Mid-Life Crisis Mis-management

Sprout Sweater Episode 3

In the third journey (episode) of the podcast, Dave welcomes you aboard the ‘Sprout 1’ for another trip into metaphor, meaning and the mind.  This week Dave builds upon last week’s episode ‘Scheduled for Destruction’  explores how the so called ‘mid-life crisis’ as well as becoming a bit of a cliché, is something that can happen at any time in your life.  And, is it always a crisis?

Dave shares tips on how to handle the underlying feelings and distress in a more positive way, thus avoiding the more destructive aspects of the phenomenon.

If you have ever felt lost, crushed or trapped by life and have experienced what some might call the ‘mid-life crisis’ then this episode is for you. 

Dave Algeo is a writer, coach, trainer and speaker empowering others to live big, by identifying the small but significant things that can transform the life we are living. Join Dave on the good ship 'Sprout1' as we explore the inner galaxy of the human mind, and find the sprouts that make the biggest difference. These are the sprouts you are looking for.

Search for 'Sprout Sweater' in your favourite podcast feed. To find out more about the podcast, and episode show notes at https://www.stressedguru.com/the-sprout-sweater-podcast and more about his in person and online events at www.stressedguru.com. Drop Dave a line at dave@sproutsweater.com to ask questions, offer feedback or suggestions for future podcast content.

Episode 3 Show Notes

The following is a rough draft of the content (not a full transcript - more notes forming the basis of the podcast recording

Welcome aboard Sprout1. I’m your host Dave Algeo, chief sprout sweater. Buckle up and enjoy this show's journey into our inner world where metaphor, meaning and mind collide. 

3.44 am again.

Why is it always 3.44. And I’m awake. It’s not just like a gentle stirring and drifting back off to sleep - I’m awake. Wide awake like so many mornings these days. And I’m thinking the same thoughts. I can’t do this anymore. It’s that familiar clamp like feeling down the side of  my head and neck. It’s every present lately and it’s just crushing. And physically it’s like my head has been ground and the dust between the jaws of the heavy vice. It represents how I feel inside too. That sense of who I am just being squeezed into pulp.  Looking at that clock again - I feel dreadful. I have to get up for work soon. How do I escape this?

I don’t know what to do. I can’t do this anymore. And yet I have done, every day for as long I can remember, and I’ll continue to do so. I continue to lie in quiet desperation as the Pink Floyd song ‘Time’ so brilliantly puts it. But I eventually fall asleep around 4.45am knowing that I would have to drag myself out of bed an hour or so later. 

Well, that was 20 years ago and I can still feel those feelings if I try hard, so I don’t try hard. I don’t indulge those memories. And looking back I do so, probably more with a sense of compassion and forgiveness than I was at the time, never allowed myself at that time. If only I could go back in time and share what I know now. Maybe I would have woken up to what I was doing to myself and taking back some power and change of my life sooner. And not in not so a destructive way. End of the ‘Mid-life Crisis Mis-Management’.

And I guess that’s the point of this episode. I talked about it last week in Schedule for Destruction, that those feelings that start to arise potentially in many of us, I say many more than we are probably aware, that feeling that ‘is this it’?. The years behind us are ever increasing the years potentially ahead are decreasing. Is this it?  And that creates a disconcerting feeling. And if we ignore it as I indicated last week it can only build and mount and create more problems and lead us to feel more crushed, trapped and perhaps engaging in less positive coping strategies and it can potentially lead to that feeling of crisis at the extreme. 

But that’s the problem isn’t it with this phrase ‘mid-life crises. 

Firstly, does it happen in mid-life? Well that little segment that I just said in the beginning there, that wasn’t in my midlife, typically what 40 - 65 is classed as midlife. It was in my 20’s. It took me years to actually start to do things later about it and what I did was pretty destructive. I threw in the towel on my marriage, breaking the heart of my wife, my kids and myself and spent years beating myself up with guilt. Feeling lost. Not allowing myself to have anything in the way of a positive, hope for the future or life ahead and it took me years to get over that. And that’s what I’m talking about in terms of mis- management. Because firstly mid-life, this mid-life so-called crisis can happen anytime. Younger or later in life than the so-called ‘mid-life’. 

And the other aspect is it’s not always a crisis and yet it becomes this cliché for many of us. We talk about the crisis, sometimes tongue in cheek, ‘ah look he’s having his midlife crisis’, ‘he’s got himself a convertible car’, whatever. The problem is for some it can end up in crisis and that’s where we need some serious intervention and support.

For many of us it starts a lot further down the continuum with those unsettling feelings, the ‘is this it?’ questions. The pushing it down and saying, ‘wind yer neck in’, ‘get back on with life’, ‘sort it out’ and ignoring it. That bottling up of emotions and avoidance leads it really, to it having nowhere to go. So, it sits, it corrodes, it gets stronger and bigger, and it comes out somewhere. It’s a bit like squashing slime. My daughter loves this slime stuff. I hate it, it gets everywhere. But that slime, you squeeze it and squash it and it just comes in between your fingers, it gets out somehow. And that’s what these feelings are like. And if we don’t deal with it in a positive way,  it will come out.

And it was more likely to come out in the mis-management approach in that those feelings of feeling crushed, trapped and lost in drowning it out without gall. Silence. Shutting down. Overworking. Acting out, you know buying that new car. Those kinds of things. They may not be classed as crisis, but they still potentially destructive or harmful and certainly those feelings are unsettling.

So how do we more positively manage that? 

If you’ve ever experienced those questions, if you find yourself potentially, what you would call a midlife crisis, whatever age. Then how we shift it to a more positive management approach rather than the more negative or allowing it to overtake us and become destructive for ourselves, the people around us and our world as we know it. Well, I kinda indicated this in the last episode, it is firstly about acknowledging those questions, the ‘is this it?’ questions, and the feelings that have come with it. But it’s then engaging in a process of acknowledging it and confronting the feelings but in a constructive way. Exposing them to the light and see what they’re saying. 

But here's the thing.

Not accepting what they say or what you feel they tell you as the truth. Because your feelings are data. They’re signals, they’re there, they’re being evoked or you’re experiencing them for lots of reasons. But what they may be telling you may be misleading you. You know that cliché again about the ‘grass is always greener’. Your grass at the moment may not be that green, or you perceive it not be. And therefore, the grass over there looks better. And the feelings maybe saying ‘wouldn’t it be better if’, ‘it will be better if I do that’ or ‘go there’ or ‘do this’ or ‘it will be better when’. That isn’t potentially misleading. 

So how do we expose those feelings, confront them in a constructive way and then start to consider what they are really trying to tell us.

 So, what you first perceive as the problem is often not the real problem. That’s generally something I would say is a good rule of thumb. It may be, but often it’s not. As somebody who has worked with lots of people now over the years and as somebody who’s been coached. I know that what I often present to my coach as a problem or what people come to coaching to discuss and know that therapist experience this as well. Is that the problem that’s presented, is often not the real issue. 

So, this is where getting it out, confronting it, writing it down, journaling, talking to a trusted loved one or friend. Preferably somebody, although we involve everybody in conversations but preferably somebody who isn’t as closely involved and has someone at stake in it. Because we want a kind of unguarded, an unbiased sounding board for these. So that's the first thing to do.

Then test and experiment with ideas, with things that you like or dislike. Because it's only through testing and experimenting in a safe and ethical way that we start to realise what is it that we really want? And what is it that satisfies that ‘is this it?’ question. And the key rules are - don’t burn bridges and do manage your temptations because the world’s full of temptations. I’ve talked about it will be better when, it will be better if I do this, or I kept there, or I have that, or leave this or drop that. And again, that can be very misleading because the temptation can feel stronger in the face of those unsettling feelings, and that doesn’t mean that that is the answer. So, recognising that and managing those temptations in the sense of recognising that, that is a temptation I’m going to step away from it. 

Don’t burn bridges,  don’t wreck relationships, leave a job, send your notice in via Facebook photograph whatever, the kind of memes that we see. Don’t do that until, or don’t do that in a destructive way but don’t do that impulsively or on the basis of those feelings and emotions. Hang back, protect your downside. Protect the financial downside, your relationships and make some considered decisions over time. And one of the things I find really helpful is to start working out what you really don’t want if you’re not clear about what you do want. Because what you definitely don’t want is often easier to identify. 

I often think about it as wide corridor that narrows down to a point where there’s only you can get through at the other end. And if you think about it the wide end of the corridor are all the things you could do or are doing. And if by gradual process of elimination, weighing up the options, protecting our downside being ethical we can start to eliminate some of things we definitely don’t want. We start to, (a), experience and do more of the stuff we do and less of the stuff we don’t want to do. Some of the things we will have to do for the time being but gradually we start to move forward and down and down and until we start to get a clearer picture of what we really want.

And this is a work in progress. Sometimes it takes experimentation testing, safe testing, sometimes it takes a bit of courage and conversations with people. Finding out what I could do and how I could do it. 

And a good place to start is often with fitness and health. I’m no fitness instructor or dietician or anything like that but one of the things I do find with myself and others, is if we could start to get  to grips with that, particularly if that’s drifted over the years. I don’t know about you I have a phrase called the ‘before you know it phenomenon’ and it happened to me a few times. Before I know it 3 years have passed, and I’ve put on another stone or I’m finding the stairs a struggle. Those can be really good key points, keystone points to get some control back. A sense of perspective and control and validation in life. So maybe tackling that area can be a good point and eliminating the things we don’t want to do and picking the things we enjoy. And then looking, and again holding up the stories that we are telling ourselves. Are you telling yourself ‘who I am to think I could do that’, ‘it’ll never be me’, ‘I don’t deserve that’,  ‘I’m just a’, ‘I have to do this, I’ve got no choice’.

Those stories are classic stories that manifest themselves when we’re experiencing this so called ‘midlife’ crisis or these feelings around the ‘is this it?’ question. These are the stories that help keep us in our safe place. ‘No just keep doing what you’re doing’, ‘your fine’, ‘get through, grind through’, we know this, this is safe. 

Challenge those stories and recognise that whilst you’re working out what you don’t want to do. Testing, sharing, connecting and managing by not burning bridges and managing those temptations. Recognise that we can start to challenge those stories with a sense of optimism. A hope that it needn’t be it. That there is more. That what we are doing now could be better by simply changing our perspective on it and managing a few of the small negative things in life.

So overall make those changes and focus on how do I constructively manage the feelings rather than crushing them down, dismissing them, pushing them to one side in which case it’s like that slime, it will squeeze out somewhere and end up in the mid-life crisis mis-management. And potentially the crisis, a genuine crisis which is what we don’t want. And if anyone is in that place where they feel that they are at that crisis point that’s the time to seek help. Reach out there are loads of resources - you can connect with me, you can reach out to your partner, friend, family member and if you’re not sure how to start the conversation you can start it with - ‘I just don’t know what it is but I don’t feel’ x, y and z, great, good, whatever. Start the conversation, even if it’s a clumsy start it's better than nothing. 

So that’s it for this week. I hope that helps you think about this idea, the ‘is this it?’ questions that arise. They are really important They help us to start to share, to realise that perhaps our life isn’t going in the direction we like and shift and stir our course towards a different and more fulfilling direction. 

So don’t crush those feelings down otherwise it will come out elsewhere and could end up in the midlife crisis mismanagement.

Catch you on the next episode.

Dave 

Dave Algeo,

Coach, writer, speaker and trainer – achieving success with wellbeing (not at the expense of it).

dave@stressedguru.com