated us likely did the best they could with what they had.

They too were, to some degree, products of their time and place, so they may have been wrongly informed by the sources they trusted and respected.

It’s rare that the people in our lives who love us intentionally set out to deceive us.

Discovering that what you have believed your whole life may not be true or certain can be traumatic. It can feel like someone is pulling the carpet out from under your feet.

For some, this causes them to abandon their faith wholesale (assuming they had faith to begin with) and throw off every restraint their upbringing placed on them.

Their quest for what is true can lead them into self-indulgent hedonism or self-denying asceticism and anything in between.

This needn’t be the case.

Disillusionment is the removal of illusion, which is the beginning of our journey toward truth.

If we genuinely value what is true, then discovering something isn’t should be a cause for celebration because it means we are closer to clarity and reality.

The key to navigating this crisis is to stay curious, teachable, humble and open-minded while learning to accept the inevitable mystery, ambiguity, and uncertainty characterising life in a complex universe.

2. The Identity Crisis: Who am I?

The second crisis usually follows the reality crisis and centres on identity: who exactly am I?

How do I uncover my true and best self beneath the layers of identity labels that others have plastered over my soul?

This crisis often catalyses a self-discovery quest that includes all sorts of explorations, from experimenting with new experiences to taking self-discovery tests.

Self-assessment tools like Strengths Finder or Enneagram and Personality Profiling Tests like the MBTI help shed light on who we are.

This experience can feel like a crisis because you realise that, in some ways, you have been living inauthentically, telling people you believe things you don’t just to fit in.

You may find yourself wrestling with questions of meaning and purpose. What am I supposed to do with my life? Do I have a unique reason for being? What if I live my whole life pretending to be someone I’m not?

You may even feel resentful for being put into situations where you were forced to comply in order to survive but in the process denied some essential part of who you know you are.

Forgiving yourself and others is often an important step forward into the liberation of your true self.

The key to navigating this crisis is to be honest with yourself, first about what you actually believe (and why) and, second, about how you truly want to live (and why).

You can’t share that with others until you’ve clarified it for yourself.

3. The Legacy Crisis: What have I achieved?

The third crisis usually comes later in life and is brought on by the realisation that success isn’t the same as significance and that what you will be remembered for matters.

The experience is often fuelled by a deep desire to leave something behind that will represent your impact on the world and your value to the world.

Those in the throes of this crisis want to know, “Did my life count? Is what I did valuable?”

Part of the reason this crisis happens is that we spend an extraordinary amount of time comparing ourselves to others, evaluating our progress against their goals.

Doing so inevitably leads to envy and discontent, so the key to making your way through this crisis is to clarify how you define success and significance. What matters to you, and why?

Recognising that while you are still alive, you can spend time and energy achieving what matters most to you will help you narrow down how you spend your days and with whom.

This crisis can be a powerful recalibration of your priorities.

It’s also important to remember when navigating this crisis that, if you are a person of faith, how God evaluates success and significance is vastly different from the vanity metrics we use to evaluate achievement (money, status, popularity, health, fame, etc.).

Ultimately, God measures success in terms of faithfulness and obedience, regardless of the “results”.

In the Kingdom of God, not everything that matters can be measured and not everything that can be measured matters.

4. The Mortality Crisis: When and how will I die?

The fourth and final crisis usually comes really late in life, as we near the end of our days and find ourselves confronting the reality of our own mortality.

It’s daunting for some, not knowing exactly when, where, and how their life will end but knowing that it could be soon.

Uncertainty about the details of one’s death can be frightening and distressing.

That’s largely because the inevitability of death leaves us feeling a distinct lack of control.

This crisis is often accompanied by a sobering realisation that the escalator can’t be stopped. We are all on a moving platform that we can’t get off and every day that passes is a day closer to the end of all our days.

Uncertainty around life after death, for oneself and those around you, is one of the harder realities of life we must face, but it too can be a powerful catalyst for a change in perspective.

Moses, the Old Testament Jewish prophet, said, “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Psalms 90:12).

Recognising and accepting the limitations of our humanity can be sobering but equally liberating, especially when life is viewed against the backdrop of eternity and the hope we have in Jesus.

Life should be lived joyfully in the light of eternity, not fearfully in the shadow of mortality.

As with many things in life, navigating these challenges is made more bearable and fruitful when we do so honestly with others.

Vulnerability, love and mutual encouragement go a long way to helping us redeem the difficulty of these experiences.

If you are in a dark, disorientating, and desperate place in your life right now, please reach out and let someone you love and trust know.

You don’t have to travel this road alone.