LifeTwo's 'Basics' Podcast, Episode 2: What is a Midlife Crisis?

On this podcast I’m going to tell you about the many kinds of Midlife Crisis. Yes – there are several.

If you ask most people, they’d probably tell you that midlife crisis is something that happens to men in their forties, when they face their own mortality. In response, they have affairs or act like teenagers.

But almost every part of that definition is wrong. Midlife crises don’t just impact men, they aren’t limited to the forties, and they don’t have a single cause. And people going through one don’t act in one predictable way.

In fact, “midlife crisis” is an umbrella term for several different problems encountered in midlife. So in order to figure out what to do about a midlife crisis, you first have to figure out which type you, or a loved one or friend, are going through.

You can start by asking two questions:

First, are your feelings linked to or triggered by middle age and feelings of mortality, or are they the result of something completely different?

Second, is the impact so severe that it significantly affects your ability to live your life?

The answers to these questions lead to four general types of crises.

First, if your issues are triggered by concern over your eventual death, and the problem is so severe it’s making a major impact on your everyday life, then you’ve got the classic midlife crisis. You feel that your time is running out and this leads to a severe psychological crisis. At its most extreme it is very much like an existential crisis – that’s when someone may feel that their life is worthless. More common is deep unhappiness with one's life so far, and with where it is going.

The second type of midlife crisis is a less-severe form of the first. It’s also triggered by the unsettling feeling that that time is running out, but it’s not debilitating. This isn’t really a “crisis,” but it is a “midlife assessment”. While you might not feel that your life is worthless, you do think that things can or should be better. This is very common at midlife. If you use the “crisis” to evaluate where you are and what you want to do, this can be an incredibly healthy and insightful period.

The next two types of crisis are not caused by concerns over one’s mortality. Instead, there is some other traumatic trigger such as divorce, loss of job, death of a loved one, or serious illness. Because they often happen in middle age, they get mixed in with the other types of midlife crisis. But these should really be called life crises because they are not unique or specific to middle age.
Again, a person’s reaction to these external events can be severe or mild. So the third type of midlife crisis is when the imact is severe. The diagnosis may be clinical depression and professional help is all but required. When the reaction is mild – the fourth type -- people might be able to address their feelings with support from spouse, family, and friends.

Those are the four main types of midlife crisis. Remember that they are differentiated by the two questions: what’s causing it? And how severe is it?

But we’re not done. We can’t discuss midlife crisis without mentioning the type of midlife crisis that really isn't really a crisis at all -- it's actually should be called the “midlife excuse.” The popular belief that practically everyone goes through a psychological trauma at midlife resulting in unavoidable behaviors from silly purchases to thrill-seeking and infidelity, provides cover for people who want to do those things anyway. One only has to read online or offline advice columns to see how frequently this rationale is used -- often by the wife of a man who's learned that it's easy to blame his "midlife crisis" for his transgressions. Digging deeper may reveal what's really going on.

And lastly – there’s the nonexistent midlife crisis. Many people go through life and never experience one. They may be the type of person who constantly makes mid-course adjustments to their life's trajectory, or who have never had a setback that challenged their beliefs about themselves. They might be very self-aware or able to handle life's surprises better than most. They might just be happy in all of the important parts of their life. Whatever the cause, they never have the period of questioning or turmoil that characterizes the types of midlife crisis we talked about earlier.

University of California – Davis researchers Carolyn Aldwin and Michael Levenson found that despite the popular perceptions of middle age to be a period of angst, turmoil, emptiness and despair over one’s mortality, surveys routinely find that individuals in mid-life are in great shape psychologically – better, in fact, than when they were younger.

This might not mean much to someone in the midst of a midlife crisis, but it should. It is evidence that this too will pass, leaving a happier, healthier individual better positioned to enjoy the next stage of their life.

There is much more to learn about midlife crisis, which LifeTwo covers at the website. We’ll also dive into some specifics in future podcasts – for instance, did you know that men and women go through their midlife assessments and crises in different ways?