Mid-Life Crisis: It’s all about grief.

Mid-life is about facing loss. Most folks who experience a mid-life crisis are at a crucial turning point that can result in a renewed sense of purpose, meaning, and sense of aliveness. Yet this often involves a grieving process: an acknowledgment of our own mortality, as well as allowing the pain of earlier losses and experiences to move through us.

As a psychotherapist based in Oakland, California, I work with folks facing the grief of mid-life. Collectively, the stress and trauma of climate change and ongoing global violence continue to create conscious and unconscious feelings of fear, dread, hopelessness, and helplessness. As if that wasn’t enough, the challenges of navigating a career (or lack thereof), partnership (or lack thereof), divorce, parenting, health issues, and aging or dying parents might easily lead to a crisis point. It might seem like a breaking down, but it’s also an opportunity for profound inner change and growth. On the other side of destruction is creation.

Mid-Life Crisis: Midwifery Through Grief

You might be asking yourself how you got here. It’s a strange, somber feeling to arrive, officially in your middle passage. There are dreams you wanted for yourself that may never have happened. Life might look nothing like what you expected it to by now, and this can be a very hard reality to come to terms with.

Things might feel like they’re moving too fast, when all you want to do is slow down and re-orient yourself.

There are so many losses that come with mid-life. By acknowledging and moving through your grief, a freedom and deep sense of meaning lies on the other side.

It’s hard to face that our bodies are not forever, and we don’t have this future to hang onto where our dreams would come true. Mid-life is so much about letting go and learning to accept hard realities about ourselves and our lives, including death. Yet in doing so, we can come to a place of self-acceptance, peace, gratitude, and a desire to live from a place of authenticity and joy.

I will assist you in better understanding what you're going though, hold you through you grieving process, and support you in becoming more of who you are.

Mid-Life: Living in the Shadow of Tech

In an age of instant information, constant screens, external validation (social media) and overstimulation; it's no wonder you're anxious, depressed or overwhelmed. Today's middle-aged adults face intense decision fatigue and pressures. You may be struggling with:

re-shaping a sense of personal identity and agency
feeling immense pressure to succeed
inner conflict around working in the corporate world or finding meaningful work that also pays the bills
navigating intimate relationships, family, partnerships and friendships
substance use
realizations and feelings about your childhood or your family
social isolation and disconnection
inability to be in the present moment
conscious or unconscious fear and grief around COVID and climate change
navigating the online dating world
parenting
being single
aging parents

Perhaps you're feeling stuck and worried about making decisions or being judged for the decisions you do make. Maybe you're starting to think about your upbringing and family in ways that are upsetting as you raise your own kids. You might be struggling with grief and loss from long ago that is arising as your parents age, your children grow up, or your sense of self changes. Perhaps you're in a cycle of behavior that you'd like to stop but don't know how. It's also possible not to know what's bothering you, but you have a general sense of stagnancy, fear or discomfort.

Grieving for the Child Within

Perhaps you were a child of divorce. Maybe you were a latchkey kid. Screens and TV characters were your primary companions. You ate food out of boxes and cans. As a teen, you thought that getting your period or your first erection was the worst thing that ever happened to you. Then you went out and got a fake I.D. and stole cigarettes. You went to college. Now, aren't you supposed to be living the dream? Not. Even. Close.

You feel constant anxiety, panic and dread. Despite all the ways you've attempted to create a life you love, you just can't seem to enjoy it. Many adults I see in my practice actually suffer from complex trauma. This is a form of PTSD that stems from a less than ideal environment in childhood. Because many of today’s adults were latchkey kids, and had to fend for yourselves, you may not have gotten what you needed emotionally. Or, perhaps while your parent(s) were working, someone abused you sexually or hurt you mentally, emotionally or physically. Maybe your parents got divorced, and you blamed yourself, leaving a lasting impression on your ideas about love and marriage. It's also possible that you grew up in an environment where corporal punishment was still an acceptable form of child-rearing. If you were raised by a single parent who was extremely stressed; despite their best efforts, you may have come to feel like the source of the problem.