I have just re-read ‘The Middle Passage’ by James Hollis, a brilliant book about why so many of us go through a ‘mid-life crisis’ and, more importantly, why it is actually an opportunity for positive growth and change, if we are willing to embrace it. I am re-reading the book partly because I am at an age one might classify as ‘mid-life’, but also because an increasing number of the clients coming to see me are at a similar time in their lives. It seems that as we approach the half-way point, we seem inclined to want to take a look back at our lives, take stock, and assess if we are where we want to be, and re-assess where we want to go. Counselling is a good space to do this.
According to Hollis, a Jungian psychoanalyst, as children and young adults we develop a ‘provisional personality’, based on our early experiences, how our parents treat us, and how we observe people behaving around us. As we grow up, leave home and form new relationships outside our immediate family, we start to see that our view of ourselves, others, and the world, which has been based on those inital experiences, is quite limited. There may have been aspects of ourselves that we never explored, or even admitted existed, because they didn’t ‘fit’ with our ‘provisional personality’.
Mid-life is often the time when the clash between that ‘provisional’ self and the hidden and emerging aspects of ourselves becomes obvious. We might suddenly feel like we don’t know who we are anymore, or we might realise that our life choices haven’t fulfilled us in the way we thought they would. We will ask ourselves questions about the kind of person we want to be, and how we want to live our lives. Hollis argues that this is an amazing opportunity to move from living the life we believed we had to - the provisional life - to living the one we need to - what he calls the authentic life.
The idea of authenticity is often misunderstood. I don’t use it here to imply that there is one ‘true’ life or self that we all need to find. Living authentically means that we are making conscious choices about what we need, rather than reacting to life in a knee-jerk way - doing what we have always done, or what we believe we ‘should’ do. Hollis says “we must accept responsibility for ourselves, and know that the path taken by others is not necessarily for us, and that what we are ultimately seeking lies within, not out there” (p.115).
So, if you have that creeping feeling in your gut that something isn’t right, maybe your career, maybe your relationships, it is quite likely that you are starting to feel the clash between your provisional life - the life you created from that limited view of who you are based on your early childhood experiences - and the authentic life that you could be choosing.
This is scary, especially when it means having to change jobs, leave relationships, or shift your way of life. As you change and make more conscious choices, people around you will notice this, and may not like it. However, if we continue living life in way that was shaped for us by others, not ourselves, we will feel increasingly disillusioned, anxious and uncomfortable in our own skin.
Counselling in mid-life can help us understand the clash between our provisonal life and our authentic one. We can look at who you believe you are and explore what that is based on, identifying who you really need to be, and what aspects of your life can be discarded as things other people thought you needed to be. It can be a safe space to test out making more conscious choices and finding ways to make changes in your life that are sustainable.
A mid-life crisis is scary, but if we can embrace the opportunity to question our assumptions about who we are, we can discover a whole new (and I would argue better) way of being for the second chapter of life.
Tips for dealing with a midlife crisis
01 : Don’t ignore a gut feeling that something isn’t right - trust your instinct. Talk to someone, don’t pretent everything is o.k.
02 : Reflect on your values, which come from your family, which come from broader life experience - do any clash and which values are most important?
03 : Think about the future, how do you feel about doing the same job/being in the same relationship etc. in ten years time?
04 : This may seem morbid, but imagine that you found out you only have 6 months left to live, what haven’t you done that you wish you had?