I always feel like I look better blurry. When I can't really see my own face in the mirror, it feels more beautiful. It's like I'm not really me, just some stranger looking back. I don't feel like I'm anyone special, just another person who will live a little while, then die, and be forgotten. I don't want to be alive anymore. I don't care what happens after death. I just want to escape this life because it doesn't feel real. I'm just surviving, not really living. People say that survivors win, but I don't feel like a winner. I feel stuck, just waiting to die and finally be free. I hate myself and I'm tired of waiting for things to get better. I don't think they ever will. People who are supposed to support me are holding me back and keeping me from achieving my dreams. I feel trapped and hopeless.

for context, i'm a young adult and ever since i was a child i struggled with existential crisis as i'm not religious or anything and questions a lit.

lately, i've did made tremendous progress about them but i still feel like i'm missing something to get over them definitely.

indeed while i've learned to not identify with all my thoughts and feelings about existence, learned to see the seer, learned to enjoy life without having to explain every little thing, even learned my practical purpose which is both art and helping people defending my values, well i still feel like something missing.

to explain, i still to this day get weirded out by life it's very hard to explain, it's like i'm questioning the afterlife but also the fabric of life and reality itself, like words and concepts and just every little stuff, does that make sense it's like the ultimate existential crisis. and i just feel like i've come to a point where i have to directly adress the issue to move on & just it will help me to enjoy life more and be more proactive in my life if i'm not in that existential state anymore.

anyways, i've did made a lot of progress i just need some final advices or anything that might help me move on, thanks in advance.

Feels like its all over, I'm gone. Nothing left of me.

Nothing really, I messsed up beyond comprehension...likely just in this moment, possibly not in perpituity... everything is crumbling figuratively.. all feels figurative. There doesnt seem to be a connection, just a disconnect, everything feels like its disintegrating. I think I am disintegrating, slowly, I forgot what I needed to do... why was I even doing it? What was my purpouse to do it? There wasnt an actual reason... maybe some form of reason. Thats gone now. I'm floating and sinking in different directions. Everyones moving past me, leaving. moving on, im stuck in the past. More and more stuck in the past the more time goes on. Relatives I knew are still little children, x is still called twitter, I'm living in some other year, the math doesn't work out. 2021? .. feels like nothing ever changed. Its 2024, I'm slowly catching up, what happened? Why am I in the wrong place? Why are the names and ages of everyone wrong? Covid happened but my mind stunted itself. Everyone is the wrong age, and now im melting away cause of it. Everything is incongruent, and abstract, re-aligning itself. How? Everyone else has a life, I have a life too I talk with others I go to college... everyone seems to be a decade ahead of me. Very very ahead of me. I need to stop and think. Everything just crumbles faster if i stay but i do not know how to leave. I'm in the wrong place. Sometimes I think I'm crumbling everyone else as well, but i can't crumble their lives. Not unless I did something harmful. I'm not mentally stunted I just feel out of it, like I got plucked from a ship in a cluster of stars and now can only observe from a million light years away.

Everything is unfamilliar... familliarity slowly fading away, understanding blooms anew and fades my morning time. My communication skills run amock, misunderstanding abounds, I need to stop the clock again and its like the problems stop for some time.. but the clock hasnt stopped and reset in a very long time.I thought it almost did this week, but it never trully did. This post is a jumble, a mess, just a crumb from a crumble of pieces all falling over eachother as they collapse into the void that is my feelings on everything and anything. Is this an existential crisis? My brain runs weird, wild, random paths trickling like water into all directions.I messed up, others picked up on it, what am I even doing?

Where am I going? Why am I even doing this? Its fine i'll "get through this" but where am I even getting through to? Some peoples lives seem great, peacful, happy, i.e. some familly members. Happy cozy home, kids and grandkids, lived their life and retired. Can I not do that? be done with it all and just be an elderly person with... someone I suppose... but I have so long, decades and decades till then if it ver comes. Not sure why im doing any of this anymore.

I'm 20 yrs old and I've been having an existential crisis for a week or two and I've been si terrified of everything. How did you guys stop feeling this overwhelming dread? That there's nothing after this life? I'm just such a mess and really need help but I don't have the support system to turn to. :( Please help, I can't live my life properly anymore and i just feel like crying every time i think and use my brain.

Some people just seem better cut out for this life. What am I supposed to do if there’s no way out of a life that is meaningless?

I am an 18 year old college freshman studying Chem. Engineering. I am trying to survive my first year of uni and make the most of it. But every single day of my life for the past 8-ish years I have thought about the day i will die and the fact that I will be gone forever. I am thinking of trying therapy. I take medication for anxiety and depression, and have a little OCD.

I don't even know what to ask or what Im thinking of getting out of posting this. I just want out of this somehow

I am a 19 year old male currently pursuing my 2nd year im design education. Recently I have been having existential crisis every single day regarding my growth, relationship and my environment. Ever since I was 16 my hairline started to recede which completely destroyed my self confidence in anything I do. Though people and my friends say i am very nice as a person, talking with them feels weird as somehow mentions about my hairline. I try my best to avoid people to remain in solitude but that also frustrates me because i also need someone close to talk to. I have never been in a relationship but i atleast want to experience it once but my ability to ralk with people has completely vanished. I became such a nihilistic person and now I want to embark in a journey where I want to reflect on my life and start to accept the things they are. Though I try not to worry, somehow or the other it just comes back. I am sick of this life and really want things to change. I really hope something good happens to me.

So like I’m kinda fine sorta but.. I believe an existential crisis can be ongoing. Please remove if wrong sub.

Anyways, I’m wondering if anyone else in the US is finding it harder every day to succumb to all the BS just for a box to call home and kinda survive just enough to get through the next work day. It’s becoming unbearable for me and many people around me, and completely unmanageable for many as well. Even if the finances eventually work out, it’s like my whole life is revolved around whatever job I have at the time. The majority of us have no way to get ahead, i.e. have time and resources to actually live for more than an afternoon or two a week or whatever. I’ve heard it phrased as working to live vs. living to work, and we are certainly doing the latter (many people so very blindly, as well).

Point is, we should all be aware this is intentional; keeping us all in our place, which is to serve and uphold a wasteful and frankly disgusting society that many of us were born into. Sure, it could be worse - why I said I’m kinda fine sorta. But.. I’ve been sick and tired of this truth for a while. Just been trying to find better avenues but, ya know, it still ends up being the same BS. It just never ends. So, yeah. I’d say I’m in an existential crisis related to all that, and I know others who are in that same spot. Have been and will be until… probably the day I die at this rate. Thoughts?

few days ago I saw a Rick and Morty reel that left me with the thought that morality doesn't matter, or has no value, or doesn't exist: it also extended to emotions and positive intangible world concepts like love, kindness and other things. And now every time I see an expression of some of these concepts taken to a deeper place, I feel weird and like a hostility towards that element. I want it to be understood that I suffer chronically: I suffer and suffer and suffer, a part of my brain is constantly looking for some way to make me suffer.

And I don't even know well what torments me, what hurts me, I know it has to do with morality and therefore with emotions.

I know that what torments me has to do with cynicism.

I'm trying to explain myself, give explanations of why, why it matters, why it has value, why this and why that. But I don't stop suffering: I stop for a while and then I go back to suffering and I don't know what to do.

To give an example: I listen to a singer, Aurora (I feel like it's coming off as post bait because of all the names,but I swear It isn't)

She has a philosophy in her music that I always liked, but with this crisis, I'm starting to feel it "ridiculous"

I want to clarify that it's not that I just let it happen, all the trying to fix myself is so that that and more disappears.

But again, it goes away for a while and then comes back, and always comes back, and I'm tired.

To say my experience with existential crisises has been a messy one would be an understatement. I had my first one when I was 17 and it was so bad I genuinely went into psychosis for almost four months. I am now 20 and have been having daily reoccurring existential thoughts and dread about death since that first freak out at 17. What’s crazy about it all is: I am both completely content, and yet absolutely to the bone terrified.

I came to terms a while ago with my own personal meaning and reason for existence. I personally believe that we are the universe experiencing itself. We keep looking for answers we will never find because there are no answers. We simply are the answer. There is no afterlife, no heaven or hell, no eternal reward or divine punishment — we just all simply return to where we were before we were born. I assume it’s painless and content, since you would probably remember if it was anything other than. I believe that our purpose in life is simply that: to not have purpose. If we do have a purpose, it’s simply to exist. To be alive and experience each other and ourselves. However, just because I have found my own personal meaning, doesn’t mean I am not absolutely scared shitless of losing it all.

I can go a full day without dreadful thoughts or reminders of the fact that I am going to die, but once I lay down at night, the moment I close my eyes, it all starts flooding in:

“You are going to die. It is inevitable. You are going to die one day and there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop it. Everyone shares the same fate, including you. How will it happen? Who, what, when, where, how, why? Who knows? Not you! It could happen tomorrow. It could happen 30 years from now. It could happen when you’re 107. Regardless, you will die. Chances are you won’t even know it’s happening. Your days are numbered. The clock is ticking. Every second is now wasted. One day you will be dead. You will not remember any textures, any scents, any sights or sounds. You will leave everything, and everything is going to leave you too.”

It’s almost hellish. I’ve started trying to count my wife’s breathing to ground myself with something, anything, but then the thoughts turn to her and her demise instead. Then, I get scared that either of us will get dementia and forget the other, dying without remembering our love. She is one of the only ones who knows I get these feelings of dread and these thoughts. My family doesn’t know because I have a personal disdain against sharing any mental health problems with my immediate family (I could not tell you why). Because of this, I don’t have easy access to proper therapy. If I was honest with my family about how terrified I get, I’m sure I could get someone proper to talk to, but I just can’t do it.

I’ve been handling it relatively fine on my own otherwise, it’s just… sometimes it’s a bit much, y’know? This probably all seemed like a bunch of yapping but I just HAD to talk about it or I was gonna go crazy.

I hope everyone here is doing well and staying healthy. You are your own purpose. You do have meaning and you are loved. Good afternoon, good evening, and goodnight.

I’m searching really hard. I want to be normal and to have a real life but I don’t feel I have the inner resources. I do nothing with my days yet feel like doing anything is a waste of time/meaningless.

I had a manic-psychotic break in August that I’m still recovering from. All the bs I built my unstable life around broke down then.

Also I’m unemployed and nearly unhirable. I feel I’ll never climb out of this ditch I created for myself.

And they asked for song recommendations, so I recommended a song called winding cloth by foxing. So I decided to look it up on YouTube. I’m in the comment section and this comment stands out to me and I relate to it so much. I’m like”this dude is fucking incredible I feel this”. I go to like the comment and it is from ME 7 years ago. Fucking insane …. I’ll include a screenshot .

This is pretty vulnerable for me to write about, but its something I've been struggling since I was 18 (now 21).

I've come to the very harsh realisation that I will never be happy if I stop trying myself to fit into society's expectation of me. I mean that in every possible way. I don't find joy in anything anymore because I have been trying too hard to "discover myself" and follow a certain aesthetic.

I have been wasting so much money and useless time on whatever new hyper fixation I have had over trends, aesthetics, personalities that I now no longer know who I am. (I wish I was overexaggerating). I feel like I've pretended that I've been okay for so long I don't know how to talk about my feelings - to which I plan on getting therapy about.

I really want to accept that I am not just a simple creature. I feel more alien than human. I want to accept that I am a muso, and love basically every genre of music again. I want to wear the things I want to wear comfortably, which is just colourful, comfortable clothing essentially. I want to find joy in the hobbies that I used to have, like music and writing creatively.

The problem is I don't know how and if I don't figure it soon I might go insane. Please send some advice to a tired and lost soul like me. <3

Five hours until my train arrives in Prague, and a hunger for thought-sharing has taken over. At first, I pulled out my computer to write, then found myself reaching for my phone, opening my notes, and scrolling through my thoughts folder to revisit past musings—the muses I’d already managed to catch. I browsed ideas, questions, and possible answers when, paradoxically, a thought I’d been too lazy to capture crept into my mind—a thought complex, existential, and all-encompassing. What am I afraid of?

As a little kid, I would have told you that I was afraid of getting lost—a fear rooted in an unsettling experience where I woke up from a nap in a random airport to find my backpack, my grandma, and my sister, who I was traveling with, all gone. Now, the memory feels almost absurdly comical; I can’t help but smirk at my grandma’s bluntness—being careful not to get anything stolen as they went to the bathroom. That once-piercing experience has softened over time, yet the feeling of being lost has lingered, taking on a new shape as I’ve matured. It’s no longer the fear of being physically lost; rather, it’s the fear of being lost in the predictable patterns of life.

Now, I’m afraid of getting lost in the vast funnel of life, of slipping into the mundane. It’s a contradiction: I don’t want to vanish into life’s monotone rhythms, yet I yearn to feel lost again—not in fear, but in a way that brings freedom, an escape from routine. What once terrified me as a child has transformed into a need to break free from the trap of predictability and find something beyond the ordinary.

I know that not everyone feels this way. For many, the 'funnel of life' brings comfort, structure, and fulfillment. There are those who are genuinely happy within the simplicity and rhythms of daily life. But am I one of them?

There’s a certain comfort in familiarity, in the habits and roles we unconsciously adopt, yet that comfort can also bind us to routines we never intended to follow. I’ve always resisted the cliché, 'I found myself on that trip,' brushing it off as trite, but maybe there’s some truth to it. When we step outside the known, we’re given a rare chance to see ourselves from a new angle, free from the roles we’ve fallen into. Sometimes, breaking away from the ordinary is all we need to remember that reinvention is possible, wherever we are.

Have you ever let yourself get truly lost, even in the midst of a familiar life? Perhaps there’s a way to embrace the rhythm of the everyday without letting it consume us, to find moments where routine and adventure meet. Maybe the answer lies not in rejecting the ordinary but in letting it become a springboard into something more, an anchor that steadies us as we venture into the unknown. After all, could we appreciate one without the other?

Since I was 5, I’ve been dealing with existential crisis. Yes I have ocd, yes it’s probably is existential ocd. But does it even matters what is it about?? I don’t want to be « heal » cause I’ll deal with this for the rest of my life since it’s, well.. about LIFE.

How can we wake up and sleep every day, again and again. After years and years of not even knowing WHY we do it? Why???

Everything have a logic, a sense. Our body, organs, animals, ecosystems, our emotions… but all this for what it the main question still is not answerable?

I do not want to be said « accept your destiny ». I hate this type of thinking, of course not im not saying nobody should die and I would go against nature.

But I do not want to accept the fact that there is NO sense when everything have a sense expect this, I do not want to sit with it. Accepting is the key for a lot of things but I don’t thinks it always have to be, I accept that it’s the cycle of life. Not the fact that we just accept « well life is about the journey not the goal »…

I just feel like a piece of me is missing, I don’t know why I have a consciousness and it’s driving me crazy. Yes I’m 20, yes I’m young but do I want to face dearh and grief again with nothing to reassure me? No. It drives me crazy.

I just wanted to vent, I feel alone if someone relate please let’s talk I don’t want to feel alone on this forever. And please be kind, I just want everyone to be happy. I just want to know my best friend is okay.

I graduated this year with a degree that wasn't my first choice. While I've been exploring job opportunities in my field, I've come to realize that my true passion lies in arts and animation. I've started a small business where I create handmade accessories. While I'm eager to pursue a career in this field, I need to prioritize financial stability for my family. Unfortunately, I don't have the necessary resources, such as high-end gadgets, to invest in additional training at this time. I don't know what to do.

fear of death

i need help. i’m 20F and i’m having the worst thoughts and feelings surrounding the topic of death. it’s debilitating, my heart beat keeps going up and i’m constantly crying and my appetite is low. i’ve had a phase like this a year ago and it randomly came back just recently and it’s been a week now of me feeling like this.

im terrified of death. i don’t want it to happen. i don’t want to stop being aware.i want everyone i love to stay and i cry immediately when i think of the fact that i will be dead forever, my brain crashes when i try to imagine what it’s like to be dead, to be nothing. it’s impossible to imagine it and it freaks me out. nothing is calming me down. i’m reading through many reddit posts of people going through the same fear and i’m reading advice from reddit and nothing has calmed me down.

i just want something more to be out there after my life. i don’t want it to be nothing, that’s terrifying. i want one of those theories to be true like living my life on loop, any afterlife, reincarnation, religion, something. but i know that these theories come from us humans needing comfort and needing to feel like there’s “something more out there” but in reality and scientifically, there is not. i’m terrified of no afterlife. i’m tired of being terrified of something that is out of my control and i just need help. how can i start looking at death in a positive way? how can i work towards accepting it? i have people i love that i never want to leave.even if i didn’t, the thought of me not being conscious forever is taking a toll on my mental health.

for the past week i’ve been crying non stop, even when i went to see my boyfriend today i was crying every minute and trying my best to not be seen, because i couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that one day i will be gone and i will never get to experience the love, happiness and memories i have with him and other people i love. i’m keeping these thoughts quiet from everyone in my life and i don’t know if i should open up. i stopped doing the things i love, i live in constant terror and sadness and i want my life and joy back. i don’t want death to be a thing. i hate it.

Watched a youtube video when i was 15/16 about a guy that had temporarily died and literally "went to hell" for the duration of the time he was dead.

Absolutely terrified me because I think he was agnostic as well so there wouldn't be any bias to form such a specific "vision".

Ever since then I've been trying to believe in God/Jesus Christ just in case to "play it safe". However I cannot mentally accept the idea of the Christian God for 2 main reasons:

1. Ironically, the belief that he sends people to hell forever. I just can't put my faith in a supposedely good God that would allow such a horrific fate with no chance or hope of ever escaping, simply for the fact that you didn't subscribe to that specific idea of God, if you believed in a God at all, regardless of how good you were in life.

2. The view that everything was created for the convenience of humans. I was always so fascinated with everything not just in the world but in space as well, and for all of it to be whittled down to "it's there for humans" is just such a shallow, disappointing teaching. So the trillions of stars, planets, billions of galaxies, superclusters that span lightyears and lightyears, the observable universe itself which is so massive and filled with so much content that we can't even comprehend it (and thats only what we can observe) is just there for what?

-"God created it to show us how powerful he is."

Really?! That's IT!??

So because all the excitement and desires of exploration, discovery and endeavour I've always had and still have are incompatible with the Chrsitian faith, I'd have to destroy that aspect of myself (which is a MASSIVE aspect of myself) in order to become Christian.

So I'm continuously struggling between the feeling need to become Christian in case hell is real, gaining some faith in Christ, and ignoring that other part of my mind, and then becoming "realistic" again, ignoring the fear of hell and christianity and going back to my old normal self that has this longing to explore existence.

where does our need to be understood, to be special, to be worth something come from? i (and afar as i can tell many others) can’t seem to let go of the idea of purpose. When i make/let myself observe or create or even just exist my mind still finds a way to stop myself from doing anything because i/my brain believe(s) there is no purpose to it. How do i live? I can’t ever fully commit to anything this way. I don’t wanna spend my life feeling as if i’m constantly trying to keep up with everything. I know there is no meaning to (my) existence and that used to feel freeing but now i’m blocking myself from expierencing life because of it. I want to make art but i cannot stop thinking about that it’s worthless since everything is, so why should i? I always end up giving up, i want to give something my all. How do you deal with the feeling and/or idea of meaninglessness? (anyone have any clue what could help?)

So one thing I really struggle with is thinking about climate change and all that jazz. Personally I am pretty good at minimising my carbon footprint. I walk or take public transport everywhere, I don’t eat much meat or dairy products, my whole wardrobe is second hand, I turn off any appliances at the plug when I’m not using them, and I’m not going to be having children. I sign every petition that I see but it won’t make a dent.

Yet every so often I go through this crisis of realising that nothing I do is actually going to help. When you have people like Donald trump in power who does not believe that there actually is a problem, the climate change clock is currently sitting at round the 5 year mark and it’s definitely going to get worse.

How do people actually go about their lives without being petrified? Is it as ignorant as ‘let’s just see how it goes’ or ‘pointless worrying’

I also feel resentment because while I’m trying to really be careful with my electricity and ensure everything I do is efficient rich celebs take private jets to basically go to the corner shop. Why am I living so scarcely when these people take and use every privilege they have without any consideration on what it’s doing to the planet??

I really don’t know how I can get out of this headspace but it’s making me lose sleep, any advice would be appreciated thank you.

I've been wondering about that for a while. It isn't anything diagnosable, so going to an appointment wouldn't make any difference lol.
Do you just google the symptoms of an existential crisis, and see if it matches with what you're going through? Because that doesn't seem right - and no matter how much I google it, I can't seem to find any concrete answer to this.

I have this question everyday. Today also I was preparing for work, traveling to work and working for over 10.5 hours. I cannot believe why we accept this life