Midlife Crisis: Diagnosis Or Age-related Pit Stop?

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

“I have not achieved anything in this life, a complete“0”. "It's disgusting to look at yourself in the mirror." “Who came up with the idea that life is just beginning at the age of 40 ?!”. "There are only black stripes in my life!"

More and more often we hear similar statements from people close and dear to us, we try to help find a way out of this situation and very rarely find an answer to the question "What, in fact, is the matter?" Middle age crisis? What's this? When is that? How to live with it? What to do with him?

The specialists of the Newbreed company decided to find out all the subtleties of such a crisis from the practicing psychologist Victoria Zakarchevna

Victoria, I propose to start by defining what is a “midlife crisis”?

- In order to understand this, you need to understand what a crisis is. Each person goes through different age crises throughout his life. Any age crisis is a leap when quantitative changes turn into qualitative ones. Accordingly, a midlife crisis is the same race that occurs in a certain period, namely in the period of middle age.

- Okay, then what is the middle age? When is that?

- Firstly, it is worth noting that it is different for men and women, since women are a little faster in development. On average, we are talking about a period from 30 to 35-36 years. This period in a person's life is called the period of middle age and it is during this period that various changes occur, both physiological and psychological. This is the most important thing to note! Because when we are talking about a small child, we always understand the crisis as physiological changes: I started to walk, began to speak, began to understand that I am me. But, nevertheless, even in middle age, various physiological changes occur, they entail psychological ones as well.

- Tell me, who has a midlife crisis more often: men or women? Are there any definite statistics or is it very subjective?

- This is not subjective. The statistics as such are not that no, they are simply different, because men and women are completely different. More often men have a crisis, for the simple reason that a woman, as a rule, in the period of 30-36 years is busy with giving birth and raising children, so she does not have time to think about self-realization. After all, even if a woman has not achieved success at work, then she always has success at home: she has become either a wife or a mother. Therefore, for a woman, this crisis goes a little differently, and more often it is easier. Men, on the other hand, encounter it more often, because they do not experience motherhood and for them, in fact, the main and only realization in life is professional.

What are the main symptoms of the crisis?

- I’ll give a simple example: if you or your husband wake up in the morning, and almost every day you ask yourself questions: “Why do I live?”, “What have I achieved in life?”, “So I wanted to become such and such, and I I didn't!”,“How to continue to be?”, that is, questions that relate to a person's place in life and his realization - these are, unambiguously, symptoms of a midlife crisis. After all, it is this phenomenon that presupposes a comparison of a person and his childhood dreams with the realities that exist. In short, the main symptoms are as follows: depressive state, increased anxiety, addiction to alcohol, drugs, herb, cigarettes, all kinds of substances that help to get away from the real state; frequent philosophical questions in order to compare your dreams with the reality you received. This applies to both men and women. Women will also be prone to tantrums. And if a person is more intellectually developed, then a reassessment of values begins to occur, when you understand that the values that you lived in at the age of 20 are not needed now, and this will also be a symptom. Also, continuing the topic of symptoms, it is important to say that in men very often this is accompanied by frequent alcoholic binges, and not happy drinking, but, on the contrary, himself or in the company of like-minded people who can support his reasoning on the topic “life is unfair”, “achieve something is difficult”, there are more such pessimistic, negative moods than positive ones. That is, they drink not out of joy, but out of grief. Often, both men and women experience depressive states, when they do not want anything, apathy and no glimpses are visible …

Yes, but why is a person able to ask himself these questions after 30 years, and not at the age of 25 or 60?

- Because 30-35 years is the age when you have already achieved something and you can already measure the result.

Victoria, can you somehow characterize the social status of people who most often critically experience a midlife crisis?

- Yes, and there is a very interesting pattern here: most often, the crisis is not only haunting the poor or the middle social stratum of society, but mostly the people of the upper stratum. Because a person has already achieved a lot, spent time, life, energy on this, overstepped some of the values of childhood, the principles of youth. He did it all, it seems that he got the result, but he is unhappy.

Are there any ways to prevent the crisis?

- There is no prophylaxis, because a person lives every year and, accordingly, to prevent a crisis means not to live a period, to fall asleep. This is impossible. But you can make this period easier!

Let's look deeper into the root causes of this phenomenon? What can entail it besides the things that we have already talked about?

- The original root cause is a change in age. A biological phenomenon, it is inevitable. As a child will inevitably learn to walk, so inevitably a person will come to compare what he dreamed of with what he received. In addition, the reason will be in the image of "I" and in such important moments as intimacy in relationships and self-realization at work and at home. That is, when a person approaches a certain age, certain quantitative changes occur, which should turn into qualitative ones.

Do all people experience it? Or can you avoid it?

- The crisis is inevitable, just as it is inevitable that we learn to walk and fall. You can close your eyes to it, you can pretend that nothing is happening, but it is impossible to avoid it. Few people are prone to reflection and deepening in themselves. Few ask themselves questions such as: Am I satisfied with my life? Do I like being in the world? Many people close their eyes and it just becomes chronic. This is how we get sick and do not get treatment, over time it becomes a chronic form. And at certain times, we experience exacerbations, for example, a blockage at work or the consequences of improper nutrition, and we are hospitalized with a stomach ulcer. This is a similar condition, only it is less noticeable, but more serious, because the soul is much more difficult to heal than the body. The tooth hurts, you can see the tooth, you can see the problem, they fixed it and here's the result. The soul is more difficult. Therefore, those who turn a blind eye to this are dealing with chronic conditions: anxiety, depression, apathy, low self-esteem, which, in principle, leads to neuroses, hysteria and other consequences. Then, if some kind of crisis or very stressful situation for a person happens, then all this chronic condition is simply very much aggravated.

It became clear that it was impossible to avoid the crisis. Is it possible in this case to shorten its duration?

- You can reduce the crisis by purposeful work on yourself. It is impossible to guess, it will happen at 30, 32 or 36, maybe at 38. But when you wake up in the morning and realize that some switch has clicked in your life and everything that came before is left very behind and you start working on yourself, asking the right questions, looking for like-minded people, finding the right answers - these are the answers,which alleviate the condition and help move forward. This is the only way to reduce the crisis, as it gives certainty, an understanding of how to move on. During these periods of crisis, many people destroy families, change cities, professions, go into creativity, because this is the field where you can realize your beginning. As a child, he loved to draw, and his parents said that he should draw a financial model. He drew up to 35, and at 35 he spat on everything and said, oh well … and began to draw.

That is, if a person in a crisis tries to understand himself, to reflect, to look for like-minded people, then this will help him to get through it faster and more effectively, right?

- Yes, the most important thing is not to close. One of the most incorrect strategies for winning (this problem is more common among men than women) is not to tell anyone about it, drink alone and everything will pass. And this often leads to not very good consequences. There are examples of top managers who leave such high positions and go nowhere, because they cannot cope with the state when everything is wrong and the result is not satisfactory.

If we talk about the fact that a person is 29-30 and he understands that this fatal period is about to come, can he somehow prepare for it in advance?

- You can prepare, not 100%, but you can. Now a lot of the right tools are freely available. For example, a map of life, goals for the next 3-5 years, a map of results, achievements. After all, you can see in advance what you have achieved, measure it and already sleep well, at least by answering the questions of what I have achieved, why I did it, where did I come, whether I am satisfied with it. If you are dissatisfied with something, then there will be some kind of buffer period to hold out, make a leap and achieve what you have not yet achieved. In fact, if such things are done every 2-3-5 years, then this will also be one of the preventive methods. That is, when a person understands in what life plane he is, where he is moving, whether he is moving in the right direction. If there are constant failures, he wonders if I am doing the right thing, maybe this is not my way. This is prevention, preparation and prevention. We again return to the fact that this is work on oneself.

Women probably at this time have some kind of complaints about their appearance and probably they resort to surgical methods. Is this also a way to cope with a midlife crisis?

- This is a way not to survive, but to delay the moment, slow down time. For a woman, after all, 30 years old is such a first bell and all surgical interventions are an attempt to delay the crisis. Because, if the values of adolescence, youth are beauty, attractiveness of the body, appearance, then in middle age they are different. And if they have not replaced the previous ones, there is nothing to replace them with. And this will be a woman's crisis. Accordingly, a woman is simply trying to prolong those values.

Victoria, you talked about drinking, in the sense that men often resort to it during a midlife crisis. How to stop this process so as not to go into binge drinking for decades?

- Either the man himself can stop this process, or you need to seek help from a specialist. It can be a psychologist, or, in extreme cases, a narcologist. You can stop only after experiencing a certain moment. After all, alcohol is a way to get away from a certain condition. That is, if you solve the reason, then there will be no need for alcohol.

And a woman who is next to a man can help him survive the crisis?

- Yes. For a woman, a man's crisis is an extremely difficult period, because a man can be seen in different ways: weak, depressed, unsuccessful, not looking for any results, a man can be seen as aggressive and destructive, and, as a rule, aggression is directed towards a woman, although she not even to blame for this. Therefore, a woman here needs a lot of wisdom, patience, acceptance. Why do families collapse ?! Because when a man does not give a woman what he should give, a woman can justly go to the one who will give it to her. And then the man remains in an even worse situation, because he is left alone with his misfortune, one more misfortune is added to him and this condition becomes more complicated.

And what will be easier for a woman: to survive her crisis or the crisis of her man?

- Good question! It's easier to survive your crisis, because there are children, there is always something to do. After all, nature arranged a woman in such a way that she is always aimed at creation, and this is a process. A woman is always in the process: bearing, feeding, raising, caring for, moreover, caring for children, for her husband, for parents. The man is result-oriented. The goal is achieved, the result is obtained, and then some kind of abyss sets in. You need to find a new goal, some new target, to start walking. And the time from the end of one goal to the beginning of the path is a very critical time.

And if a woman has no children, how does she cope with the crisis?

- Often women who have no children have children of sisters, brothers, nephews, godchildren, etc. Women have dogs, cats, flowers, husbands. A woman has an inner attitude to care and take care of someone, so women who do not have children often look for them. If women do not have such an attitude, they go into careers and take care of their subordinates or the company.

If, nevertheless, we talk about the crisis as such, then it is more associated with the emotional state or with what is in the head, with the mind? Is it more a crisis of what: feelings and emotions or common sense?

- It's hard to say, because feelings and emotions are basic processes that always accompany thought. Thought is always colored in some color, in some kind of emotion. Therefore, answering your question, what crisis is it, I cannot say that it is correct to single out one thing: the mind or emotions, but still it is more worth talking about the crisis of the mind, because reassessment, rethinking are always questions to yourself, to your "I", and already in what color the "I" is painted is situational. Emotions can change: one day you can cry, another day you can laugh. Emotions do not have a crisis, because they are changeable, they always depend on the inner attitude.

Victoria, your parting words, recommendations, recipes for successfully overcoming the midlife crisis, in addition to what we have already talked about

- If these are your close people and they are already over 30, then look, observe them, whether they avoid close relationships, whether they make mistakes, whether they are going through some strange periods. Perhaps they need help, and you will become a person for them who will ease this condition or help them find the right direction. The second recommendation for people who are already over 30: pay attention to yourself, pay attention to how much you like to be in the world, how well you are with yourself, reflect, because time runs very quickly, it is psychological time, and sometimes we are chasing, in our opinion, behind something important and we lose something much more important. Reflecting and feeling ourselves, we are able to foresee some conditions and prevent them, because all the answers are within us. And, of course, if you see a problem and it is difficult for you to cope with it on your own, then contact a specialist. After all, working with you in tandem, he will be able to help you show the right direction, draw your attention to those results that you may not want to notice, pay attention to those important values that you suddenly stopped seeing, help you find answers to questions that you ask every day and do not want to answer them. Maybe it will not be as pleasant as alcohol or a good hookah, but the fact that it will be more effective and give a good result is unambiguous.