While the term “mid-life crisis” is often used as a cliché, for those experiencing major life transitions in mid-life, the term is anything but just another off-hand expression. However, if dealt with effectively, you can avoid a crisis and use this time in your life to create new beginnings, feel more content in the moment and trust in your ability to navigate life with greater ease.
All men and women experience some form of emotional transition in the middle of their lives. This transition period may involve reaching a point where you’ve achieved the success that as a younger person you believed would make you happy (marriage, relationships, job, house, kids, etc.) only to find yourself feeling unfulfilled, restless and wanting something different, or it may be that you’ve reached the same stage of life only to discover you’ve yet to achieve your goals and fulfill your dreams.
Mid-life transitions generally involve reevaluating our lives and making some adjustments to long held beliefs concerning happiness and fulfillment. It is not uncommon for people going through a mid-life transition to:
- Question past decisions
- Feel dissatisfied with the lifestyle that was previously a source of happiness
- Experience dissatisfaction with the pursuits that used to provide pleasure
- Fear aging
- Become angry with their spouse and feel trapped in their relationship
- Question who they are and the direction they’re headed
- Have difficulty making big decisions
- Seek out change and adventure
- Desire new relationships
- Want to find ways of living life that truly bring fulfillment and deeper connection to others, not just fleeting satisfaction
While these thoughts and feelings, and the transitions they lead to, don’t necessarily bring about calamity, if they are not adequately addressed a crisis may result… a crisis that can be unproductive and even destructive to one’s relationships and one’s life.
Factors such as work or relationship stress, the loss of a parent or loved one, and unresolved childhood issues can make you more vulnerable to experiencing a mid-life crisis.
Even for those who don’t reach a crisis, mid-life transitions can easily present emotional challenges that lead to anxiety, depression, and the need for professional counseling or therapy.
How Can Mid-Life Counseling Help?
In our teens, our 20s, and our 30s, we see what lies ahead as filled with possibilities to achieve our dreams. But something happens when we transition into our 40s and 50s. We experience a new sense of urgency about life and the direction in which we’re headed. The fragility of life is ever more present for us. We recognize that if we are dissatisfied with our lives it is time to make changes to our goals and dreams, and that we need to take action immediately.
But how do you successfully create the change you seek? Do you just struggle through it on your own or do you try something different?
We are all surrounded by expectations: the expectations of family and friends, career demands, and societal values, to name only a few. Sometimes we hold ourselves back for fear of being judge negatively. While some thoughts and actions detract from our well-being, exploring them and uncovering the underlying beliefs and desires that lead to them can be extremely beneficial, and mid-life transition counseling can help.
If you’re going to successfully move into the second half of your life and find deeper meaning, it is important to explore your own expectations and how those of others influence you, take a closer look at what you’re doing and why you’re doing it, and determine what would give you a greater sense of happiness, connection, and meaning.
Learning to embrace who you really are with greater compassion, non-judgmentally and non-reactively, will help you to uncover what you want from life. It’s during our 40s and 50s that we prime to come to grips with these issues, and it’s a very personal journey.
As we struggle with the complexities of mid-life transitions, we realize the need to make different choices. But change can be difficult. Change involves risk and uncertainty; but change is also an inevitable part of life that allows us to discover who we really are.
When transitions occur, loosening our grip on our old definitions of the world and our old ways of doing things will lessen our angst and allow us greater acceptance of the changes we our experiencing. Opening to new possibilities allows us to embark on a journey towards new values and priorities, being more fully present in the moment and with optimism for the future.
In addition to helping you overcome work and relationship stress, grieve the loss of a parent or loved one, and increase your self acceptance, mid-life counseling and therapy provides a confidential environment in which you can feel safe and supported to explore your thoughts, feelings, and desires, determine the changes you need and want to make, and start taking action towards achieving a richer, more balanced and meaningful life.