The 7 Types Of Personal Crisis

Throughout life, we all go through personal crises. Each person experiences them differently, being sensitive to their individual circumstances, the environment and the tools they have to overcome them. However, no one escapes them.

If we go through different types of personal crises throughout life, it is because everything is in constant movement and change. Stability continues  to be a passing state, between one crisis and another. This is not something negative, but quite the opposite: it is crises that allow us to move from one stage to another and not stagnate.

The word ‘crisis’ comes from the Greek krisis which means ‘to decide’, but also ‘to separate’. Describe those situations in which a break occurs that forces you to choose between different options. What are the main types of personal crisis? We will see it right away.

1. Evolutionary

Evolutionary crises are those that are related to changes  marked by age. The passage from one stage of life to another sometimes generates great changes that require us to rethink ideas, beliefs, feelings, etc.

There are more intense evolutionary crises, such as the one that occurs during adolescence or after the passage to old age. The decisions  that must be taken during this type of crisis have to do mainly with the social and professional role ; likewise, they imply an important biological transformation.

2. Accidental, one of the types of personal crises

Another type of personal crisis is accidental. It occurs when some fortuitous event arises that considerably changes some aspect of life. This element can be positive or negative, but in both cases it represents a remarkable transformation.

In accidental crises, decisions revolve around how to incorporate into life  that new experience that has occurred unexpectedly. Therefore, they involve a process of shock, instability and rearrangement.

3. Family

The family is only a stable and fully happy institution in cartoons and stories. In real life, it constitutes a restricted social circle that is present, even as an absence, throughout life. The way it marks us and how we live our state in it can generate various types of crisis over time.

The familiar is one of those transversal axes. It covers all the vital stages, playing the role of stage or background for a large number of personal episodes. In general, decisions related to proximity, distance, values, emotions and interrelationships are derived or split from this type of crisis.

4. Health

Most of us go through one or more health crises throughout our lives. For some it becomes a long-term experience, due to the severity of the disease or the severity of the symptoms they experience.

A health problem leads to rethinking life in one or more aspects. As in the case of accidental crises, this type of situation implies decision-making aimed at incorporating the experience in such a way that it is approachable or assimilable for the person affected. It can also lead to labor and social decisions.

5. Social

When speaking of social crisis at the individual level, what is referred to is those situations in which there is instability, recurrent or very intensive changes in relationships with the usual environment. For example, when someone becomes famous, they fall into disrepute.

This type of crisis also takes place when a calamity occurs that alters the normal development of a community or a society. The usual thing is that decisions must be made focused on changing the daily way of relating to others ; sometimes they involve a change of environment.

6. Economic

This is one of the most common types of crisis, but also the most misunderstood. For whatever reason, many think that money or work matters should be approached exclusively in a pragmatic way and that the mental is a secondary issue. In fact, the opposite is the case.

Economic crises often have a great mental impact and, in fact, are often triggered by irrational or compulsive behaviors. Therefore, rather than solving the problem of money or work itself, these types of situations require making decisions in terms of behaviors in this regard.

7. Loving

The sphere of the couple is one of those that generates the most crisis, because this type of relationship demands a whole set of mutual adaptations and contradictions that must be resolved. No matter how compatible the two people involved are, there will surely be moments of crisis during their relationship.

There are many decisions to be made in this area, but the one that always gravitates in this type of relationship is to continue or end. Also, of course, you go through the option of formalizing the relationship or not, having children or not, etc.

All types of crises are a manifestation that change is necessary, or that it is relevant to adapt to it. All of them also involve learning and generate some kind of instability. Even so, deep down they are the engines that move life forward.