#33. Crises

This essay will take you 8 minutes to read

What is a psychological crisis? Well, as usual, there are plenty of definitions, but this time they’re more or less coherent. Whichever exact phrasing you pick, it’s usually something about a situation in which the previous way of life doesn’t function anymore. It can be phrased in terms of personality—the previous person you are doesn’t fit the new situation, or in terms of coping mechanisms: existing copings do not sufficiently reduce stress, it can be worded in terms of behaviors, and so on. But the common denominator: something has to give, the way you lived before isn’t the same way you’re going to live forth.

So, when do we face a crisis? Obviously, when things change. If nothing changed, you’d be well doing what you were doing before, which is the opposite of crises. And things change all the time. Since the moment the baby is born, every year or two, they develop a qualitatively new psychological machinery that changes their life. And then, while the child—now a teenager—hasn’t even stopped changing biologically, the life around them starts changing.

Here’s an example of a lineup of crises one is bound to face:

0-1 years—yes, you’re born straight into your first crisis, and now, unlike your existence in the womb, you have to figure out how much to trust the world around you

2-3 the autonomy crisis—the phase of learning to be a separate individual

3-5 initiative vs guilt crisis—the crisis of modeling your mode of socializing

5-7 the crisis of the first-grader—adapting to the new environment of school

5-12 the “industry vs inferiority” crisis—calibrating the degree of initiative and proactivity

12-16 adolescence—probably the most (in)famous crisis, the time of dealing with puberty, sexuality and gender

17-18, the school graduation crisis, along with stepping into adult life

18-20—crises of adapting to a new environment: college/work or both

Then, between 20 and 40, you have a bunch of crises that aren’t tied to a specific age: your first serious relationships, marriage, kids, then all of the crises above happening to your kids, job, getting fired, promoted, buying a house, dealing with three “once in a century” political and economic crises in a row, pandemic, you know, the usual. Then, at about 35-45, you get to the midlife crisis, and once you’ve solved that, you get back on track with age-related crises.

50-60, the crisis of transitioning from “adult” to “old”, with all the career, family, self-image, sexual, and other consequences

And from 60 on—one health crisis after another, all the way to the crisis of accepting mortality and approaching death—if you’re lucky enough to live that long

But wait, you’ll say. Something’s not right! I intuitively feel that a crisis is a short, unnatural state of life. Life is supposed to be free of crisis, and the picture that gets painted by that lineup implies that there’s always a crisis in life—sometimes multiple, concurrent! Well spotted, my attentive reader. That’s exactly the point I want to make today. One of the points, anyway.

See, there is precisely this misconception, that a crisis is something bad, preferably avoided, and getting into one is a mistake that wise and resourceful people don’t make. There’s nothing further from the truth. Crisis is a natural state of life. Crises happen all the time; they don’t end, it just rolls into another domain of life. So let’s unpack a few things about them. See, that’s the deal, life is progress. It never stands still. No matter how good you have it, there «Linger on, thou art so fair!» only works in exchange for your soul, and even then, only in a novel. You change. Life changes. Relationships change. Politics change. You need to run just to stay in one place. So there’s always a side of you, a behavioral pattern, a habit, a persona you’ve developed, that is out of date. Your wife doesn’t actually like your music style anymore. The young don’t laugh at your jokes anymore. Your knees can’t keep up with your ambitions anymore. You’re too adult to expect pure bliss from installing a video game. Too high up in the career to show up drunk. Too rich to save meaningful money by sniping sales. You’re always too something for something. It’s a constant updating circle; you’re just focusing on one issue at a time, which is why it looks discrete. It might be a bad thing—you can’t do what you want because you’re out of resources. Out of money, youth, health, charm, out of time. It can be a good thing—you can’t fit into a box you’ve chosen because you’ve outgrown it, you have too high standards now, too much influence, too much strength, too much knowledge. You can’t meaningfully train in your living room with a couple of dumbbells if you’re a pro strongman anymore. That’s not a bad thing. But it’s still a crisis. Your previous way of life doesn’t work anymore.

So why do some changes become a crisis, and others don’t? It’s not like every change in life is a crisis, right? Sure, that’s true, if your grocery store changes its layout again—that might be annoying, but it’s unlikely to become a crisis for you. What is, though? What’s so special about the kind of changes that turn into a crisis? And how does one even know if they are in a crisis? I’ve got one word for you: confusion.

A crisis, as mentioned in the beginning, isn’t anything new in life. It’s a thing that makes your previous tools of dealing with things useless. If it’s a new thing that you have a tool for—it’s not a crisis. You’ve got tenfold the money you had, but you’re a professional broker—that’s not a crisis. You got diagnosed with something bad, but you’ve had a relative with that diagnosis, whom you were helping all the way, so you know the drill—that’s not a crisis. On the other hand, if Jack gets refused by a girl in the bar for the first time in his life after decades of scoring first-try—that might be a genuine crisis. See, it’s not about the scale of the event, or even the novelty per se, although it plays a role. It’s about your preparedness, about you having personal, real, first-hand, not theoretical or by proxy experience with this, or not having it. So when something is unpleasant, or enraging, or harrowing, or even ecstatic—that’s not a crisis. It’s a crisis when something makes you confused. When you don’t have a script for the next step.

Which leads us to the second big misconception: that a crisis is about something bad happening. True, people are often not prepared and fall into a crisis when bad things happen. But people just as easily get into a crisis when good things happen. Winning a lottery is a crisis most don’t go through unscathed. Getting a deadly diagnosis revoked is a crisis sometimes worse than receiving it in the first place. Becoming a parent—even if the baby is wanted—can be one hell of a crisis. Wedding, graduation, promotion, winning a court case, or a championship—all coveted, dreamed of, desired events that can send the protagonist into the deepest crisis of their life. On the other hand, the worst event of your life might not turn into a crisis—that’s another side of the same misconception. Not only is it not true that only bad things cause a crisis, but it’s also not true that bad events always cause a crisis.

So what’s so bad about a crisis if it isn’t about a bad thing, and the only mental state indicative of it is confusion? Well, for one, being confused gets real old, real fast. Sure, we all like to be confused a little: humor, which we all love, is based on the deliberate confusion of the audience. But it’s a controlled confusion that happens in an irrelevant part of your life. Being uncontrollably confused about something important isn’t a nice experience by itself. But that’s not even the only thing. Confusion breeds anxiety and chaotic actions. A person in crisis tries to get out of it, trying, first, to push harder with old tools, which do not work anymore, and only cause more problems. And then begins to chaotically try new things, which is good in principle, that’s the search activity, and it is the way to get out of a crisis. But it can take wild forms, and cost the person dearly while they are trying to find the approach that works.

So what to do? If avoiding crises is impossible, moreover, if going through them is a necessary part of personal growth, but being in a crisis is costly and unpleasant—then what? Well, a few things can be done.

One, it’s very helpful to accept that you’re in crisis. Not just “might be”, but, as we discussed, always are. It’s not the question of “are you in a crisis?”, it’s a question of “where in your life is the crisis right now?” And answering it, recategorizing the situation as a crisis can already help a lot.

Two, owning your failures. I often speak about owning or appropriating your success, because that’s what people tend to want from counseling—successes. But including successes in your self-image, while helpful in many ways, still has a flaw—it makes one feel vulnerable. The more you’ve achieved, the more you feel responsible to maintain and develop, the more you’re anxious about whether or not you could restore it in case of loss. But owning your failures—that’s what creates the antifragility. Knowing you’ve earned 10 million is nice, but knowing you’ve lost 10 million and survived makes you bulletproof.

Three, and I’m not going to be original here, get help. You can always schedule an appointment with me, but aside from my subtle sales pitch, you really could, and dare I say should, find someone who’d help you. Help can come in a number of not mutually exclusive ways. Someone might just support you emotionally, recharging you to keep pushing through. Someone might share their experience, their tools, and approaches. Someone can guide you professionally, asking the right questions to highlight what you’re missing, and bringing your attention to feedback from reality you ignored. Someone could just help you unwind, blow out some steam, and forget about your crisis for a night of good time. You can mix all of these and other forms of help. But getting help—in whichever ways you’ll find it—is better than not getting it.

Until next week,
Konstantin Kunakh

As always, feel free to share your stories by simply replying to this email. From time to time, I share some of them here. Just let me know if you’d like to stay anonymous.