The stereotypical concept of the big singular midlife crisis has been debunked. Crises occur in every age span, and they are highly individual. I agree though that a crisis should never be wasted.
Never waste a midlife crisis
251–260 of 461 posts
Re: Never waste a midlife crisis
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are saying it like divorce is a bad thing.
IRL, divorce is devastating for everyone involved, especially the children. I believe therapists diagnose divorce and breakups in general so often because it eases their conscience a bit. You can see this same reasoning with abortion and such topics. A divorced therapist is like a dentist with bad teeth or a tee-totaling drug-dealer. Can't trust any of 'em.
[dead]
Re: Never waste a midlife crisis
#253Good advice, from a 36 year old middle aged man 3 years into a midlife crisis after a massive work-related burnout event. A couple more pieces of advice from me: * A midlife crisis has its own glacial pace. Be prepared to be upside down for a long time. * Be prepared not to be the same person you were before. Be prepared to learn there is no turning back. * If you're in a midlife crisis, your previous life was simply…
> 36 year old middle aged man You're not quite middle aged yet :). And 33 is way too early for a midlife crisis, surely? Maybe it's just garden variety burnout and/or depression?
I guess it depends on how people see their mortality. I know people who thought they'd die for sure before they hit 30.
For myself 30s was only when the life started to happen.
Re: Never waste a midlife crisis
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
It can be as simple as them having found coping mechanisms or support systems that work for them. No need to invoke weird conspiracies about them being mentally ill.
I'm not invoking conspiracies about them being mentally ill. I'm suggesting it as characteristic of the type that they are messed up. That's not a conspiracy, any more than saying that people drawn to fighting forest fires are brave or parachute instructors have a high risk tolerance.
People drawn to fighting fires are stereotypically brave, but they are also stereotypically arsonists themselves. The worst people to call when you notice a fire is the fire brigade. They'll just spread more fire! Evidence: they're admitting to burning undergrowth to stop wildfires. "Fighting fire with fire", these people are nuts!
Plus - firefighters: stereotypically buff and desirable. You'll lose your house and your partner.
The right person to call is a poet. Not otherwise associated with fire, handles a lot of paper. They hate fire!
Re: Never waste a midlife crisis
#255I turned 40 last year, shortly after “making it” to my career goal: CTO of a hyper-growth start-up. Shortly after my birthday, my daughter, who had just started middle school, was hospitalized because she was suicidal. What I believe has been a midlife crisis exploded with such tremendous force, I thought I was losing my mind. Thank goodness for good therapy, which I immediately sought. This is the most profound reco…
If you don't mind sharing, where did you find a therapist, and what is their background? It seems like there is such a wide range of options, and I'm a bit hesitant about the online platforms.
Also not OP, but if you open up with any mental health positive people in your life, that's a great place to start. They may even have a recommendation which will really ease a lot of your worries going in as it largely is a personality based thing in my experience.
Also - give a call to some therapists. You can choose some arbitrary screening criteria that make you comfortable - like if you only want to talk to men because you're a man and worry about that, or if you want to find an lgbtq-oriented therapist, those types of things can be filtered. There are even faith-adjacent therapists - but I personally would be uncomfortable with that - but they exist!
Once you have a list after filtering down of 3-5 therapists, call each for a consult. During the consult, if you don't like the therapist, cross them out. After calling 3-5 you can choose the one that your gut tells you. If you can't commit even then, then flip a coin on them to be honest. If your gut tells you to go with two different ones, choose one at random and try it out.
Finally one other thing that I found surprising was even if someone marks cognitive behavioral therapy on their listing (A lot of them do!) - they may not use it in a 'tool-based' fashion. Meaning, you won't get a lot of homework.
If you are someone who needs take home work to be able to function, this could be a question you ask during your calls.
Here is an example of how it could go:
You have the criteria: 1. Must be LGBTQ positive 2. Must accept my insurance 3. Must be skills-based oriented around processing emotions
With these three, if I cannot find the information on their page, I can ask them during the consultation call something like:
1. If you don't accept insurance, can you do a super-bill so I can file a claim with my insurance? 2. Do you do skills-based learning as part of your practice They may say "no, but I do X, Y, Z" in response
Anyway, I'm not editing this down but hopefully that helps a little.
Re: Never waste a midlife crisis
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Thinking to my religious friends who have 5+ kids, a rich spiritual life and deep engagement with community, it's very hard to imagine them going through one. I grew up in a church and will tell you right off the bat that neither church nor family prevents one. Googling will give you no shortage of Christian articles and resources around dealing with them. Nobody is immune to that sense of "everything looks peachy…
Also, 5+ kids may seem helpful, but not because you won't face existential crisis with five kids -- you just will have more trouble finding time to process. Kids keep you very busy, until they don't. As an ex-church person: the "community" is pretty hurtful to a lot of people and isn't immune to high school clique / cult of personality type things, even if you discount other obvious harms (the experience of gay kids…
> Kids keep you very busy, until they don't.
Honestly, seeing some catholic families with 5+ kids, the model where one partner simply spends all time in work and hobbies while leaving all childcare to the other one is super common too.
Re: Never waste a midlife crisis
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not invoking conspiracies about them being mentally ill. I'm suggesting it as characteristic of the type that they are messed up. That's not a conspiracy, any more than saying that people drawn to fighting forest fires are brave or parachute instructors have a high risk tolerance.
People drawn to fighting fires are stereotypically brave, but they are also stereotypically arsonists themselves. The worst people to call when you notice a fire is the fire brigade. They'll just spread more fire! Evidence: they're admitting to burning undergrowth to stop wildfires. "Fighting fire with fire", these people are nuts! Plus - firefighters: stereotypically buff and desirable. You'll lose your house and yo…
Admirable take, but one with mixed and uncertain results;
I am ashes where once I was fire,
And the bard in my bosom is dead
~ Mad, bad, & dangerous aka George Gordon, Lord Byron
Re: Never waste a midlife crisis
#258I wonder if the mid life crisis is a completely modern and secular malady. Thinking to my religious friends who have 5+ kids, a rich spiritual life and deep engagement with community, it's very hard to imagine them going through one. Because they are too busy, but mainly because their life is oriented from the get-go around what is very meaningful to them
Yes I wouldn't be surprised at all. It's easy to see how much lower suicide rates are for example in so called "third world" countries that have been war torn, due to no small part by Western colonialism, compared to "advanced first world" countries, which are generally highly secular and have higher standards of living. Believing in God plays a major role in maintaining mental sanity, particularly in the faces of ch…
> It's easy to see how much lower suicide rates are for example in so called "third world" countries
How good/trustworthy is the data on suicides in those countries? Highly religious countries are not keen on showing and sharing unfavourable data.
Re: Never waste a midlife crisis
#259Midlife crisis is about recognizing your mortality and limited time left, and looking at what you have done and finding it comes up short to what you hoped for your life. The reality of how little time you have left is a key component, that death is stalking every decision and will likely curtail some plans.
Honest question. Is midlife crisis and/or burn out a problem that you face only when you can afford it?
I am a frist generation immigrant in the US. I do ok for myself and am at a vantage point of seeing my peers etc have these issues but I also can't forget that my parents worked much harder for much less, with similar, if not lot more stresses, and I don't think it was even an option for my mom/dad to have the luxury of burnout or on a midlife crisis, even therapy would have been an expense to think twice about. They worked Saturdays as well, had much worse commutes, longer hours and they barely even took vacations etc. as much as me and my peers now. They seem to have done ok for themselves and are reasonably happy, and fine in their older age now.
Are these just problems that one faces only after they have certain comforts in life and can afford to have such problems?
Re: Never waste a midlife crisis
#260This is hustle porn. All of Kleon's books are hustle porn. A lot of, "you just gotta, like, do, man." Not a lot of whatever the hell that means for the millions of folks who exist in the long tail of every creative market, struggling day in and day out to try to escape the doldrums of their day jobs, but never making it. Year after year. YouTube video after YouTube video. New social media site after new social media…
I don't know anything about this author until now, but by reading the one article and thinking a little critically and reading here, what he said was deceptive. A lot of advice is actually just toxic, because in it's generality, people always give assurances behind it. It might be fine for trivial things, but for shaping major themes in one's life, one really can't have a feeling of FOMO because they don't act on this generic advice.
I say this because I have spending years shaking this off. This is my mid-life crisis (that I decided had to start when I turned 40 :P ) What you say about success and happiness is relevant - even if "success" is an implicit measurement in places where hustle is a religion, it's best to ignore that stuff and do your thing ... or not. :)