Who Am I Now? Navigating Midlife Transitions with Compassion
For many adults in their 40s and 50s, life can feel unexpectedly unsteady. Perhaps the children you spent decades caring for are heading to college or moving out. The house is quieter, and routines that once defined your days are gone. For both men and women, hormonal changes can significantly affect mood, sleep, concentration, and emotional regulation. This season may bring added upheaval, such as career pressure, layoffs, job dissatisfaction, or growing awareness that the path you’ve been on no longer fits. The sheer multitude of simultaneous transitions may cause emotions to surface.
You may find yourself asking questions you haven’t had time to ask before:
Who am I now? What do I want? Why do I feel anxious or sad when I should have things figured out?
Many individuals experience stress, irritability, or a sense of failure that they don’t talk about openly. However, these experiences aren’t signs of weakness; they are signs of transition. Erik Erikson, who coined the term “identity crisis,” described this stage as the tension between generativity and stagnation. When familiar roles change or fall away, many people experience:
Increased anxiety or depressive symptoms
A sense of emptiness or loss of direction
Heightened self-criticism or rumination
Relationship dissatisfaction
Why am I feeling this way and what can I do?
Let’s highlight a few of the transitions that occur during mid-life. Bringing our awareness to the complexities we are experiencing is an important part of the process.
1. Perimenopause, Menopause, and Andropause
Perhaps you are familiar with menopause, especially if you are a woman in her 50s. However, many people don’t realize that perimenopausal symptoms can begin much earlier. Among other things, the reduction in estrogen can negatively impact mood, identity, sleep, and sexual intimacy.
Men also experience mid-life hormonal changes. Andropause is a much slower decline of testosterone levels in men. Sexual dysfunction, changes to muscle mass, fatigue, and depressive symptoms may ensue.
Gentle Suggestions
See a primary care physician or naturopath to have hormone levels checked
Practice gratitude for a body that feels/works differently than before
Embrace humor as your body changes
Have compassion for your experience
2. Empty Nest
When children leave home, parents may experience disruption to their daily structure, sense of purpose, and emotional connection. This can bring grief, guilt, loneliness, or new awareness of attachment patterns. Unresolved trauma or increased emotion could surface as external distractions decrease.
Gentle Suggestions
Pick up a new (or old) hobby
Date your spouse
Journal – reflect on personal interests, goals, and values
Take care of your own physical and mental health
Become a supportive consultant to your adult child
3. Career
For many, this stage includes increased job pressure or layoffs, shifting roles, and a growing sense that the identity you’ve lived in for decades no longer fits as well as it once did. Job loss, career dissatisfaction, plateauing, fear of becoming replaceable, chronic stress, and burnout can lead to irritability, emotional withdrawal, sleep disturbances, or increased anxiety or depressive symptoms. A sense of failure or loss of purpose may be interpreted as weakness rather than as signals from the nervous system that change is required. This stage often invites one to examine how self-worth has been tied to achievement.
Gentle Suggestions
Increase emotional awareness throughout the day – How am I feeling?
Consider flexibility in identity – Who else am I?
Ask for support
Look for, and practice making, deeper connections
Why Therapy?
Midlife therapy is often less about acute crisis and more about integration. Some ways counseling can support you during this season are:
Anxiety and mood regulation
Parenting adjustments
Marital communication during transitions
Identity clarification
Healing early attachment and trauma patterns
When navigated intentionally, this stage of life holds the potential for deep healing, increased authenticity, and more grounded relationships.
Written by Novo therapist
Sarah Dubar, LMCHA