I can’t stand the expression “midlife crisis”. It evokes images of balding, middle-aged men buying red sports cars and marrying trophy wives half their age, and of middle-aged women with face-lifts that make them look perpetually stunned, wearing too tight leopard skin clothing, dating the pool guy or the tennis coach.
Funny, pathetic and not to be taken seriously. Certainly no room for psychological development
“Oh he’s just going through a midlife crisis” we say and shrug our shoulders and laugh.
The car, the trophy wife, the face-lift, and the tennis coach are of course all avoidance strategies.
No, I much prefer the term “existential crisis” because not only is it free of the above connotations, but it also describes more adequately what is really going on.
Because it is a crisis of existence.
And that is serious.
At least for the person going through it.
This is what I know about existential crises:
1) They typically occur sometime between our mid 30’s to mid 40’s (which is earlier than most people assume).
2) Events like having a child, a relationship breakdown, sickness, loss, or a significant birthday can trigger an existential crisis. On the other hand, sometimes it is not a specific event but rather the realisation that we’re past our prime and the opportunities are not limitless any more, that precipitates this crisis. We have gotten the career, the partner, the house, the car, the kids and all the other trappings and then we pause for a moment and think, “is this it?”
3) People rarely realise when they first come to see me that they’re having an existential crisis. Most often it manifests itself as some form of anxiety or depression, but scratch the surface and all the big questions of meaning, relationships and mortality become evident.
4) Being in the middle of an existential crisis is scary. Often it involves questioning many or all major areas of our lives: what we do, who we’re with, where we live, how we live, our priorities in life. There is suddenly no solid ground to stand on and everything is in flux. People have described it as feeling lost at sea, standing in the middle of the fire or free falling.
5) Existential crises are great opportunities for change. Human being don’t like change so often things have to be at breaking point before we change.
I am well aware that some of you look at me like I’m deranged when I say “crisis is really very good news” but I truly believe that it is only when we reach the place when the old way of doing things is unbearable that we make real changes in our lives. Change takes courage.
As the American psychologist Robert Akeret writes: “ Personality change takes time; it takes pain; it takes crisis; it takes risk, for one must dare to give up one way of living in the hope – and with faith – that another will be more fruitful.”
So, I’ve got nothing against sports cars and face-lifts per se, but I think these things are better used as a reward for working through some truly difficult and scary stuff rather than avoidance strategies (which deep down we know are not going to work in the long run).
Yes, if handled wisely, crisis can be very good news.