Why do people often have a ‘mid-life crisis,’ and is it just a fancy way of saying they’ve hit a point where they finally realize they’ve been doing everything wrong?
In: Other
A lot of people already mentioned the “you realize you have fewer years left ahead part”, and although that’s a huge part of it, it’s a little more complicated than that.
What it really is is a *combination* of many events that leads to a person struggling with their own identity and a transition period of self reflection and questioning who they are. This *can* be advanced age, but also watching friends and family get sick, pass away, or leave their lives, being unable to relate to anything current and heavy feelings of nostalgia, feelings of lack of accomplishments in the person’s life, dissatisfaction or losing their career or partner, etc, or even simply your life not working out according to your plan (which can happen as early as a person’s 20’s.)
What follows is a literal psychological crisis where the person struggles with *who they even are* as a person anymore. Some try and fill it they way most are familiar with; trying to act “young” or fall back in things that brought them comfort in their youth. But others experiment with things they either never tried or would seem “out of character”, be it clothing, hobbies, sexuality, drugs, purchases, etc.
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