Quarter/Mid/Late life Crisis Discussion

[slant]

Hello everyone,

This year I have been going through a quarter life crisis and subsequent transformation of my life. I am still reeling from it. I feel very disoriented, and though the changes in my life I've made were both necessary and positive changes for me, it is still difficult to adjust to so much change at once.

I am interested in hearing about other people's experiences with these developmental stages in life; I think for me 'crisis' was even a misleading term because it was really just an awakening and transformation of my self and who I wanted to be.

So what have your experiences of this been like, what happened, what did you do, how did you cope, how did it wind up? Telling it as a story is highly encouraged, as much detail as possible. I do not know a lot of people in my life yet who have reached these stages so I just would like to hear about it in a discussion format.

Thank you.

 

[David54]

ok. . to begin with, I never thought I would make it to 35. That was the age at which you became part of the establishment, and I certainly wasn't that. 25 was not a thing back when I was 25, at least if it was I don't remember. . I've always wondered if that was the minds way of shielding you from certain truths. . no memory of it. . of course it is. When I made it and I didn't turn into an ad executive or some other establishment troll I just was 35. . 40 was a tough one. Half your life is over. What did you accomplish? nothing. .I felt very old and pointless. no longer identified as part of anything cool or moving even, I was just 40 and getting older. 50. . eh. . 60. .now that was tough. . old, no other way to put it, just old. On the downhill side of everything and irrelevant to life, the universe and pretty much everything. Still, nothing to "show" for 60 years on the planet .
At each stage wrestling with the same things I do today. . identity, understanding.. . community, what do I believe and more importantly, why. . no stable long term relationship, though plenty of short ones along the way, each more messed up than the one before. .love, what is it, how do I get it, why is it so hard, etc, etc. .
At each stage asking WTF is the point of any of this. . why am I here, and now what???
welcome to the stages of life. I wish I could say there are answers, and maybe there are, I just don't get it.
so now at 65. . .shit, that's really fucking old. .asking the same questions, and seeking the same answers, searching for meanning

 

[JustPhil]

Good topic @slant

For me, my quarter life crisis was more a stepping off the path. Not staying true to myself I would say. I followed and was content to be led in life by others. I felt there was something missing, but instead of looking within, which I think i should have done, I looked for answers externally. I partied hard and did what all my friends were doing (who predominantly were extraverts) because I had never been given the right to think for myself growing up.

I think this "misstep" caused me a lot of problems in that I was forcing myself to be someone else. "Fake it till you make it" is a fitting quote, but no matter how hard I tried I could not "make it". I thought looking inside for answers was not the answer and so never looked within. This was in a large part due to the anxiety and depression I encountered when I did so. Something that made me feel bad could not possibly have any benefit to me!

In the end I was stretched out like a rubber band, in my own mind forcing it to be the shape I thought it should be. But it was unnatural and about eight years ago I paid a very painful price for not looking within and coming to terms with who I truly was. I thought that eight years ago was my midlife crisis but I was wrong on that count. My mid life crisis came on the 5th November 2016. This was the day I felt a shift, I felt the world tilt a little, and my perception of the world and my place within it become a little clearer.

My anxiety and depression lifted as a sense of "rightness" washed over me. I suppose I felt that I had got to the point I needed to get to and that the reason for the anxiety and depression were no longer needed. I'll never be sure, but that day is indelibly etched within my mind. It is like I was reborn anew. You'd think this would be a great day for me (it was, believe me) but it led me into facing a whole lot of emotions that I had probably shut out of my mind for 25 or more years. I thought I was going crazy. The doctors would not do anything for me, and all these feelings and emotions were crashing around me, into me. I couldn't deal with them at all and it made life difficult for about four months. Finally I got a handle on them at least so I could sit back and look at them objectively.

Since then it has been a period of growth for me. A fifteen year relationship ended (in a large part due to the turmoil within me) and so I was left alone soon after. Although it sounds like bad luck, it is possibly the best thing that could have happened to me, as I was a giver in the relationship and would not have looked within as much if we had stayed together. My partner was not about feelings (possibly an ISTP) and so it would have only created further tensions.

So I have spent the last two and a bit years looking inside and in furthering myself, which in all honesty, should have been done when I was 20 - 25.

I'm still very much a work in progress. Ignoring who I was for so many years has had a profound effect on who I am now, but I look on it positively for the most part. It has defined me, the mistakes have made me a stronger person. I have learn and continue to learn from my mistakes. Deep inside I probably have a regret of "wasting" 20 - 30 years, but its too late, I can't turn back time. I can just make the most of what time I have left to me.

It's weird to put something that was so profound into only a couple of paragraphs, but I don't think I could ever put down in words the emotions I felt growing up, and the emotions I felt directly after 5th November, and the contentment I have been moving towards since that date.

 

[Cornerstone]

Maybe those of us who have had a quarter life crisis have actually had a midlife crisis but just don't know it yet.

 

[David54]

I wish I could say that somewhere the answers become clear. That when you reach a certain juncture in life you are granted access to the keys to the vault of truth and understanding. Maybe there is for some, but apparently not for me.
I think that life is a journey with some rest stops along the way. .When I look back, the path is all too clear, and therein I think lay the idea of life crisis. I look back and see what I should have done, what I could have done that would make my current life so much better. But would it? There were reasons I said yes to this and no to that. When I look backwards I don't have the reasons for those decisions. All I see is the path I chose to take. .

 

[java]

Good thread!

I think I've had some sort of quarter life crisis as well. And like you, I think it is still going on, or at least, it still has an effect on me. But the shock, the sense of emergency that would make it a "crisis", toned down a lot. What felt like a storm prompting me to make many decisions quickly eventually transformed into a slow sailing on calm waters, leading me to yet unknown destinations, but doing so in a much less distressing way.

As for what happened, here is the story.

When I graduated from university, I started looking for employment. I was focused on that for a while, and when I've found work in my field, I slowly started to cement my schedule around that. Life resumed at a normal pace, and days would all look the same, but for a while, at least a year, I was quite content. Perhaps I was taking rest in that comfort. Then, the crisis came. All of a sudden, I was confronted with too many questions at once, the chiefest of which was "What am I doing with my life?"

I was out of university, I was working... now what? I had no goals ahead of me other than the ones I would decide to make for myself. And I've found that I didn't know what I wanted. Somehow, it made me very panicked and anxious. I would stay up at night, wondering about myself and my priorities, wondering if I had neglected some areas of my life, especially when it comes to other people and socialization, or if I had been true to my wants, but was just a weird fruit in the basket. Was I lying to myself, was I refusing to see what I truly wanted? Why was I such a social recluse? It's obviously not normal, people don't live like this. Why was I staying away from others? Was I too stubborn to accept that I needed people in my life? Yet, why does it seem difficult to stay interested in people? Shouldn't this come naturally? How can we suddenly feel disinterest in someone we got along with the day before, despite no action of them causing a disappointment?

This state of unrest lasted several months, and it was the first time I felt something lasting and haunting me over such a long time, without any semblance of resolution on the horizon. But I kept doing my thing, I tried to stay grounded, even if at times, the anxiety would return. I learned to manage this anxiety, by letting go, by focusing on what I had, on discipline, on the good parts, on the things I enjoyed, and I was able to put my existential questions aside, long enough to calm down, at least. I've read alot about the stories of others, some having it worse than me, others having it better. I realized I was young, I realized I had time to evolve, to learn to know myself better, and that this wasn't an issue of survival, that I didn't need to fix this overnight, unlike what my first instincts somehow told me.

Overall, I think my perspective slowly adjusted, and my problems stopped looking like immediate threats. Now, most of these questions still remain unsolved, but I feel like I'm expanding my world socially and finding out, piece by piece, what I truly want. I'm learning new things about myself, things that sometimes bring up more questions than answers, but things that make me feel more human and more normal. I may have a lot on my plate and a lot to figure out, and it is happening slowly, but for now it feels like progress. I think sometimes, it is when we reach a milestone that we realize the distance we've walked. In a way, the crisis turned into a journey.

 

[slant]

It's weird, it's not even a crisis. It was in October of 2018 that's when this all started. It's just like

I've done so much in this last year that my brain hasn't had time to catch up or something

I look at myself and how I am and I think about what I was doing a year ago today and I don't know that person

I've become someone. A person. I was not a person before, I was living to live not to exist. And those are different things. Just fueling my base needs and for the most part doing anything I could to escape reality, to be anyone but me, to exist anywhere but where I was.

And at that juncture in the midst of depression and complex PTSD I was just... There. Floating.

I didn't know how easy it was to be a person. To create and be part of a community. To create art and to mingle with people and learn from people and hear their stories and within learning about them, discovering things about you.

I used to wonder how certain people made being human look so easy. Like that was a reality of my headspace that I didn't even feel connected with my humanity. I was like an input in a computer, there was something missing.

And now that drive. That human spirit. It Burns in me so deep and so hot that I don't think I could get rid of it if I tried. Even for the past couple of months I've been so terrified that I might lose everything that I've build and go back to merely being an object. But I know now that it's not even possible. I have embraced the path of development, growth and change and I'm fine with it.

"Conceptual paths wide open
I'm scared to death
Existential weight no longer holds you back
Conceptual paths wide open
I'm scared to death
I'm ready for the future
I'm ready for what happens next
If you don't know where you're gonna sleep tomorrow
You can get what you want
Don't spend your life
Paying rent to a slum Lord"

 

[David54]

But I know now that it's not even possible. I have embraced the path of development, growth and change and I'm fine with it.

then you have grown beyond your years. . I would call this more of an awakening then a crisis. .

 

[Wyote]

then you have grown beyond your years. . I would call this more of an awakening then a crisis. .

I think they are really the same thing when we are talking about them, it's just that people have no idea how the fuck to re-orient themselves during this period of chaos.
So the result can be a complete burn down to the ground in both negative and positive ways.
One way or another, your life is getting disrupted because it must change.
It's sort of like an integration of all the new input you've absorbed in your soul and this new set of "rules" necessitates change.