What crisis
I’ve always thought of a crisis as a big problem that can’t be solved at the time of manifestation.
Old mate says he’s in an existential crisis. I think it’s an identity crisis.
An existential crisis is about existence itself. Meaning, mortality, contingency, the fact that nothing comes with guarantees or intrinsic purpose. You can put someone alone on a mountain with food and shelter and they will still feel it. It survives isolation.
An identity crisis is about relational positioning. Who am I relative to others, what role am I playing, how am I seen, what status or narrative am I failing to maintain. Remove the audience and the crisis is resolved.
It turns out people were the problem. Sort of. At the core is unrealised self expectations as perceived through the reflection of others. That is, totally imagined. No one really cares.
When unmet standards continue to hurt in solitude, it usually means the person is still running a social model internally. The work is not to meet the expectation but to trace its provenance. Where did it come from, who benefited from it, and under what conditions did it make sense.
Because one things for sure, the expectations don’t make any sense now because they were created for a different environment. Expectations are adaptive rules, not truths. When the audience, incentives, or payoffs change, they stop working.
The discomfort comes from still optimising against a dead objective.
So…
1. Label it as not existential, but an identity model past it’s use-by date.
2. Reduce mirrors and comparisons.
3. Trace each expectation to its origin and discard the ones that no longer fit.
4.Replace goals with constraints.
5. Accept the motivation lull.
6. Stay concretely useful, like Arnie.
If the pain eases in isolation, the diagnosis holds. So long as you don’t let those old expectations smuggle unrealistic goals back through the side door.
If a goal requires an audience, a narrative, or future validation to feel worthwhile, it is already compromised. Constraints are harder to corrupt because they are enforced by cost, not aspiration. Once you notice that pattern, the guardrail is simple; if the goal would not survive anonymity, it does not belong in the model.
An actual existential crisis is handled differently because it is not resolved by fixing roles or expectations. The steps are:
1. Accept that the problem is unsolvable in principle and stop trying to close it.
2. Remove false urgency because the questions do not require immediate answers.
3. Ground attention in physical reality and routine to stabilise the nervous system.
4. Narrow time horizons to days and actions.
5. Choose provisional values you can defend without metaphysics, such as honesty, reduction of harm, competence or care.
6. Act consistently with those values even while doubt remains.
7. Allow ambiguity to persist without forcing narrative resolution.
The goal is not meaning but stability under uncertaint conditions. If functioning improves without answers, the process is working.
offshore westerly 