The Truth About The Mid Life Crisis (and how to not screw it up)

As we near the age of 40 and take stock of our lives, many of us find ourselves feeling antsy, like we don’t quite fit in our own skin. The truth is, we never really did—but now we’re finally ready to notice it.

In my work as a psychotherapist, I often guide people through this very struggle. What I’ve seen is that when the discomfort first bubbles up, people tend to move in one of two directions: inward or outward.

Let me explain.

Midlife is not a crisis—it’s an opportunity. Or as Homer Simpson once called it, a crisi-tunity.

By midlife, the old protective strategies we’ve been using since childhood to manage our anxieties stop working.

The hunger for approval that has us compromising our boundaries and self-respect.
The fear of being alone that drives us to stay endlessly useful to others.
The reluctance to be vulnerable that  keeps us entrapped in drinking, smoking, perfectionism, or superficial relationships.

Whatever your go-to strategies are, you’ve been carrying them for decades. You’ve practiced them, perfected them, and woven them so tightly into your daily life that you’ve almost convinced yourself they’re real. (No, you don’t actually enjoy being a doormat.)

Then comes that wonderful—and terrifying—moment when things suddenly look clearer, like you’ve finally put on the right prescription glasses. But first, it kicks you in the ass.

The crisi-tunity usually begins with a challenge, or several. This is the doorway to real growth (and often what brings someone into my office). It might be getting fired from the job you sacrificed so much for, trouble in your marriage, an illness, a death, or even a fender-bender that rattles you more than it should.

Sometimes the trigger is positive, or at least looks that way from the outside: a vacation, a birth, a new opportunity. And sometimes it’s not one big thing, but a drip of small, almost invisible events. You just look around one day and feel alienated, dissatisfied. Your job, relationship, family life—they’re not what you imagined.

But here’s the thing: even if the crisis appears to begin on the outside, it’s not the outside that needs fixing.

Take a 45-year-old man. He goes to work, as he has since his twenties, only to find that the big promotion—the one that was supposed to make everything better, to finally give him the status, the money, the goddamn respect he deserves—has been handed to someone else.

He’s got two options.

In the first, he says:
“Fuck it. All this work, for nothing. They don’t respect me at work, they don’t respect me at home. I’m done.” He storms out, buys an expensive suit, a red convertible, maybe even a mail-order bride (which apparently comes with mail-order respect), and vanishes—only to resurface decades later on his deathbed, finally realizing the mistake. Tragic.

In the second, he says:
“Fuck it. All this work, for nothing. They don’t respect me at work, they don’t respect me at home. I wonder why? What have I been doing to end up surrounded by so much disrespect? Have I been saying YES too much at work and NO too much at home? Why? Why am I always chasing respect, and never finding it? It’s just like when I was a kid…”

In the first scenario, he changes the scenery. If only he had a younger wife and a shinier car, then he’d be at peace. Then the hole inside him would finally be filled.

In the second, he begins asking the right questions. He starts to see his true anxiety—the fear he’s been carrying since childhood. In this case, it’s the terror of being unimportant. He begins to see how he built his whole life around avoiding that fear. And in naming it, he starts to heal.

And maybe, just maybe, in the second scenario, he still ends up with a red convertible, a new partner, and the open road. But the path that leads him there is entirely different—and the choices come from clarity, not avoidance

With love,

Tami