[crazygringo]

Exactly. Maybe a better word is "spiraling", when it thinks it has the tools to figure something out but can't, and can't figure out why it can't, and keeps re-trying because it doesn't know what else to do.

Which is basically what happens when a person has an existential crisis -- something fundamental about the world seems to be broken, they can't figure out why, and they can't figure out why they can't figure it out, hence the crisis seems all-consuming without resolution.