Quarter Life Crisis Dynamics Among Final-Year Islamic Counseling Students: An Islamic Guidance Perspective
Kata Kunci:
Quarter Life Crisis; Islamic Counseling; Emerging Adulthood; Final-Year Students; Spiritual Coping.Abstrak
This study aims to understand the psychological dynamics of quarter life crisis experienced by final-year students of the Islamic Counseling Guidance (Bimbingan Konseling Islam) study program at Universitas Islam Negeri (UIN) Mataram, to identify the factors contributing to it, and to analyze students’ responses from an Islamic counseling perspective. A qualitative phenomenological design was employed, with informants selected through purposive sampling based on indications of quarter life crisis until data saturation was reached. Data were collected through in-depth interviews, non-participant observation, and documentation, and were analyzed using the interactive model developed by Miles and Huberman, comprising data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing/verification. The findings show that informants experienced anxiety, confusion, stress, and identity crisis shaped by internal factors (low self-confidence, unclear life goals) and external factors (academic pressure, family expectations). Students’ responses varied between adaptive coping (spiritual practice, social-support seeking, self-reflection) and maladaptive coping (withdrawal, procrastination, rumination). Within an Islamic counselingframework, spiritual values such as patience (ṣabr), reliance on God (tawakal), and gratitude (shukr) played a central role in helping students manage the crisis, underscoring the importance of an integrative psychological–spiritual approach.
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Appendix
Interview guide, informed-consent form, and the full field-note corpus underlying Table 1 and Table 2 are held by the author and are available upon reasonable request, in accordance with the confidentiality protections described in the Method section.
