Experiencing an Existential Crisis as an INTJ

Rambling about my own personal experience dealing with an existential crisis episode.

[brooooooooooooke]

Ni seeks meaning. The discomfort of the crisis is meant to be motivation to find it.

[PaleGhost]

I understand what you're saying. I've been through this. I found it really helpful to zoom in on life and actually watch it. Watch the ants carrying food that's too big. Study how a plant grows through cracks in a wall. Watch how people shop at the supermarket.

You'll be reminded how chaotic life is in its essence. When you are able to put it in perspective instead of always stuck in the big picture, you'll see that you're doing pretty good. You've succeeded at more than most people can even dream of, and you'll continue to achieve more in time.

Every living being on this planet is struggling just to survive their environment, and most of them are ill-suited yet still survive. The bar for being alive is extremely low. We can easily help those around us to achieve more, and their success is also our success. Use our superpowers to help out every living thing we can touch, and that can ripple to things out of our reach. We have the ability to affect our environments like no other because we see the systems behind it all.

That's what I got out of it all, anyway... my meaning to be alive.

[sawnet]

I’m 46, INTJ. I appreciate you taking the time to record your thoughts in the moment. I can relate to the sense of this following you around like a shadow. I’m a father of three and I can tell you that there is something to having a grand purpose, ie being a parent that does help in these moments but also gives a grounding post. I laughed at you asking your friends to tag you to prove you have a life.. similarly I used to hear I was a fun barnacle. Someone who finds a fun person and holds on yet doesn’t help create the fun.

I have chosen to reject these falsehoods whether self inflicted or from others. Our way of interacting is not less than. Our contribution is not less than. Our society just is not geared for us and therefore most others and us via media are lead to believe there must be more and that we are holding back.

Fear not Jon. Your mind and the way you engage with life is a beautiful thing. Seek those who value and appreciate you. Don’t over analyze with a non-Ni bias.

You are the first INTJ on YT that seems to capture the fullness or nearly of being an INTJ. Much love and kindness to you.

[MrRager]

(INTJ) I've come to think of these crisis moments as an inevitable state of mind and therefore I must find a safe space to suffer through it until it passes. Sometimes you'll get something useful out of it, sometimes you won't. This is an extremely introverted state to be in so if someone did give you an answer I have to question: would I accept it? Would it even be satisfactory?

Trust your own mind to wander in a safe space. That's really all your brain wants to do. A conclusion is not required.

[VK]

Intj-a, female, 36, mom of two, I know exactly what you’re talking about. Sometimes I think that I feel like that for all my life. I read the comments and not sure if my answer would fit the big picture but I came to conclusion that “why do I feel that I don’t do enough” is about time. It runs with the speed of light, at least we, intj’s, feel it like that. Like we’re always out of time and the amount of goals is getting more and more every year. But even if we do our best to accomplish there’s still a ‘what’s the point’ question at the end. It’s strange to say that, and I wouldn’t believe if haven’t experienced myself, the answer is love. Sounds too sentimental? Yeah, I know. I’m not talking about love we feel towards our families and friends. I’m talking about the incredible, unbelievable, almost impossible thing like unconditional romantic love. The connection which is 100% fulfilled on intellectual, emotional, physical and spiritual levels. Once you experience it literally everything would make sense, every single tiny detail would have an almost divine meaning. It’s beautiful and yet very intense. I’d say too intense. I have experienced it and it changed me to the very core. I didn’t even recognize myself. It also freaked me out, seriously. It was another intj, btw. We were shocked, happy and terrified. We broke up, though. The intensity was unbearable. And now I guess, I know what is the meaning of being alive. Yet such knowledge left me absolutely baffled. I mean the chances for intj to find someone who could flip our whole world upside down are… like zero. And here we go again with a new existential horror, knowing what’s the clue but not knowing how to achieve it because other people’s will is something even masterminds can’t have.

[PaulAvramBodea]

I am very happy you shared it with us. I think most of the INTJ have the same type of feelings like you, i have them for sure. Its very hard for other types to understand and i think no one can rly help.
My strategy is to accept it is happening beeing happy for who i rly am and be ready to settle once again the vision, after some years of doing it i found i will never achieve what i trully vision but i accepted it and i hope to help others with my ideas to achive a better future. Also by normalizing it i can more easily control myself and be functional in the external world, at least somewhat functional.
My go to idea to dont fall in a dark place is to think how wonderful, gorgeous and sublime is the fact i can think and feel all this unspeakable things. I hope it helps a bit, you for sure helped me and other people.
(Sorry for my English, i am not a native speaker)

[NL-stul]

I’m (likely) INFJ, I’ve experienced these a lot since age 14. During these events I didn’t just struggle with purpose, but was also struck by derealization. The world felt unreal and physics theories and spiritual believes just seemed to exacerbate things. I used to cling to Se activities to get a grip on reality. MBTI has helped me understand these events so much better. As mentioned by others in the comments, having a child has helped me greatly, it has given purpose and a rhythm to life. I’ve recently discarded spiritualism and have found purpose in religious practices. Biblical symbolism is wildly interesting to me. I do believe we grow emotionally stronger and reflective with age. Perhaps wishful thinking, but I am confident these existential crisis are a thing of the past for me. They are temporary and we can overcome them! The best to you dear Jon.

[MohamedOsama-evck]

you just slapped me on the face when you said it's an Ni thing that was literally my conclusion and somw how we got to live with it any way (in my opinion whenever I fell that feeling i remember i just want to die when I'm fully lived my life in the meaning of i have done everything thing that there's literally nothing in this life that i want any more i want ro die when I'm tired of all the experience i have had after doing it all then suddenly i wake up like i have some duty to finish or some thing more important than the meaning which is living it to do) I hope that helps some way I am an intj too i hope your doing well and very much alive .❤️

[OndansetronDabigatran]

My take as a 33 year old fellow INTJ:
I've seen some of your videos and like your content, I feel understood and love your appreciation of "mama Te". But she seems to be at vacation now.
Maybe you or anyone other finds this helpful how I got out of a similiar crisis:
I had a crisis with the meaning of my goals in my twenties while studying at university. I not only lost confidence in becoming a doctor but lost the "why".
My very best friend (whom I refuse to type because I don't want to reduce him to 4 letters) first introduced me to sensory experiences: travel, food, concert. I did not feel the moments, just like you described.
Then he took me to help him repair his car, do the oil change, renew the brakes. What a profane thing you might think. But the feeling of accomplishment (Te) and seeing to influence the real world got me out again. My fondness for vintage cars and motorcycles was founded. More tinkering than actual driving. Since that time this is a source of energy and recreation for me.

Thank you for existence.

[arerki]

Hey! I follow you and I have been there right where you are now (I’m also an INTJ). I think I had an existential crisis a few weeks ago and it’s terrible. But know that you are not alone. You have tons of subscribers that understand what you are going through. ❤❤

I don’t know if you want suggestions or just were looking to vent, but I find when I have them, I have to sit down and identify the things that are no longer working in my life, that can be positions (overcommitting and feeling burned out or stretched thin), stuff (doing a massive clean up), or lack of working out. Usually that helps a bit and gives me a place to start.

I wholeheartedly understand what you mean, we aren’t really depressed but life just seems like it’s going by and we aren’t part of the movie, despite everything we do and have accomplished.

[sathyath]

INTJ will dying off like a vegetable when they don't have grand goal. And from my personal experience, the most fulfilling state for INTJ is when you actually let yourself to set an 'impossible to achieve' goal derived from your idealism, and start to actually set motion into it by grand planning it. When you enter that state, you'll feel like in a trance, and all you can think of all day long for years is that goal and so many things to do. To the point that there simply no time to think of present and past moments.

[alenaholeckova]

This is part of human experience at its core. Detached spaceman on a piece of rock. This feeling can prevent us from moving forward but it is also a beautiful reminder that we have souls. At least for me it is. You do not stand alone in this abstract solitude. Thank you for your videos!

[RaidenShogun..]

This existential crisis happens when I try to do Se (like going out whole day with my mom) idk I feel like this living in the moment thing and buying physical stuff doesn’t feel right to me, feels weird and doesn’t satisfy me in the long term. When going out, I would think about things all the time and my brain won’t shut off-

[SalvatorePellitteri]

Without meaningful relationships it's hell after 40s, as an INTJ it's extinction level fear, hope is lost. The truth is: Life is a joke, society is a joke. I'm 42, INTJ. I have bad existential crisis going on too, I don't know anymore why I'm doing what I'm doing, I don't know anymore why I'm sleeping, eat, talk to anyone. What's the point of life? Peoples you likes don't likes you, people likes other peoples that likes other peoples that likes other peoples. You need to be lucky to find someone that likes you back and as an INTJ most of people don't get you. At this point I feel like the place where I live hates me, after 25 years I'm moving as far away from this place, I don't have anything left here. This is the kind of despair Ni dom realize at some point in their life.

[Socrateesm]

I completely understand where you're coming from. And what I have found is that I strive for it because I want answers the NI wants answers to everything. And I think the best thing that always works for me is to know that we cannot answer everything

[BuizelCream]

I can relate with you Jon so hard. I just had my existential crisis since the start of the year. It kicked in due to having a relationship by being stuck in feeling-mode for too long that it indirectly upheaved a lot of my repressed trauma that I had buried for years. It still isn't easy for me to be this vulnerable, but I'll share a ramble from my end, hoping it'll be something insightful too.

To put it simply, what I went through last year definitely had something to do with leaving an organized religion, so I had spent the past months in hard denial of me not knowing what my purpose in life was outside of it. INTJs tend to question everything, so it had never been even more clear to me as to why I tend to get into existential crisis like this. Our Ni just loves to question and ruminate about things beyond physical reality. But when my crisis is intertwined with childhood abuse and being surrounded by IRL communities that doesn't know how to properly handle a guy like me that is a homo, it gets very bizarre to navigate life independently knowing I had to deconstruct a lot of false narratives and beliefs while dealing with all these suppressed emotions I was never equipped to handle. So, I had a huge Ni and Fi problem, so yeah, what I went through was also the classical INTJ loop. It's what made the crisis I had this start of the year even harder.
But getting into a relationship for the first time that is good and healthy did help me to cope a lot recently. To have someone safe to bounce my real feelings with, and being in this new Se experience that feeds my Ni for its search for answers. It's like adding reasons beyond myself to have something to fight for. Another thing that's been helping my self-discovery and holistic contemplation beyond MBTI was being interested in spirituality, but ofc this is me replacing the void that was present when I left something significant behind. My Ni has been loving and indulging in this recently.

What I've learned so far as someone who's nearing 30s is that when I get into existential crisis mode, it means there's something important for me to contemplate about. A lot of inner work was needed to be done in my end, and what I noticed in my own reality is that my crisis tends to come from deep unanswered questions that begs to be addressed, and as I keep getting answers it has to be implemented in my life somehow. This is where INTJs do best, researching and synthesizing a lot of information from various perspectives to gain new insights out of them, enjoying the benefits of being open-minded. Since our existential crisis is definitely rooted from Ni, it makes sense as to why we need to feed it with more things to contemplate, something that's new and challenging that also comes with the help of Se being sprinkled here and there, and something that helps our Ni to transcend beyond the limitations of what used to be the scope of what it wants to understand. A new project or pursuit to tinker and think about. At least my Ni has loved to get busy in this way.

[Spectra]

I think metacognition is the reason for our feelings of dissociation. And the reason we feel like we're not doing enough is because, wtf can you do about that? I was talking to my INFP girlfriend (we watched this video together, as we oft do), and she said something that sent ice buckets down my spine: 'It's scary when intuition points to the answer that there is no answer.'

[genowefatrabka]

Hi. I think we (as humanity in general) has been indoctrinated in thinking that we "need to live a moment", and Ni-doms experience present different - thats why we cannot really live in moment, because we focus on future, even if ot is only few seconds forward. We imagine this damn hike how it will looks like (very vivdly), so when we are actually hiking we don't experience this by senses - we already hiked in our mind. I think this is one of the reason why we feel "dead" - because we already lived once in our minds.

You are very much alive Jon, just in your own, INTJ-way alive and this isn't worse in any way than Se users. Look - they have only live once, that's why they tend to feel everything in this moment. We live many times, we just cannot share it with others, thats why we are lonely in our milion lives. That's why we have crisis that follows us as shadow.

[shillout]

When I went through these feelings and it came on strong as never before, I finally saw why so many turn to religion, and I kind of wished I could do it too. Because there is no meaning or purpose to life, we will just die and vanish too soon anyway.
It hits hard, and it can be a long struggle to get out of that state if you don't find anything to hang on to. The only thing we really can do in this life, is trying to change anything for the better in the world, even the smallest thing that might make a difference. And that could be just this, to start a YouTube channel and make others feel connected and even understand themselves better.
And this goes for everyone, if you spread good things that make others feel better and grow, that could help change the course of humanity for the better even in the slightest way. And that's actually pretty awesome right? The butterfly effect is no joke, and we are all a part of it every day.

[rudystar]

True story. I feel the same sometimes brotha. Too often in fact.

But reading The Power of Now and doing volunteer work, connecting with other humans, really helps.

Religion can help too but for me, not a whole lot. Hopefully you learn to be present and the biggest lesson I learned from Power of Now is that there is no yesterday and no tomorrow.

You must be get out of your head, which is filled with labels, expectations, and fear. All things that are based on the past and future. Understand that the now, the only reality, is gone the second you finish each thought. Then you can begin to understand that No part of the now adds pressure to your life, no part of the now labels you other than how you want to feel.

Easier said than done I know. But I have faith in you.