Ni users, have you ever had an existential crisis?

[teslashock]

I'm not sure that this is an Ni thing - I went through a phase where I was not only completely atheist, but also completely existentialist and I was overwhelmed with the meaninglessness of everything (outside of the meaning we ourselves assign to it, and agree upon). While initially freeing, it eventually made me feel very depressed. That was certainly a crisis. I was living and thinking so far outside of the box that I was afraid that I would wake up one day and be a giant Kafka-esque cockroach.

I still think that lots of things are arbitrarily meaningful or meaningless, and in fact last year I chose to write my final paper for my World Lit class on Albert Camus' The Stranger.

I think having spiritual beliefs protects me from having an existentialist crisis now. But I think enough to sometimes wonder if my spiritual beliefs are a protective measure to keep myself from becoming completely nihilistic. Usually, though, I'm fairly certain that something is there.

Again, let me make this clear: I don't think that thought processes that lead to existential crises are only had by strong Ni users. However, I do think that this kind of thought process is quintessential Ni, regardless of within whom it is manifested. That being said, I was interested to see how people are used to dealing with Ni might respond to my OP. I'm not disinterested in non Ni users' responses either. I'll take whatever I can get

I went through an existentialist thing too back in high school. I read The Stranger and thought I was an expert on why the world is meaningless. However, I still had to have these thoughts presented to me; I didn't arrive at my conclusions internally (and of course, the Ne-dom has the Ni analysis presented to her in a long-winded metaphorical story...what a shock).

I guess I just think that Ni users are a lot more capable of understand their existential freak-outs, as it seems they may be a bit more susceptible to them.

 

[teslashock]

I'm Ni-dominant, and of that i'm more certain than about these four-letter codes or numbers.
I've been thinking about existential things for a long time, and in truth I do feel quite insignificant.

Places in the universe with matter so dense that a teaspoon full of it is heavier than our solar system?
Dark matter? Supermassive black holes? Supernovas?
Somehow it seems we're just a fluke in this chaos, without apparent purpose.

I wonder if we can create a purpose? Or if we're just like a viral infection, polluting and destroying our planet.
Maybe changing mentality and ways, and getting off this rock to achieve a galactic civilization is our long-term goal?

The world needs cooperation, the ideal communist society. We're not there biologically or mentally speaking, but we can strive.
Imagine building huge ships and space stations without any actual material costs because there are no private enterprises, no countries etc?
Anything would be possible.
That is probably one of our evolutionary goals.

This whole post sounds like a strong balance between Ni/Te, especially the last bit...what more could I expect from an ENTJ right?

Very interesting...

 

[teslashock]

Why does it freak you out? I find that the opposite freaks me out. I'm very comfortable with the lack of significance of everything.

It seems like tertiary Ni users are a lot more likely to be ok with the "meaningless" of everything. You guys are just so delightfully chill in the face of weighted problems. Good for you

 

[Domino]

Well, at least most Ni users reach their offices.

That's mere conjecture and rumor! lol

I suspect we reach where we're going because we're being funneled in that direction by the happy traffic lights and horn beeps.

Us Ne-doms mount our unicorns, travel halfway down the path, and end up making a wrong turn somewhere, only to find some kind of stimulus that opens up a carton of tasty creative juices (regardless of how useful or useless this creativity might be). Ultimately, we end up either late for our meeting or just don't manage to show up at all.

hahaha! How true.

Anywho, your whole post was very good. Thank you for the vivid analysis. I really hope you don't let your thoughts get to you too much though. Just remember that life can be plenty meaningful by just having fun and doing what you enjoy. It doesn't have to be much more complicated than that, imho.

I'm learning, I'm learning. *deep sigh* I have helpful directive forces to keep me on the straight and narrow so I don't go galloping off into some field. ahahaha! My sister says I remind her of Snoopy flying around on his doghouse fighting the Red Baron.

Oh yes, I constantly have "Ni freak-outs"(to borrow PinkPiranha's term). In fact Pink seems to have covered this rather well. And yes like her, I need a Ne companion to snap me out of it often.

Werd.

Truth to be told I am not sure that I ever had anything except existencial crisis in my life. However I don't feel bad about it.

lol! That sounds just like my INTJ best friend. Sometimes we have them at the same time and we just stand there looking at each other like "Well dang... what do we do now?...."

 

[BlackCat]

It seems like tertiary Ni users are a lot more likely to be ok with the "meaningless" of everything. You guys are just so delightfully chill in the face of weighted problems. Good for you

Yeah it sometimes scares me as to how chill I am. 15% of my average was on the line last weekend with a 2 page paper, and I didn't start it until the night before. I did good though. I wasn't panicking or anything like that.

And to elaborate on how seeing the "meaninglessness" of things freaks me it, it's because Ni tends to just hit me. It's like a sudden insight into something. Like, my brain is a funnel, and how much of this it can process at a time is the small opening that the water comes out of. I'm not usually thinking of things when all of a sudden *BAM* I get random insights. It freaks me out because it's sudden and uncalled for. Usually some sort of symbolic event will happen and then I will get all of this random information. I usually forget all about them in a short time. To fix this, I keep a notepad in my pocket and I write down everything that I think of when this happens.

And I am pretty much fine with living in the meaninglessness of everything. I know that the things I'm doing don't really mean much, but I don't let it bother me. I do things because I want to, not for some higher purpose. This is also why I don't worry, because if something fails it's like "Eh, whatever, it doesn't matter anyways. No need to gripe about it."

 

[Uytuun]

Meaning preoccupies me and it often sweeps the ground from under my feet...and interestingly I've never thought about these things as existential crises because like Pink says they have oh so little to do with reality and with concrete existence...at times I am acutely aware of how thin the veneer of order is that kids us into believing there is meaning in what we do.

It's like a black pit at the center of my being...like a truer, but more confronting ink black view of the world that always shines through just enough to mock and destabilise my feeble attempts at moving. It's much, much bigger than my existence and it pulls at me always. It's why INJs *need* order...we are so far out and limitless inherently that we need the external limitations lest we are swallowed whole by the "other" place...it soothes.

 

[Billy]

Ya know, the kind where you think to yourself "Why am I here? I can't really come up with a rationale for the continuation of my existence, so why does my life continue?" Do you feel like you are minutiae on the grand scheme of things? Like the Earth is just a speck of dust in the universe's elaborate lasagna dish, and anything having to do with you or the rest of its inhabitants doesn't ultimately affect the rich, bold flavor...

I was having a conversation with an INTJ friend of mine the other day, and he seemed to exhibit this kind of philosophy. It seems rather depressing to me, and it's not really something that I can analyze too much on my own, as I use microNi, if that. I can, however, begin to fathom it once it's explained to me. Anyway, I'm curious to see if you Ni users empathize with the above in any way.

I don't just mean Ni-dom/aux people either, k?

All the time, it made me especially EMO in college when I was much more introverted. I have since come to grips with it and while it can seem kind of depressing its really not. I am also an atheist, and the only gleam of hope I can see for my life to have purpose is to live it as honorably as possible on my own terms and to help as many people as I can with what I have as I go along. I am well aware that I cannot take anything with me when I die, but I have come to the conclusion that I can pass my genes and my ideas on in the forms of children and self expression and achieve a sense of immortality via that. I am completely fine with that at this point. And it makes the future seem much less bleak, I haven't come to grips with the fear of death yet, but I think that is something I will be ok with once I have lived a longer and fuller life and I have achieved some things like a family and monetary success to let them live comfortably. If I do that then I will know I have done my part in nature to continue awareness even if its only a brief flash of light in a dark and empty universe. Better to have been if only for a minute then not to have been at all. And for that I consider myself an extremely lucky bonding of chemicals, elements and molecules.

 

[The Outsider]

Truth to be told I am not sure that I ever had anything except existencial crisis in my life. However I don't feel bad about it.

I strongly relate to this as well.

 

[foolish heart]

the existential floor always seems to drop beneath me when I assume a state of pseudo-objective thinking. if isolated from emotion stimulation, i could go crazy searching for the "X factor" logic that will fit all the pieces together. once i accept the subjective nature of the perspective of my existence i can function again... in a cause/reaction world, conditioned responses--despite their subjectiviteness--are vital.

however, letting one's brain sit and process the unsolvable would do wonders for strengthening your neural paths, i would think.

 

[teslashock]

letting one's brain sit and process the unsolvable would do wonders for strengthening your neural paths, i would think.

It probably fries my dendrites and axons. Yum.

But yeah, it's just all a bit too heavy for me. When I try to contemplate existence, my mind is just like "NO! Go somewhere else, I beg of you!"

 

[Poki]

yes, then I woke up an touched myself lol, not in that way

 

[Ungw�liante]

Ya know, the kind where you think to yourself "Why am I here? I can't really come up with a rationale for the continuation of my existence, so why does my life continue?" Do you feel like you are minutiae on the grand scheme of things? Like the Earth is just a speck of dust in the universe's elaborate lasagna dish, and anything having to do with you or the rest of its inhabitants doesn't ultimately affect the rich, bold flavor...

Yeah, but in the opposite way. "I exist - why does the world ?"

 

[Soar337]

All the time

 

[Evageneva]

I went through a bad patch of this about four years ago. Eventually this cleared up. But because of my extreme INFP scores, I am prone to it outburst of it more frequently than I would like. I believe its my very high intuition. I 95%, N 100%, F 84%, P 95%. Maybe I should become an existential psychologist

 

[Forever]

No. I never had an existential crisis.

 

[FemMecha]

I live in a constant existential crisis, but feeling infinitesimally small is not the problem. That is thrilling to me and why I love to look up at the stars and feel terror in the marrow of my bones because I am incomprehensibly small.

My sense of reality is in flux. I was raised in a structured religion and used that framework during my early adult years, but have abandoned it without replacing it with any externally established system. My sense of ideals, reality, morality, is all from inside of me (of course influenced by the outside world, but codified within me as an individual). Sometimes I am at peace in the flux, but sometimes it creates anxiety. I don't know what happens when people and animals die, but i can sometimes feel them. I don't know what it means.

I feel existential isolation and cannot reconcile how one human can actually perceive another. The inner constructs people create of each other creates walls that blind us. Even people I've known and loved my entire life I can see doing this (and I must do it as well), and during moments of stress, the blindness completely overtakes to the point of distortion that it is like no one ever met or knew each other at all. I feel distance, sadness, and ongoing incomprehensibility between people.

 

[Warrior]

I had it too many times to count.

 

[Wunjo]

Yes.

But without crisis, without conflict, there's no resolution, without conflict; there can be no balance because the opposite principles which root themselves in the psyche of man would have no opportunity to be reconciled, for crisis is a harbinger of reconciliation, a harbinger that people close their ears at their own risk. As psychoanalyst Melanie Klein once put; "Conflict and the need of overcoming it, is a fundamental element in creativeness."

 

[rav3n]

As an aux Ni user, it's not a crisis. I know that I don't matter in the big picture. It's quite freeing to get over myself, lol.

 

[Lark]