THE MEANING OF LIFE AMIDST PERSONAL CRISIS

Abstract

The article considers the life crisis as a psychological phenomenon of the individual. It indicates the destruction of established relations between people, the external and internal world. A life crisis manifests itself in various forms of experiencing difficulties, going through life’s path and is characterized by excessive stress on both the physical and psychological levels. During a crisis, individual behavior is unpredictable. During a crisis, individual behavior is unpredictable. Experiencing a crisis is associated with the degree of awareness of the crisis state, which increases with the enhancement in the level of personal maturity and the subject’s ability to reflect. The type of crisis situation is determined not only by internal causes, but also by the subjective properties of a person’s life world. For people, the life world has two sides: it can be distinguished from the external and internal sides. According to its properties, the external world of a person can be light or heavy, and the internal world can be simple or complex. Rethinking the situation and the meaning of one’s life does not happen before crisis situations in everyone. Independent processing of life meanings is very difficult process that causes strong emotional experiences. The results of our study showed that persons with suicidal attitudes in a state of life crisis perceive suffering as mental pain. And when this pain becomes unbearable, suicidal attitudes are formed. A comparative analysis of the content of the meaning of life in the researched subjects gives reason to assume that a high level of egocentrism prevents the processing of the meaning of life in a crisis situation, causes tension, and contributes to the emergence of suicidal thoughts. Thus, personality crisis is accompanied by deep and intense suffering. This leads to the disintegration of the ego system, to the emergence of mental illnesses. It can also become a new stage of human development and play a transformative role in life.