5 Stages of Existential Reckoning

A journey from awakening to clarity and dignity

By Simon Olling Rebsdorf, PhD, Climate and Science Advocate

What happens when we begin to see the world differently – not just intellectually, but existentially This article attempts to describe five stages that many people seem to experience when confronting deep, often uncomfortable truths about the world, themselves, or the future. These stages are not linear, nor are they universal. But they form a pattern. A kind of reckoning.

The figure above outlines five existential stages that many move through when confronted with uncomfortable, fundamental insights. This is not a conventional life crisis. It is about seeing the world, and one’s place in it, with new eyes.

The stages are not linear. One may move back and forth, skip a stage, or return to a previous one. But they describe a pattern that appears across different kinds of existential confrontation.

Stage 1: Beginning of insight

A shift in perception. Often quiet. Something that used to be background suddenly takes form. A structure you hadn’t noticed before becomes visible. A relation, a cost, a consequence. It may come from data, a conversation, or an intuition. But it lingers. You begin to sense that the story you’ve lived by doesn’t hold in quite the same way anymore.

This is not enlightenment. It is a breach. A small rupture in the self-evident. Most of what surrounds you carries on as before, but something in you doesn’t. There is a before and after, even if you can’t explain it yet. The world looks slightly different now, and there is no clear way back to the previous state of not-knowing.

What makes this stage difficult is its vagueness. You see something, but you’re not sure what to do with it. It doesn’t yet have language. You may try to test it out in conversations, only to find that others don’t quite follow. Or worse, dismiss it. So you turn inward and carry it silently for a while.

(Comparable to the early stages of meaning crisis described by John Vervaeke and what Viktor Frankl called the noögenic dimension — the tension between what is and what could be.)

Stage 2: Despair and struggle

As the insight sharpens, the tension grows. The gap between what you now see and the way others live and talk becomes hard to bear. You begin to ask why no one else seems to notice. Why everything continues as if nothing is wrong. Why things that appear urgent to you seem invisible to others.

This is the stage of friction. You may argue more. You may withdraw. You may lose patience. There is energy here, but it turns inward or gets stuck in circular thought. It is hard to be in company. Harder still to explain what is happening inside you.

You may experience doubt, not about the insight itself, but about yourself. Have you misunderstood. Are you too sensitive. Or not sensitive enough. There is a confusion of roles: observer, participant, critic, witness. Everything feels entangled.

The struggle is not only with others. It is also with meaning. With the realisation that there may be no rescue from without. And that the weight of knowing doesn’t automatically lead to clarity or change.

(This dynamic echoes Albert Camus’ notion of the absurd and Søren Kierkegaard’s despair rooted in self-awareness. It also aligns with the dissonance described in existential psychotherapy.)

Stage 3: Depth of bitterness

When the struggle yields no relief, and there is no recognition, no shift, no shared space, bitterness can begin to take hold. This is not just frustration. It is a deeper sense of futility. You see the cost of inaction, and it breaks you. Not because the world is cruel, but because it is indifferent.

At this point, the insight has matured, but it no longer feels like a resource. It has become something sharp. A presence that colours everything. Joy feels artificial. Plans feel hollow. There is no longer a clear reason to care. And yet you do. That is part of the pain.

There is a kind of grief here. Not for a person, but for a possible world. One that might have been. Or for a version of yourself who no longer exists. The bitterness is not simply a moral response. It is existential. Something in you is dissolving.

This stage is dangerous in its inertia. You stop expecting things. You become careful not to hope too much. You rehearse disappointment to avoid being surprised by it. And yet, a part of you waits. Not for rescue, but for something to make it possible to move again.

(This stage resonates with the concept of learned helplessness described by Seligman, but shaped here by existential awareness rather than conditioning. It also reflects the “tragic optimism” Frankl explored: the capacity to endure suffering without losing meaning entirely.)

Stage 4: Reorientation/reflection

Eventually, something shifts. Not because the world changes, but because you do. Not as a breakthrough, but as a slow realignment. You begin to ask different questions. Not why others don’t see it, but how you live with it.

You start to re-examine your relationship to the insight. It is no longer about being right. It is about coherence. About what it means to carry what you know without being consumed by it. You begin to search for a posture, not a solution.

In this stage, small things matter more. Conversations that don’t try to fix. Writing that doesn’t explain everything. Moments of calm that aren’t based on denial. You learn to be with your knowledge, rather than against it. You learn to walk alongside it.

There is a shift from resistance to reflection. From outrage to orientation. The bitterness may still be there, but it no longer drives you. You begin to recover a sense of inner space. Not optimism, but perspective. You can breathe again.

(This corresponds with meaning-making processes in narrative therapy and adaptive coping in existential psychology. It shares features with what Kierkegaard called “repetition” — not escape, but a conscious return into life.)

Stage 5: Clarity and dignity

What emerges over time is a new kind of clarity. Not the clarity of solutions or control, but of stance. You know what you know. You carry it, and you are not ashamed of it. There is no longer a need to argue. You have found a place to stand.

This is not detachment. It is commitment without illusion. You act when it is possible. You remain silent when it is not. Your presence no longer depends on others agreeing with you. It rests on something quieter, something that cannot be taken from you.

Dignity in this sense is not pride. It is not certainty. It is the capacity to remain upright, inwardly, even when things do not improve. It is the ability to speak from a place that is no longer seeking validation.

Clarity and dignity do not solve the world’s problems. But they make it possible to live in full view of them. And to remain human.

(This stage draws on existential integrity as described by thinkers like Rollo May and Irvin Yalom — where freedom and responsibility are held together without denial. It also echoes Hannah Arendt’s sense of personal responsibility in the face of public reality.)