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Never waste a midlife crisis

austinkleon.com

361–370 of 461 posts

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#361

I 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

> religious friends ... it's very hard to imagine them going through one

So much great literature and philosophy was written specifically because religious people went through crises of faith where they re-interpreted their entire social/religious world. Kierkegaard being one most people know.

Same thing, different name.

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#362
post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just inviting downvotes but I also agree with you. Therapy is a scam and no doctor can explain how or why anti-depressants work (also why they have people "try" many before finding the "right one for you"). But people are too cool for friends and family now and hearing hard truths so they pay someone to be told they matter and how to run their lives. I have seen different approaches to therapy being done to diff…

> Therapy is a scam and no doctor can explain how or why anti-depressants work (also why they have people "try" many before finding the "right one for you"). We also don't know the mechanism behind how anaesthesia works, this doesn't mean anaesthetists are grifters. Mental health issues are not easily distinguished, "depression" is a cluster of conditions which probably have different treatment responses but all pres…

I don't remember seeing many studies about anesthesia doubling the risk of going unconscious like anti-depressants and suicide. Or many situations in which someone just doesn't respond to the anesthesia. That's the track record we're talking about here. Not sure it even rises to the status works sometimes.

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Funny. For me it's when it ended. And while expected lifespan is some 80+ these days, I can't help but see expected useful life span to top out at 60-ish...

I expect you will probably redefine useful by the time you hit 60, or is it actually your belief that senior citizens are useless?

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#364

I 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…

That sounds incredible, thanks for sharing! Do you have any advice on connecting to yourself and living that connection?

I believe it differs dramatically for each person. What works for me may not work for anyone else. Here's what is working well for me:

* Taking long walks on trails, without my phone or podcasts.

* Tending my little garden.

* Meditating. Not some prescribed formula, but something I sort of "fell into." However, some common meditative tools have proved very useful: body scans and breath work.

* Being deeply curious about myself. Why did/do I want X? Do the reasons feel right? Why did Y make me angry/sad/happy?

* Practicing acceptance and letting go of things that don't serve me.

The tricky part is that I don't believe any of this would work for someone else if they just tried to go through the motions of it.

I do believe, though, that being deeply curious about yourself is the way to start in figuring out what you need to connect.

Question your motives. Question your emotional responses. Dig until you understand. Dig harder when half your brain is screaming at you in pain to _stop_ digging.

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#365

I 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…

> I think our best years are ahead of us.

With your newfound awareness, they almost certainly are.

Signed as one who is about 15 years down the path you have realized...

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#366
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is good advice. Sadly, many on HN are very pro "mental health professionals". I see the opposite advice proffered frequently. These "professionals" make things worse by pathologizing normal life. Their availability to function as ersatz "friends" discourages people from making the real kind, imho.

Have you ever been to a therapist? My family did a few group therapy sessions when my dad died, and it wasn't anything like you suggested. At no point did the therapist suggest there was anything wrong with us or suggest medication. She just listened and helped us deal with the new situation. Was it absolutely necessary to talk to a therapist? No it wasn't. Did it make the situation easier to deal with? Yes it did.

Group therapy is basically like having a mediator in a room to facilitate conversation. It's not quite the same as individual therapy. I'm glad you got some value out of that interaction.

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is this book https://www.amazon.com/Passages-Predictable-Crises-Adult-Lif... which factually points out that most people go through several crises in their adult life. As a rule of thumb you have one every seven years or so. I had one around 30, another in my early 40s, and another at 49. If you read between the lines in Freud you could also get the picture that a psychoanalysis would be likely to span the dura…

Divorce is often extremely healthy. It's not reasonable to characterize it as either.

You are asking a lot of the word often here. Also, the perspective of who it is healthy for is skewed according to the data out there on outcomes after divorce.

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#368
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting help from mental health professionals is just a way for that individual to foist their opinions onto you. Psychology is a highly subjective field whose studies have startlingly low reproducibility. You’re much better off finding someone in your circle that’s willing to listen to you and shares your values (though not everyone might have this available to them).

This is good advice. Sadly, many on HN are very pro "mental health professionals". I see the opposite advice proffered frequently. These "professionals" make things worse by pathologizing normal life. Their availability to function as ersatz "friends" discourages people from making the real kind, imho.

Therapy is a scam, see the replication crisis on hackernews's front page today. An enormous amount of studies don't replicate.

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#369

Midlife 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 luxu…

I think it depends on what you mean by "you can afford it".

At some level that's the nature of midlife crisis, identifying what it is you have and what you want, and what you can have.

If you are happy with what you have despite all its costs, it's not really a crisis because you've identified that as such. Even if you're not entirely happy with it but you recognize that it is a net good for you and your family, there's no crisis either. If some things you identified as benefits before are now seen as serious costs — to family, children, morality, or integrity, among other things — but there's an easy and painless way to rectify things, there's also no crisis.

The problem — the crisis — is in recognizing or believing that what you once saw as good things are actually costly, but rectifying it is also fraught with large and probably unknown costs. Maybe you've realized the vocation you're in is actually rife with immorality and corruption, or maybe you've realized that your career has completely cost your children precious, limited time with a good family, or whatever, but you've gotten so far along that the costs and likelihood of changing careers are also great. That's the nature of the crisis.

At some level I think you could say it's a crisis of privilege but I don't think so. I think it comes anytime a set of life choices, over a long time and with many costs, leads one to a position of deep dissatisfaction and realization that there's limited time to right things. My sense is that doesn't really depend on socioeconomic status necessarily.

The other side of it is there are apparently studies showing similar mood changes over the course of life happen in completely other species, so there's an argument that it really has nothing to do with existential or sociological issues at all and is very biological. Based on my own experiences that seems hard to believe though; my guess is midlife crises can happen for many different reasons, and aren't limited to midlife.

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#370
post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just inviting downvotes but I also agree with you. Therapy is a scam and no doctor can explain how or why anti-depressants work (also why they have people "try" many before finding the "right one for you"). But people are too cool for friends and family now and hearing hard truths so they pay someone to be told they matter and how to run their lives. I have seen different approaches to therapy being done to diff…

1) Length of therapy is strongly correlated to school. CBT and it's forks are relatively short and ability-oriented, where psychodynamic is very long with hazy endpoint. And generally CBT should be pushed much more, as it's faster, more goal-oriented, and less prone to, let's say, therapist biases. 2) Although I get the idea that people need friends and family, it's easy to forget that people with severe issues do no…

Agree that CBT or other behavioral approaches are preferable and that there are some legit disorders that can't be easily helped. Point is that most people don't need or benefit from therapy, and are more likely to be harmed.
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