# Existential crises and the four temperaments



## Exquisitor (Sep 15, 2015)

I'm curious to get some stats correlating the onset of existential crises with Keirsey temperament. If you'd like to explain your answer or give more detail, go ahead and do so in a post.

A definition:



Wikipedia said:


> An existential crisis is a moment at which an individual questions the very foundations of their life: whether their life has any meaning, purpose, or value.


A serious existential crisis is often a debilitating experience of alienation and angst, and it can be brief or very prolonged.

Here's a pretty good article that discusses the concept of existential crises and suggests some effective methods of coping with them.

And just for fun, here's a video of a little girl experiencing an existential crisis.


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Of course, feel free to share any thoughts you have on the subject.


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## Larch (Oct 14, 2015)

NF here. I started experiencing existential crises at a young age, about 7-8. I have fewer of them now that I'm older - instead, I tend to experience positive existential insights. I've come to embrace the fact that I'm a very small part of a big universe that I will never understand. I used to question reality itself, but I've come to realize that my life is more meaningful and fulfilling if I behave as though reality is as it appears to be. Does that make sense?


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## blood roots (Oct 29, 2013)

NF. I was about 12.


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## NomadLeviathan (Jun 21, 2015)

*NF* - My aunt mentions I was 4 when I first expressed awareness of my own mortality, spawning her nickname for me: _Little Philosopher_. My mother says at 5 I had my first "crisis," but around 7 was the first that I can remember.


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## Lunaena (Nov 16, 2013)

NF. End of age 11, but it did not become intense until age 12.


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## Zosio (Mar 17, 2015)

Ah darn, I guess I should have put NF -- 11 or Under. I had forgotten about my "first" one. 

I remember being up in the middle of the night and crying with my ISFP sister because we were contemplating the idea of existing for eternity (we were raised in a Christian household). We thought of how awful it would actually be for life to never, ever, ever end, and it made us very upset. I was trying to consider different options or figure out if the eternity thing somehow worked differently. I was probably about 7 or 8 when that happened.


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## sinaasappel (Jul 22, 2015)

no t sure if i ever had one though i know im not that impactful


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## Exquisitor (Sep 15, 2015)

zosio913 said:


> Ah darn, I guess I should have put NF -- 11 or Under. I had forgotten about my "first" one.
> 
> I remember being up in the middle of the night and crying with my ISFP sister because we were contemplating the idea of existing for eternity (we were raised in a Christian household). We thought of how awful it would actually be for life to never, ever, ever end, and it made us very upset. I was trying to consider different options or figure out if the eternity thing somehow worked differently. I was probably about 7 or 8 when that happened.


Interesting how religion can provoke that in kids. What I was taught as facts by my Christian parents about eternal life etc., which I learned to take for granted alongside non-theological facts, inspired a lot of awe-struck rumination in me. And some things just seem to be a lot more immediately emotion-inspiring for innocent, confused kids. Mum tells me that me and my sister once got extremely upset when our family visited a church (out of service time) that featured a very large statue of Jesus hanging on the cross. We couldn't understand why something so horrible should happen, or why it should be depicted so prominently.


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## Zosio (Mar 17, 2015)

Exquisitor said:


> Interesting how religion can provoke that in kids. What I was taught as facts by my Christian parents about eternal life etc., which I learned to take for granted alongside non-theological facts, inspired a lot of awe-struck rumination in me. And some things just seem to be a lot more immediately emotion-inspiring for innocent, confused kids. Mum tells me that me and my sister once got extremely upset when our family visited a church (out of service time) that featured a very large statue of Jesus hanging on the cross. We couldn't understand why something so horrible should happen, or why it should be depicted so prominently.


Religion is definitely good at tugging on those sensitive heart strings. 

I used to work in a ministry that evangelized children, but looking back on it I sort of regret it. I don't think it's wrong to introduce children to those values and allow them to consider things on their own, but ministries like that tend to be pushy and dogmatic.


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## Purrfessor (Jul 30, 2013)

Age 3 was when I first thought I was God and I explained it one day to my dad a few years later with my uneducated mind as, "the world is facing me". Pretty sure he didn't understand but he realized something was off because him and my mom kept asking me if I ever needed to talk about anything. Which I always denied because I kept it all a secret because it's so damn hard to explain something like that. I ended up finally telling my mom at age 16 because I was going through severe depression due to pushing myself so hard thinking I'm God and keeping my identity a secret. Then she cried and told me that my father held me soon after I was born and called me God. She was really confused saying things like, "but how can someone like me give birth to you." Being God was normal to me... It didn't come with any responsibility or powers. It was just a fact of life. So I had to explain to her that it really meant nothing grandeur and being God was being similar to everybody else except I experience the cosmic consciousness that my being alive provides life to exist in the first place. Before I was born there was nothing and after there is everything - time being only an illusion of beginning to end but it is actually from middle to both ends, starting at 0 and moving both positive and negative in direction. 

Anyway, existential crises forever and always for me.


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## ScientiaOmnisEst (Oct 2, 2013)

Ugh.

SP, somewhere around 17-18.

Pretty sure that's actually the norm and you guys are the strange ones.


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## Exquisitor (Sep 15, 2015)

Stelliferous said:


> Age 3 was when I first thought I was God and I explained it one day to my dad a few years later with my uneducated mind as, "the world is facing me". Pretty sure he didn't understand but he realized something was off because him and my mom kept asking me if I ever needed to talk about anything. Which I always denied because I kept it all a secret because it's so damn hard to explain something like that. I ended up finally telling my mom at age 16 because I was going through severe depression due to pushing myself so hard thinking I'm God and keeping my identity a secret. Then she cried and told me that my father held me soon after I was born and called me God. She was really confused saying things like, "but how can someone like me give birth to you." Being God was normal to me... It didn't come with any responsibility or powers. It was just a fact of life. So I had to explain to her that it really meant nothing grandeur and being God was being similar to everybody else except I experience the cosmic consciousness that my being alive provides life to exist in the first place. Before I was born there was nothing and after there is everything - time being only an illusion of beginning to end but it is actually from middle to both ends, starting at 0 and moving both positive and negative in direction.
> 
> Anyway, existential crises forever and always for me.


That's a really interesting perception to have, especially so young. I mean, I suppose everyone feels a kind of "Truman Show" effect of subjective consciousness, especially when they're young, but that sounds extremely intense and alienating.


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## Purrfessor (Jul 30, 2013)

Exquisitor said:


> That's a really interesting perception to have, especially so young. I mean, I suppose everyone feels a kind of "Truman Show" effect of subjective consciousness, especially when they're young, but that sounds extremely intense and alienating.


Intense and alienating yes. Those are the right words to describe it. My goal for a large portion of my life was proving this fact to others but.. I gave up finally a few years back. I enjoy life more when I'm not working myself to death and I think enjoying life is far more important than proving something just so I won't feel so alienated. It's easier to deal with loneliness than to deal with proving something to others.


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## Exquisitor (Sep 15, 2015)

Stelliferous said:


> Intense and alienating yes. Those are the right words to describe it. My goal for a large portion of my life was proving this fact to others but.. I gave up finally a few years back. I enjoy life more when I'm not working myself to death and I think enjoying life is far more important than proving something just so I won't feel so alienated. It's easier to deal with loneliness than to deal with proving something to others.


Actually, now I think about it, I went through feelings that might have been similar when I had an episode of psychosis at 19. It's difficult to remember how it felt, because that state was kind of dissociated from my normal identity, but it was something like I was able to see through the layers of reality to realise that I was some kind of special being that transcended time and space, an endless entity just becoming conscious of my own cosmic nature and patiently amused that others could not recognise that nature, or see beyond their own present reality. I remember distinctly that it was a very comforting feeling, like being embraced by the universe.


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## ZZZVader (Oct 1, 2015)

I remember how struck I was at the thought of what life actually was. I was 5 at the time when I thought to myself, "What is... self? What is life? Why am I encased in this body? Is life a simulation?"

I was at a Macy's store, and I remember feeling so fearful and weird at the thought of being trapped in a human body and if everyone around me was really real. I questioned if my life was a simulation before I even knew what 'simulation meant'. When my mom spoke to me, I was wondering if there was even some kind of "soul" in their body. Also, all the religious stuff they shoved down our throats and made us to believe only gave me more questions.

I remember being really young when I first came to question the religion I was in. I asked my mother, (since our religion is well known for comparing themselves to other religions and "proving" those other religions wrong), "What if our religion isn't true? What if, just like all the other religions we talk badly about, ours is the same?"

She just told me not to think about it...

Grr. Wish I questioned more and thought the way I do now (I'm an atheist btw)

That was my first. My second was when I came to the realization my religion contradicted itself and that we all don't have a purpose. There was never a reason and evolution is just this thing that happened by chance. We all live because random events that created this domino-effect helped what we see now to be here. I also came to accept that there wasn't really anything after death too, which at first, made me mega-depressed.

Anyways, that's my two cents on "existentialism" and a piece of pie from my childhood.

Good day to all *hat tip*


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## stiletto (Oct 26, 2013)

8-9 nt


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## SarSedge (May 27, 2015)

*NT*. It was when I was 12 and my grandma died. I realized that everything and everyone I had ever loved and held dear will disappear. None of them will last forever. Thanks to this thought, I started to do things that matter. Think more deeply into things people take granted. Think that none of this matters in the end.


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## UraniaIsis (Nov 26, 2014)

_NF: 11 or under_

My first memory was at the age of 7 when I had my first breakdown. It was just an accumulation of the thoughts of parental mortality, being capable of looking after my siblings if s.h.t.f., understanding my own psyche and emotions, questioning whatever little bit of faith I had left in religion and whether reality was actually real or just some over-the-top-dream.

I was also picking up Astronomy at this time. Oddly enough, the concept of the vastness of space made me feel so insignificant but also happy that I was a potential of many possibilities.


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## An Excellent Meme (Oct 18, 2015)

I cant answer this I dunno if I am NF or NT


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