Understanding Midlife Transitions, Finding Purpose and Moving Forward
12 October – written by Katrin Kemmerzehl – Blog
Have you ever looked at your life and wondered how you ended up here?
Perhaps, from the outside, things seem reasonably settled. You may have a job, a relationship, a family or a home. You care about the people in your life and appreciate what you’ve achieved. Yet somewhere inside, something doesn’t quite feel right.
You might find yourself wondering, “Is this really what I want?” or “I’ve spent so long doing what I thought I was supposed to do. What do I actually want for myself?”
Perhaps you feel restless without knowing what you’d like to change. The things that once excited you may no longer hold the same appeal. Maybe you miss feeling hopeful about the future, or find yourself wondering when life started to feel more like something to manage than something to enjoy.
You might even feel guilty for wanting something to be different, especially when you have a lot to be grateful for. So why aren’t you feeling more content?
Sometimes, these feelings are connected to a particular part of life. Your relationship may have changed, or you may be wondering whether you’ve grown in different directions.
Perhaps work no longer feels as meaningful as it once did, or you’ve spent years working towards something only to find that it hasn’t brought the fulfilment you expected.
Family life and the choices we make around it can bring their own questions. Perhaps you’re wondering whether you want children, feel content with your decision not to have them, or find that life has taken a different direction than you expected.
If you have children, you might be adjusting to them becoming more independent, or finding that caring for others has left little time to think about what you need for yourself.
Sometimes, there’s no one obvious reason for feeling this way. You may simply feel that the life you’ve built no longer fits as well as it once did, or that you’ve lost touch with what you want for yourself.
These questions can come up at different points in adulthood, whether after a birthday, a change in a relationship or career, a loss or a period of exhaustion. Sometimes they emerge gradually.
Midlife is often portrayed as a dramatic crisis, but it can be much quieter than that. Research on adult development highlights midlife as a varied period of life, with its own opportunities and challenges, rather than a stage everyone experiences in the same way (Lachman, 2015).
You might find yourself wanting to make some changes in your life, or you just want to feel more like yourself, understand what matters to you now and find a way of living that feels a little more fulfilling.
These questions can be an invitation to pause, even if you’re not yet sure what the answers might be.
The life we imagined and the life we have
One of the more challenging parts of adulthood is realising that feeling grateful and feeling uncertain can exist at the same time.
You may appreciate the life you have created while also wondering whether it still fits who you are becoming. You might care about your family and still notice a longing for more time, freedom or space for yourself. You may value your work while questioning whether it continues to give you a sense of meaning.
These mixed feelings are not unusual. Research into adult development suggests that people often become increasingly reflective as they move through adulthood, becoming more aware of their values, priorities and the gap between the life they imagined and the life they are living (Lachman, 2015; Charles & Carstensen, 2010).
Many of us grow up with an idea of how life is supposed to unfold. We absorb messages about success, relationships, family, careers and what happiness should look like. Yet real lives rarely follow a predictable path.
Sometimes the things we worked towards bring the fulfilment we hoped for. Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes circumstances change, and we find ourselves adapting to a life we did not expect.
These moments can bring a sense of loss. Not always a dramatic loss, but the slow recognition that certain possibilities may have changed.
Maybe the relationship you imagined would last forever ended, or your career developed differently than expected. Perhaps becoming a parent, not becoming a parent, or questions around family life have brought unexpected emotions.
Or you are simply noticing that the person you are today has different needs and hopes from the person you were earlier in life.
Psychologists describe these periods as part of the ongoing process of identity development. Throughout adulthood, we continue to revise our understanding of ourselves, our relationships and the meaning we make from our experiences (McAdams, 2013).
This kind of reflection is a normal part of being human.
Why These Questions Often Appear in Our 30s, 40s and Beyond
Although we often hear about a “midlife crisis”, this doesn’t reflect everyone’s experience. Midlife is a varied stage of adulthood, shaped by our experiences, relationships and changing responsibilities (Lachman, 2015).
Much of adult life involves working towards something. We may spend years building a career, developing a relationship, raising a family or trying to create a sense of security.
We make choices based on what matters to us at the time, what we hope for and what we believe will make us happy. Often, we are so focused on getting there that we have little opportunity to stop and consider how we feel about the life we’re building.
But our lives don’t always unfold as we expected. Goals that once felt important may lose some of their appeal, circumstances may take us in a different direction, and the things we thought would make us happy may turn out to be more complicated than we imagined.
Sometimes, we achieve what we set out to do and discover that our sense of fulfilment hasn’t quite followed.
As we get older, we may also become more aware that our time and energy are finite. This can change how we think about success, what we want from our relationships and how we would like to spend the years ahead.
Perhaps you’ve found yourself asking questions such as:
Have I achieved enough?
Is the life I’m living still the life I want?
Is this all there is?
What am I doing with my life?
These questions can be uncomfortable, especially when you’ve worked hard to build the life you have. They don’t necessarily mean you’ve made the wrong choices.
Sometimes, they reflect the fact that you’ve changed, or that what matters to you now isn’t quite the same as it was before.
Making space to reflect
One of the challenges of adulthood is that life can become very full. Work, family, relationships, caring responsibilities and everyday tasks can leave little time to pause and reflect.
You may sense that something has changed, or that something is missing, without quite knowing what it is.
Perhaps you’re used to responding to what needs doing, making sure other people are all right and keeping everything moving. Then, when you finally have a quiet moment, you might find yourself wondering what you enjoy, what you’re looking forward to or what you would choose if you weren’t always thinking about everyone else’s needs.
Periods of transition and change can bring these questions into focus. You may find yourself reflecting on what you’ve learned, what matters to you now and whether the life you’re living still feels right for you.
Sometimes, you know you’d like something to change without yet knowing what that change might look like.
You don’t need to have all the answers straight away. Having space to talk things through can help you understand what you’re feeling, reconnect with your own needs and begin to explore what you want from the next stage of your life.
Finding Meaning in the Next Chapter
Sometimes, the question isn’t just what you want to do next. It’s what you want your life to feel like.
Psychological wellbeing involves more than simply getting through each day. It can also mean feeling comfortable with who you are, continuing to grow as a person, having meaningful relationships and finding a sense of purpose in life (Ryff, 1989).
Wellbeing can also come from enjoying life, developing as a person and doing things that feel meaningful to you (Huta & Waterman, 2014).
Together, these ideas remind us that a satisfying life is not just about keeping everything going. It is also about feeling connected to yourself, to other people and to what matters to you.
Meaning doesn’t always come from making a major change. It might mean spending more time with people you feel comfortable around, returning to an interest you’ve neglected, having more space to rest or finding a different balance between work and the rest of your life.
For some people, meaning comes through caring for others or contributing to something beyond themselves. Psychologist Erik Erikson (1950) described generativity as an aspect of adult development, reflecting the wish to nurture and contribute in ways that matter. Later research explored how this can take many forms, from caring for family and mentoring others to sharing knowledge and contributing to a community (McAdams & de St. Aubin, 1992; Gruenewald et al., 2016).
For others, moving forward means letting go of ambitions or expectations that no longer feel right. Perhaps you want more time, less pressure, deeper relationships or greater freedom to be yourself. You might also feel sadness about choices you’ve made, opportunities that have passed or parts of life that haven’t turned out as you hoped.
These feelings deserve space, too. Accepting can help you decide where you want to direct your time and energy now. You don’t need a complete plan for the years ahead. Sometimes, it begins with noticing what gives your life meaning, what leaves you feeling depleted and what you’d like to make more room for.
Talking these questions through can help you understand yourself with greater compassion, explore what matters to you and find a way forward that feels more your own.
When Understanding Yourself Comes Later in Life
For some people, midlife brings a new understanding of themselves. This can be particularly meaningful for neurodivergent people, including those with ADHD, AuDHD or autism, who may have spent years adapting to expectations without fully understanding why some parts of life feel harder than others.
Perhaps you’ve wondered why everyday tasks take so much energy, why you need more time to recover, or why you’ve sometimes felt you were trying to put your needs last. For some, a later diagnosis brings new understanding. Others begin exploring whether neurodivergence might help make sense of their experiences.
Research into autistic adults diagnosed later in life highlights the effort involved in fitting in and the impact of having their needs misunderstood (Lai & Baron-Cohen, 2015; Leedham et al., 2020).
As life becomes busier or responsibilities grow, ways of coping that once seemed manageable may begin to feel more difficult to sustain. Looking back, you might start to recognise how much effort you’ve put into meeting expectations, even when doing so has left you feeling exhausted or disconnected from yourself.
This new understanding can bring relief, alongside sadness or frustration about the years spent trying to fit in or even blaming yourself for difficulties you couldn’t explain. With time, it can also open the door to greater self-compassion and a better understanding of what helps you feel more at ease. You can explore what feels right for you at your own pace.
Whether or not neurodivergence is part of your experience, getting to know yourself more fully can open up new possibilities for change, self-acceptance and a way of living that feels more sustainable and your own.
Finding Your Own Way
Midlife can be a time to look back on the life you’ve lived so far and consider what feels important to you now. You may find yourself questioning old expectations, rediscovering interests you’ve put aside or wondering what you’d like the next chapter of your life to look like.
Sometimes, this is a time to consider what matters to you, and explore new possibilities and choices. It can also be a chance to understand yourself a little better, look at your life from a different perspective and discover what you want for the years ahead.
Having some space to pause and reflect can help you make sense of what you’re feeling and see things more clearly. You may begin to recognise what matters to you, what no longer feels right or what you’d like to approach differently.
It’s okay not to have all the answers before you begin. Talking things through is a way of finding out what those answers might be.
Counselling can offer a space for that kind of exploration. You can talk openly about what’s happening in your life, consider different perspectives and explore your thoughts and feelings at your own pace.
Together, we can make space for questions that may be difficult to put into words and help you find a way forward that feels right for you.
If you’d like to explore this, you’re very welcome to get in touch.
References
- Charles, S. T., & Carstensen, L. L. (2010). Social and emotional aging. Annual Review of Psychology, 61, 383–409.
- Erikson, E. H. (1950). Childhood and Society. W. W. Norton & Company.
- Gruenewald, T. L. et al. (2016). The Baltimore Experience Corps Trial: Enhancing generativity via intergenerational activity engagement in later life. The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, 71(4), 661–670.
- Huta, V., & Waterman, A. S. (2014). Eudaimonia and its distinction from hedonia: Developing a classification and terminology for understanding conceptual and operational definitions. Journal of Happiness Studies, 15(6), 1425–1456.
- Lachman, M. E. (2015). Mind the gap in the middle: A call to study midlife. Research in Human Development, 12(3–4), 327–334.
- Lai, M. C., & Baron-Cohen, S. (2015). Identifying the lost generation of adults with autism spectrum conditions. The Lancet Psychiatry, 2(11), 1013–1027.
- Leedham, A., Thompson, A. R., Smith, R., & Freeth, M. (2020). “I was exhausted trying to figure it out”: The experiences of females receiving an autism diagnosis in middle to late adulthood. Autism, 24(1), 135–146.
- McAdams, D. P. (2013). The redemptive self: Stories Americans live by (Rev. ed.). Oxford University Press.
- McAdams, D. P., & de St. Aubin, E. (1992). A theory of generativity and its assessment through self-report, behavioral acts, and narrative themes in autobiography. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62(6), 1003–1015.
- Ryff, C. D. (1989). Happiness is everything, or is it? Explorations on the meaning of psychological well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57(6), 1069–1081.
Katrin Kemmerzehl
I am a qualified counsellor in Newcastle upon Tyne.
Please get in touch if you’d like to arrange a consultation.