Why your “midlife crisis” is actually a good thing
“The greatest potential for growth and self-realization exists in the second half of life.”
- Carl Jung
At midlife, many of us hit a time where we find ourselves feeling lost and dissatisfied. We might have had relative success in the world, but internally, we feel something’s missing. The work and social roles that used to bring us satisfaction and validation no longer fulfill us. We may have been affected by a significant life change, like the loss of a loved one, kids going off to college, or our impending retirement. At such junctures, we find that one phase of our life has come to an end and we’re left feeling uncertain about how to move forward. The opening line to Dante’s Divine Comedy is often quoted as the quintessential metaphor for this “crisis:”
“In the middle of the journey of life I found myself in a dark woods where the right way was lost.”
- Dante Alighieri
As this midlife reckoning takes place, it can feel pretty scary and overwhelming, like a rug is being pulled out from under you. But, this can actually be an incredibly creative and exciting transition. And, it is a perfectly normal phase of adult psychological development.
Midlife marks the entrance into what Carl Jung (the founder of analytical psychology) called ”the second half of life.” The first half of life is concerned with turning outward and establishing the ego to navigate the world. It involves a lot of social striving, professional goals, and focus on external recognition. There is nothing wrong with this… It’s a natural part of our psychological development. However, it causes a split within our psyche. In establishing our persona - or the image our ego presents to the world - we push rejected aspects of ourselves we don’t feel are acceptable or useful into the dark, where they become part of what Jung called “the shadow.” I will discuss persona and shadow in a later post, but for example, perhaps you only received love or recognition when you did things well, so you became a perfectionist (persona) who feels shame when you make mistakes. Thus, ignorance becomes a quality in your shadow. You might have been taught that you should put taking care of people ahead of your own needs, so you form a persona around being helpful and regard prioritizing your own needs as selfish (the shadow).
“The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego, the second half is going inward and letting go of it.”
- Carl Jung
At some point, in the second half of life, we start longing to reclaim the lost parts of ourselves so that we can become more balanced, authentic and whole. Jung believed that reclaiming this wholeness is the purpose of the second half of our lives. As we become conscious of the persona and the shadow we undergo a process of integration that he called Individuation. This process can be supported by working with symbols, archetypes, dreams, and active imagination (all of which I will discuss in future posts). Far from being a stagnant time or one devoid of meaning, Jung regarded the second half of life as offering the greatest potential for our growth and self realization.
The so-called “mid-life crisis” is our initiation into this phase. The nagging emptiness many of us feel at some point in midlife can be thought of as our heart, or our soul, calling us into deeper relationship with ourselves and beckoning us into this self realization process.
While the work requires a great deal of courage, commitment and openheartedness, it is well worth it, because the reward is nothing short of our power and our freedom. From the position of wholeness, we move out of a reactive way of being (shaped by what others think and old patterns) into a creative way of approaching life that comes from deep within us. We truly become capable of creating the life we really want.
And that is why your midlife “crisis” is actually a good thing!