phrase
Existential Crisis
A moment when one's sense of meaning, identity, or purpose collapses.
Origin
Term emerged from 20th-century existentialism — Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Sartre, Camus — describing the dread that accompanies confrontation with freedom, mortality, or meaninglessness.
Modern usage
Used (mostly lightly) for anything from a midlife reckoning to deciding whether to text someone back.
In the wild
Reading the news at 2 a.m. is a reliable existential crisis trigger.— common usage
Tags
meaning
anxiety