A Depth Psychotherapist on Late Midlife Transition 1
To a depth case studies, late midlife transition has some characteristics different from earlier stages in the midlife transition process. This is especially true in our time, when particular aspects of the late midlife transition get intensified by our way of life.
Individuals today experience a great deal of demand on their strength, time and resources, and the late midlife transition period is often a time when the stress level is particularly great.
Has It Been Worth It So Far?
The depth case studies knows that this retrospective question is all too characteristic of much of the midlife transition process for individuals. But the further the journey of midlife transition goes, the more this question can take on urgency. Individuals strongly feel the need to get some concrete resolution to this question.
What Will Make It Worth It From Here on in?
Tied to the above is the question about the future: what is the direction that I really want in my life? For some people, the problem becomes that they can’t even really imagine what it is that they might actually want in their lives. What can give all of this journey value and meaning? This might be a values or a religious or philosophical question, or it might be something else altogether.
Sometimes, as we move through midlife transition, even acknowledging what it is that we yearn for can be an extremely hard thing to do.
…If Only I Could Get Free From All These Pressures…
In our era, to an accelerated degree, people in late midlife transition face acute pressures. Pressures from our kids, at the stage where they are making fateful decisions about vocation, the move into adulthood and leaving home. Pressures of rapidly changing workplaces, and of fighting to stay in the workforce. Pressures of aging and increasingly dependent parents. For individuals in the late midlife transition “sandwich generation”, individuation means finding meaning beyond and through major life transitions.
I Can’t Postpone Living Anymore! …But What is it to Live?
What is it to live? For many of us, even in later adulthood, this is a thorny question. What is it for me to live? Answers are intensely individual. They will only come through exploration of personal depths and the unconscious, and through a deep level of acceptance of what life has been so far. This is key to the work of the /a-midlife-transition with clients in late midlife transition.
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