Feeling Stuck in Midlife?
Here's Seven Ways to Cope with Challenges in the Midlife Transition
Midlife, like every other life stage, offers opportunities for growth, renewal, and evolving into your strongest self. With growth, comes unavoidable growing pains that Thomas Wentworth coins ‘lessons of faith and beauty’ in this quote:
How many lessons of faith and beauty we should lose, if there were no winter in our year!
This metaphor serves as a reminder that without navigating challenges, we cannot appreciate the powerful and beautiful insights that can flow from life.
In Who You Were Meant to Be: A Guide to Finding or Recovering Your Life's Purpose, Lindsay Gibson, writes:
‘Different people have unfulfilled dreams in different areas. Some people
know who they were meant to be in the career field, and may even have pursued
it successfully. But they may never have defined what they needed for real
happiness in their relationships. Other people might feel very good about their
marriage and yet be disappointed over their unsatisfying career. In some cases,
there is dissatisfaction in many or all areas of life. It is important for you to
identify in which areas of your life you do not feel you are filling your needs.
When you think about some of the challenges midlifers contend with, does Lindsay’s words ring true for you?
The challenges you’ll encounter in midlife will flow from your circumstances because no two people, and no two journeys are the same. But there are similar threads weaved into the midlife experience that can surface for many.
Let’s see - have you encountered any of the following?
Physical and Cognitive Decline: You contend with the inevitable physical and cognitive challenges of growing older.
Career Shifts: Some retire at this life stage and take on less responsibility, while others pivot careers to better align with their deeper passions and interests.
Role Adjustments: You are adapting to changing caretaking roles. Some midlifers take on more responsibilities now, such as caring for grandchildren or ageing parents.
Inevitable Mortality: Midlife is a time when mortality comes into sharper focus. The realities of grief and loss draw closer to home, particularly when are dealing with ageing parents or older family members who pass on.
The Empty Nest: Midlifers can overlap with the empty nest as children leave home to pursue their independence, leaving you to contend with adjusting to your shifting role as parent.
The Midlife crisis is something we often hear about when regrets about unfulfilled dreams and goals surface at this point in our lives.
Ultimately, the gremlins you’ll wrestle in midlife, and how you respond to these, depend on several factors.
I recently attended a helpful workshop about stress, resilience, and wellbeing. In the sessions, they walked us through a stress-vulnerability model that illustrates how to gauge your stress threshold by noticing your line of vulnerability. We all have a different capacity to cope with stress that's determined by our life context and our unique circumstances.
Your ability to cope with stress will be influenced by factors such as:
Childhood and traumatic or challenging life experiences;
Views about ageing;
Financial security or vulnerability;
State of health;
Quality of one’s relationships.
The more intense the stressors you deal with, or the greater the number of challenges you face at the same time, can bring you closer to your line of vulnerability. This places your wellbeing at risk.
I thought this stress model was a simple but a nifty way to track your wellbeing. It can help you notice when you are moving closer to your threshold of risk so you can ramp up your efforts for self-care and coping. The more things you do to reduce your stress and build resilience will pull you away from that line of vulnerability. For example, seek support to help you reduce the stressors to get you back below your line of vulnerability.
The transition to midlife offers an ideal opportunity to take stock of your life and re-examine, reframe, and heal parts of you that still need restoration. At the same time, it can be stressful to take an honest, vulnerable look at your life, particularly when you look at it through the lens of time, regrets and missed opportunities. To make the needed shifts to adapt and evolve into your highest self can free you to enjoy your midlife chapter with newfound freedom.
So, how can you shift away from your threshold of vulnerability?
Below are seven suggestions to cope with challenges in midlife that can help you on the journey.
View Yourself as a Work-in-Progress.
First, understand that whatever you’re feeling and experiencing is normal and embrace yourself as a work-in-progress. You're not expected to have all the answers or always feel like you should be able to cope with everything. Life gets tough, and sometimes the sheer number of stressors we face simultaneously can be overwhelming. It's okay to acknowledge that.
Cultivate Regular Introspection.
Second, engage in regular introspection to track your growth and well-being, using a tool like the line of vulnerability. With midlifers juggling up to eight life roles, most days can feel like you’re on a rollercoaster, like you’re speeding through the highs and lows of everyday life. Midlife gently nudges you to carve out time to regain inner stillness.
Find Ways To Cope with Stress.
There are a variety of free tools available online shared by trained psychologists to help us cope with stress. For example, simple things like grounding exercises where you use your five senses to bring you back to a state of calm when you're feeling overwhelmed.
Practice Reciprocal Support.
Know your strengths and limits and understand that asking for help is a sign of strength, not weakness. It can draw you into community with others. We don't need to carry our burdens in isolation. We’re surrounded by communities that can serve one another. We can support one another with our unique strengths and skills.
Refine Your Inner Circle.
Choose people for your inner circle who can hold space for you to be your whole self. These are people who can respect healthy boundaries and cheer you on to becoming your most empowered self. They appreciate your uniqueness and in their company you feel completely safe and comfortable to fully express yourself. And this can flow both ways.
Foster a Growth Mindset.
Foster a growth mindset by choosing to view your stressors as opportunities to grow your resilience and expanding your capacity to cope. Trust yourself to take one brave, manageable step toward your goals and trials with the understanding that like a child learning to walk, you will stumble and get up and try again. And with grace, self-compassion, patience, and persistence, you can cultivate your growth and wellness.
Practice Intentional Self-Care.
Self-care is not an indulgence or luxury reserved for some. It’s a necessity, particularly when you notice yourself inching closer to your threshold of vulnerability. Build specific self-care habits to cope with life in ways that work for you. Self-care can look different for everyone. For some, it can be a regular walk to de-stress and recharge mentally and physically. For others it may be a relaxation technique such as meditation, mindfulness activities, or listening to relaxing music. For someone else it may be to attend a dance class, or simply cranking up the music in your home and playing your favourite songs. Yet for others, it might be to bake, paint, journal, or spend time with one of your favourite supportive people. The options are endless.
In other words, midlife gently nudges you to cultivate deeper qualities, such as resilience, inner strength and perseverance, as well as creativity, emotional maturity, self-determination and increased coping skills. And these can only emerge from our growing pains. I like to think of these as the nuggets of unfading beauty that flow beneath the worries of crease lines and grey hairs.
To summarise, midlife like any other life stage, will present us with inevitable challenges and opportunities for growth. But there are ways to combat these. With simple practices such as normalising challenges and developing a growth mindset, regular introspection, offering and receiving support, refining your inner circle, and practicing regular self-care you’ll be well on your way to flourishing in midlife.
If you enjoyed this article and would like to more support to cope with the midlife transition, click on the link for a sneak peek into my signature self-paced e-course, The Midlife Roadmap: Six Guideposts to Thrive on Purpose in midlife. Or, visit my digital home, the www.midlifehours.com. Or simply join my Substack mailing list to be notified when I drop my next article.
As always, take care, and travel gently on your midlife journey!
Glynis / The Midlife Introvert