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IMO the term is so diluted as to be meaningless. Burnout isn't a mid-life crisis. Changing your career doesn't necessarily mean you're having a mid-life crisi
by BaseballPhysics 3y ago
IMO the term is so diluted as to be meaningless.
Burnout isn't a mid-life crisis.
Changing your career doesn't necessarily mean you're having a mid-life crisis.
Changing your personal circumstances doesn't necessarily imply a midlife crisis.
Every definition I know of includes a sense of existential angst, a feeling of regret, of lost potential, of questioning identity, of a fear of mortality.
But simply realizing you're unhappy in your life or circumstances and want to change them isn't itself indicative of a mid-life crisis by any meaningful definition I'm aware of.
- OO000oo 3y agoYeah I think everything in your comment is pretty understandable and I probably wouldn’t trust someone who claims to have not experienced nearly all of those feelings to some extent.
- jkhdigital 3y agoHadn’t heard that list of “symptoms” before but… I guess that means I am in a midlife crisis at 39.
- solumunus 3y agoI think it’s when those feelings completely break you that you’re in the crisis stage.
- NovaDudely 3y agoThe lost potential is a key one I have seen. The idea that your youth is in the rear view mirror and that you didn't do all the things you thought you would do.
- Scarblac 3y agoI was in my 40s and starting thinking more in terms of how much time I had left rather than what I wanted to do at some unspecified "later". I also had young kids and a depressed jobless wife, so I wasn't completely free to do what I wanted and felt trapped. Then my father died pretty young, from a cruel cancer, and that amplified it all.
- chasd00 3y ago> The idea that your youth is in the rear view mirror and that you didn't do all the things you thought you would do. Youth is wasted on the young. It’s such a shame.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- TeMPOraL 3y ago> Every definition I know of includes a sense of existential angst, a feeling of regret, of lost potential, of questioning identity, of a fear of mortality. Oh, then that one started for me around 30. I've successfully managed to bottle up those thoughts for now, which is probably why I'm facing a mother of all burnouts right now.