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Good advice, from a 36 year old middle aged man 3 years into a midlife crisis after a massive work-related burnout event. A couple more pieces of advice from m
by sph 3y ago
Good advice, from a 36 year old middle aged man 3 years into a midlife crisis after a massive work-related burnout event.
A couple more pieces of advice from me:
* A midlife crisis has its own glacial pace. Be prepared to be upside down for a long time.
* Be prepared not to be the same person you were before. Be prepared to learn there is no turning back.
* If you're in a midlife crisis, your previous life was simply not good enough and reality has caught up to you. Go through the process, and you'll become a better person.
* Outsource your mental health during this phase to professionals. Not even your spouse might be able to accept what comes out of this reconfiguration of yours. You will probably need the help of someone that is not invested in your previous existence to hold you in this trying time.
--
3 years in, it's getting better, I miss part of my previous life, but I know who I am now, how I operate, and I won't compromise to fit someone else's mould anymore. In your childhood you had no say in how you were grown and pieced together. You had to carry whatever they had built for you until you broke down. Now is your chance to start over and do a better job at it.
Good luck!
- neilv 3y agoHow close to Breaking Bad has it gotten?
- TimesOldRoman 3y agoOn a scale from Walter White to Willy Wonka, how WW are you?
- sph 3y agoLess like Breaking Bad and more that like meme of Pablo Escobar waiting in a melancholic mood. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/pablo-escobar-waiting https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/pablo-escobar-waiting
- TimesOldRoman 3y agoI have had a couple sabbaticals, and that is me around day 12.
- postsantum 3y agoPryce and his new yellow Hummer
- rootusrootus 3y ago> 36 year old middle aged man You're not quite middle aged yet :). And 33 is way too early for a midlife crisis, surely? Maybe it's just garden variety burnout and/or depression?
- nextlevelwizard 3y agoI guess it depends on how people see their mortality. I know people who thought they'd die for sure before they hit 30. For myself 30s was only when the life started to happen.
- TeMPOraL 3y agoFunny. For me it's when it ended. And while expected lifespan is some 80+ these days, I can't help but see expected useful life span to top out at 60-ish...
- SketchySeaBeast 3y agoI expect you will probably redefine useful by the time you hit 60, or is it actually your belief that senior citizens are useless?
- TeMPOraL 3y agoProbably. Note: this is not a rational belief, just an emotion. I feel that for me, my useful lifespan ends at around 60, meaning I have less than half of that to look forward to (and all of that on a downward quality slope). Objectively, I understand that there are important roles for senior citizens, and I do enjoy the company and services provided by many of such people. Just that trying to imagine myself getting to that age fills me with despair.
- sph 3y agoIt was being a little cheeky. And if a massive burnout whose first month was having daily panic attacks and 3 years to recover is garden variety, I am afraid to know what a serious one entails ;) Depression was part of the baggage I was carrying around all my life. It's hard to say, given the state of things, but perhaps depression is one thing I was lucky to shed during this phase.
- OO000oo 3y ago38 yo male now starting to think I don’t know what a midlife crisis is.
- andsoitis 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midlife_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midlife_crisis
- coel 3y ago"Studies indicate that some cultures may be more sensitive to this phenomenon than others; one study found that there is little evidence that people undergo midlife crises in Japanese and Indian cultures, raising the question of whether a mid-life crisis is mainly a cultural construct." I thought this was interesting.
- Dalewyn 3y agoJapanese salarymen often undergo a crisis when they retire and suddenly find themselves with tons of time and nothing to do. Not exactly midlife, but it's of a similar vein.
- Aeolun 3y agoThat’s when they go into politics.
- oefnak 3y agoYou might like this article about penis stealing witches: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-the-geography-of-madness https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-the-geogra... And this one: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-crazy-like-us https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-crazy-like...
- sph 3y agoA midlife crisis is quitting your desk job to sell ice creams on the beach in the Caribbean. Getting to the point of doing it, not just thinking about it.
- layman51 3y agoMay I ask for further advice on your fourth bullet point about “outsourcing your mental health”? I understand you might need to shop around like you maybe go to a cognitive-behavioral therapist, or psychoanalyst, or buy a Transcendental Meditation (TM) course.
- operatingthetan 3y ago>or buy a Transcendental Meditation (TM) course. That's a cult, so maybe some other kind.
- sph 3y agoTalk therapy with a psychotherapist. The ones that listen and don't do much talking, not the ones that prescribe (which are called psychiatrists). If all else fails, M-x doctor. It's a thing.
- ctrlp 3y ago[flagged]
- p1esk 3y agoThink about the life your typical therapist is leading What kind of life are they leading?
- newaccount74 3y agoIt's just an anecdote, but all therapists I've met are divorced. It's probably just a coincidence, but I thought it was interesting.
- ctrlp 3y agoNot a coincidence. It's significantly more common in the profession[0]. They get divorced at a higher rate, and they recommend divorce to their clients. Therapists and psychiatrists are massively responsible for the divorce rates among boomers (the first widespread consumers of these services). Their children apparently learned nothing and are rushing headlong into the same therapy-culture that destroyed so many of their parents' marriages. [0] https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-009-9057-8 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-009-9057-8
- weregiraffe 3y agoYou are saying it like divorce is a bad thing.
- roeles 3y agoThank you so much for sharing. This makes a lot of sense right now.
- Vayl 3y agoLiterally as if I'm reading about my own life. Being the same age doesn't help :) Well put.
- boesboes 3y agoWow, 3 years, that's a long way. Congratz on making it this far and good luck on the road still ahead. 39yo here, just stopped shy of a full burn-out & after a month with a lot of confusion, crying and panic decided to hand in my notice. That helped a lot, but I'm not really well yet ~3 months in. Mainly sleep is an issue. My body seems to enjoy triggering tiny panic attacks when I'm falling asleep, which makes falling a sleep complicated >_< I've been struggeling with sleep and anger issues for many years now, but it had come to a point where I did not want to accept being angry anymore. Anger turned into crying and despair, but that is frankly progress. I got some help, it was not great, but it helped me understand a lot about myself. In the end, this gave me the courage to quit and think about life in a different way. Now I just have to figure out where to go from here. Stick with what I know and do it better or do something different entirely. Not a clue how to figure that one out yet. Anyway, thank you for sharing. It's good hearing from other people that went through similar things.
- naveens 3y agoI'm 41 and in the same place. It's been 2 months since I quit and frankly the decision was a bit of relief. Thanks for sharing and hang in there.