Every once in a while most of us will go through what psychologists and philosophers call an existential crisis. It can happen to anyone at any moment of their lives even when things seem to be going normal from the outside.

Many people use the phrase existential crisis without even knowing if they’re going through one, so we’ve made a list to help you identify the signs that you or maybe a closed one is going through an existential crisis.

1) You Feel You’re Losing Your Identity

Experiencing an existential crisis means that you either miss the person you used to be or that you’re wondering how your life would be different if you had done something different in your past. Maybe you feel you don’t know yourself as much as you used to or you feel a stranger in your skin or feel like a puppet and someone else is moving the strings. This can lead to feelings of guilty and anxiety for loosing your identity.

2) Things Seem To Have Lost Meaning

The coffee you loved has no taste, your favorite movie seems dull, and your current job brings no life satisfaction. The things that made your life had meaning are now so boring that you begin to wonder what got you into those things in the first place. This can also apply to close relationships with friends, family members and your lover.

3) You Worry Too Much

It’s normal to worry from time to time, but when it becomes excessive worry you can end up feeling overwhelmed and anxious. Your small worries have intensified to existential worries about your job, your partner, your skills, your life and your hobbies. You worry about things like:

Whether you chose the right partner

If you actually have a future in your career

If you’ve made the right decisions this far

These worries intensify as you get deeper into this state, and they can make you see your life from a negative perspective.

4) You’ve Lost Motivation

Living your life has never felt heavier before. Every step you make takes up a lot of energy from you. Even the smallest chores seem demanding, like brushing your teeth, doing your bed and washing the dishes. You are not as motivated as before and your body energy isn’t helping.

5) Death Becomes A Common Concern

You have started to think about dead more than usual. You feel you can die at any moment and that all your life will be gone in a second. This is the moment where you start wondering what have you done so far in your life because you are not really afraid of death, you’re afraid of dying without a real contribution to the human kind.

6) It Feels Like You’re Wasting Your Time

Time flies by all of us. We wish we could just pause it and live eternally, but we can’t. You feel that every second must be lived doing something remarkable and incredible and when you don’t do so you feel useless and a waste of oxygen. These feelings can bring doubt and fear to your already troubled experience.

Should We Worry About It?

Existential crisis can lead to mental illnesses like anxiety and depression if they’re not treated on time and properly. Now that you can (for the most part) identify if you or someone you love is going this ordeal, the next step is to devise a plan to deal with the existential crisis and overcome it.

The Paradox Of Too Much Freedom

It may sound paradoxical, but having too much freedom can be overwhelming. Since there are many ways you can live your life it is inevitable that at some point of it you wonder if you made the right choices, you’re not crazy, you’re a rational human.

Every option has its downsides. You think you’d be happier in a different town or with a different job but that is only because you’ve only seen the surface, but if you had the opportunity to live in this reality you’ll see that is just as difficult as the one you’re living. You feel your life has no meaning because you are the protagonist, you are only focusing on yourself and are not seeing the big picture.

The thing is that you will always feel a little dissatisfied from time to time no matter what life choices you make. That’s human nature after all. You feel like your life has no meaning because you are only focusing on yourself and your goals. If you focus on the advances that humanity has made, you’ll realize how much we have advanced as a group, and that has happened because of the millions of lives that did ordinary things. After all you are alive because your ancestors chose to raise children, make a living and stay healthy.

Our presence on this planet is limited and there is very little time to do everything we would like to do. Life can mean whatever you want it to mean, looking for meaning is what gives life meaning after all. In a million years all your friends will be dead and no one will remember your name, so enjoy the very little time you have, learn to appreciate the big picture, and don’t worry about feeling you’re not making a contribution. As long as you make a decent amount of money, you have a few people that care for you and you live in a good enough city you will be just fine.