Mid-Life Crisis?

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0 height="100%"><tr> <td valign="top" width=200 BGCOLOR="#006633" TEXT="#F7F7FF" background="001d6c00ddvuru.jpg"> <div> <IMG SRC="1dab6780.jpg" border=0 width="182" height="120" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> </td> <td valign="top" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#0066FF" FACE="Arial" ><B>Walmer Baptist Church</B></FONT><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#333399" FACE="Arial" >    </FONT> |     <FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" ><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Walmer Baptist Church"><U><U><IMG SRC="01a581f0.gif" border=0 width="88" height="31" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></U></U></A></FONT></div> <div>                                                   </div> <div> Mid-Life Crisis?</div> <bR> <div> By Revd Sean Michael Carter<FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT></div> <bR> <div> © Copyright Revd Sean Michael Carter. This article may not be reproduced without written permission. </div> <bR> <div> <B>Mid-Life Crisis</B></div> <bR> <bR> <div> I recently had a lady come to me for counselling because she felt she was having a mid-life crisis. She was approaching her fortieth birthday. The counselling sessions prompted a suggestion from her for me to write an article on the subject so I decided I would, referring to her as Anne. (This is not the client’s real name and is used to protect her identity.)</div> <bR> <div> It is not uncommon for people to go through a mid-life crisis. Such a phenomena can occur in the third or fourth decade of life where quite a high percentage of people experience a mid-life trauma to varying degrees. Some experience it mildly, for others it is a far more drastic time.</div> <bR> <div> The woman concerned was going through a time of intense personal evaluation. Frightening and disturbing thoughts were going through her mind. She was beginning to ask who she really was as a person and what was the point of her life. She was in a situation where she couldn’t express what she was feeling to those closest to her. These anxieties were producing an uncomfortable separation between her and her loved ones at a time when support and understanding were needed.</div> <bR> <div> There can be various triggers that cause such feelings. Menopause, children leaving home, the "sandwich" of caring for both parents and children. Some women can navigate these periods without a traumatic psychological "crisis." Some cannot. For Anne it was a difficult time.</div> <bR> <div> During such periods some people abuse  alcohol or indulge in egregious consumption, believing the  acquisition of unusual or expensive items such as clothing, sports cars, jewellery, gadgets, tattoos, motorbikes, etc will soothe and solve their feelings. Such measures give us a spurt of feeling good but they are not a long term solution and it usually ends in depression, especially if the person has spent more than they earn and ended up in debt. They feel worse. Anne had got into a lot of debt trying to buy her way out of the feelings she was having. </div> <bR> <div> A mid-life crisis can be a time of self doubt and disenchantment with everything familiar and stable. The first step to helping Anne was to get to the root cause of her anxieties. There are four major enemies that can plague a person during this stressful period.</div> <bR> <div> <B>1. Your own body. </B></div> <div> As people get older, their stamina decreases, wrinkles appear on the face and the hair starts to grey. Our metabolism slows down and often it is harder to maintain the ideal weight we once were. The changes produced by ageing are not pleasant.</div> <bR> <div> In a society that equates human worth with youth and beauty, it is not surprising that so many people, especially women, find the ageing process stressful. Anne felt a sense of personal devaluation as day by day she felt she could see her youthful good looks fading everytime she looked in the mirror. The fear of old age, sickness and death being only a couple of decades away hit her hard. These thoughts were creating a tremendous emotional reverberation leading to her feeling quite down about life in general.</div> <bR> <div> <B>2. Your Work</B></div> <div> The second enemy a person can face during such a time is their career. Some people begin to resent their work and can feel trapped in the field they have chosen. This was certainly true of Anne. She was a professional person but wished she had chosen another field. She had started to think that many of her dreams and plans for her career would not be fulfilled and that she would spend her years up until retirement in a job that she no longer enjoyed. This caused resentment in her because she realised life’s brevity and did not want to squander a single day of it, but the financial demands of raising a family at the same time gave her little choice but to continue her work. </div> <bR> <div> <B>3.Family</B></div> <div> The stormy time of self doubt and introspection can be devastating to a marriage. A person can become angry and depressed and channel and project their frustrations onto their partner falsely believing they are the cause of the way they feel. The gradual change in Anne's personality and behaviour was causing significant problems. She and her partner were constantly arguing.</div> <bR> <div> <B>4. God</B></div> <div> Anne did not believe in God, yet through a strange manipulation of logic she blamed any supposed creator for all of her troubles. In return she felt abandoned and unloved by ‘any such being called God.’</div> <bR> <div> <B>So, what was the answer?</B></div> <bR> <div> A mid-life crisis has a predictable beginning and a predictable end. It is a relatively short-term age related time of transition. The good news is that it is not a permanent trap that holds a victim captive. Rather, it is a door which we must all pass through and from which we can emerge. Normality will return, unless we make some disruptive mistakes in a desperate to attempt to cope with how we are feeling. It can be disastrous to make life changing decisions at such a time. I counselled Anne to not make any big changes in her life at that time.</div> <bR> <div> We need to realise it is the way we are thinking that determines how we feel. It is a simple but important truth that many people do not realise, that there is no such thing as a feeling without a thought.  On average we have 50,000 thoughts a day. If those thoughts are negative about where we are in life, then we will feel worse. Anne had to re-align her value system and be shown how negative and disruptive thinking patterns had led to her feeling that way.</div> <bR> <div> To state it succinctly, a mid-life crisis is often more severe for those whose belief’s and values reflect the contemporary values of our society. For Anne, the mid-life crisis represented a day of reckoning because of a life-time of confused values. Her sense of self worth and personal esteem was entirely built around how she looked. She wanted to regain her youthfulness. Our worth as human beings is far more than how we look or how old we are. A Christian understanding of what it means to be human is that we are created with a specific role and purpose in the fabric of the universe, by a creator whose ultimate expression towards us is one of love and respect. Our creator calls us to become more authentically human as we seek to be a force for good in this world. It is who we are and what we are becoming that is central to a Christian understanding of human worth.  It is good to keep physically fit and healthy and eat a balanced diet and so on, but when it boils down to it our looks are just that, mere window dressing. Our sense of worth should not be based upon them. If it is our self esteem crumbles as they begin to fade with the passing of time. Anne was taught how to think differently about herself.    </div> <bR> <div> Well, if Anne didn't believe in God then it was a waste of time and energy blaming him so she should stop doing that. If she did in fact have a faith, then it was a time to examine exactly what she believed and why. A  person does not mourn the loss of their youth, for example, if they honestly believe that life is full of unlimited potentialities and that our existence does not end at death. We survive our own funerals. The physical dies but our spirit survives. At my suggestion Anne is now reading certain works of philosophy and Christian spirituality that to use her words she is finding ‘incredibly enlightening.’ She plans to attend a Christian Alpha course soon.</div> <bR> <div> There are many dimensions to reality. In a secular society people become locked into the physical reality and ignore their development as human beings. Anne's old habits of thinking about herself and her life are changing as she realised that she had locked herself into a mental and emotional prison because of the expectations and values of a shallow society. All along she had the keys to unlock this mental and emotional prison and enter a bright new world. She just needed someone to turn the light on so she could see where the keys were in the dark. Christ is turning on the light and setting her free!</div> <bR> <div> In life in general and with her career Anne was in search of an undefined dream and goal and felt a deep sense of remorse for goals not accomplished . I suggested she started the Compass Journey. This has helped her to define how she wants to use the gift of life she has been given. It revealed that deep down there was a lack of self confidence that caused her to fear to make the changes to improve her life. She now has a new surge of genuine confidence and is now re-training whilst continuing her present work and is now looking forward to a whole new career. She and her husband have both recieved counselling and their relationship is back on an even keel.</div> <bR> <div> Anne has started a life diary listing all the things she wants to do, places she wants to see, and things she wants to achieve along with a step by step plan as to how she can accomplish them. To quote her, “I have never been happier. I am optimistic about the future and am enjoying each day and moment of life. I never realised that Christian teaching could help people so much. I want to know more.” Good for you. Go girl!  </div> <bR> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id24.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Inspirational and Spirituality Section"><U><IMG SRC="019581f0.gif" border=0 width="88" height="31" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></U></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Walmer Baptist Church"><U><IMG SRC="01a581f0.gif" border=0 width="88" height="31" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></U></A></div> <bR> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>