Archive for year: 2015

What on earth is a midlife crisis? What is midlife come to that?

Well, when it comes to timings, in theory at least, it has to be happening later these days. In previous generations people were lucky to live to 60, then the 30s would have been midlife. Now as we are all moving towards living to the magic 100 the 50s and 60s have become the new 30. In psychotherapy we are now suggesting that the people who are 60 and over are about 20 years younger than the previous generation. That is, people at 60 are doing what their parents were still doing at 40. I guess the timing of a midlife crisis is a moveable feast.

Midlife crisis is a term first coined by Elliott Jaques he suggested that it occurred somewhere between the forties to early sixties. He looked at it as being points, or periods of change and transition in life. However, there seems to be little evidence that the midlife crisis is in any way a universal phenomenon and seems more to do with the industrialised and urbanised western culture rather than the agricultural societies of Africa and China.

I have a theory that is born out of developmental psychology in the school of analytical psychotherapy. It is this…

… at around the age 3 to 4 most of us have set our gender role and identity. By this age we understand the concepts of male, female, mother, father, brother, sister and so on and we understand where we fit in these patterns. We have also developed internal working models, or inner concepts, that enable us to make sense of our percepts, or what we perceive to be out there. A concept is like a box full on information that explains things. So in the mother box will be all the information that we have gathered about what a mother is. So, when we see those things ‘out there’ we know what they are. We have concept boxes for things, people, roles, talents etc.

I guess it is fairly obvious that if the things that end up in the concept boxes where mixed up we may have some odd ideas. Let’s say that when we were gathering information about mothers, to fill our mother concept box, our mother was always beating us with a stick, then we are unlikely to be able to perceive a woman out there as a mother, unless she is carrying a stick and beating people with it. It also follows that when we grow and become a mother we might feel that beating people with sticks is a part of the deal that we have to do to be a real mother. Anyway, I digress.

After our basic concepts have been established at around the age of 4 we enter what is termed the ‘latent’ period. This is where our focus moves from being self-centred to attempting to build and understand relationships. This phase is also termed ‘socialisation’. It is not until we reach adolescence that the early concepts gathered at 4 years are re-examined, re-evaluated and, if required, re-built.

It is in adolescence that we challenge all the basis assumptions that we took on early in life. This also means challenging the beliefs of our society, religion, culture, family and so on. Often this includes experimentation with various versions of our-self until we find one that feels comfortable, that we can own into adult life. Growing your hair down to your knees, or dying it green, or hanging your face with cutlery, or getting tattooed, travelling, experiencing and experimenting are all a part of the adolescent phase. It seems to me that those people who don’t go through the rebellion of adolescence, those that do not question the current order and challenge their early concepts are vulnerable to a mid life crisis.

When people have a mid life crisis, go ‘off the rails’ or ‘lose the plot’ they are normally doing things that they would normally have done in adolescence. Their behaviour often appears out of place belonging in adolescence not in middle age. We can all be vulnerable to midlife crisis because we all, or at least most of us, failed to do all that we could have done in the adolescent phase.

Avoiding a midlife crisis

Most people that I see who are in midlife crisis are those who feel stuck where they are and are seeking change and new experience. The mother when the last child leaves home. The man in his mid fifties who still has a mortgage to pay and children at Uni who need supporting. Often it is those who have had enough, they have run out of steam, motivation and energy. Over all they need some fun, excitement and new experience.

To avoid a crisis make sure that you are enjoying life and experiencing new things and having some fun. When we learn to express our-self and enjoy who we are and where we are, then the need to do something drastically different tends not to happen.

Be happy and have fun

Sean x

Even when we are doing nothing we are doing something. To the person who always needs to be busy, someone who meditates or simply stops long enough to enjoy the view, may be seen as a procrastinator. Yet, perhaps it’s the person who is being still and apparently doing nothing who is seeing the real world and making the breakthroughs in science art or literature.

If you break down the word Pro = forward, future… Crastinus = tomorrow

For many, procrastination simply means to delay. That does not make the person lazy they may simply be the type who considers before they act. However, that does not mean that there aren’t people who are really lazy and do as little as possible. Sometime the feeling of procrastination is an emotional barometer that tells you whether what you are doing is what you should be doing. It will help you discover what it is that you really want from your life.

Imagine that when you wake you are about to go and do something that makes you feel good. Do you have problems getting out of bed? Well no. Now, imagine that you are waking to a day full of things that you don’t want to do. Do you have problems getting out of bed? Well yes. We often see procrastination as a bad thing but it might just be that our need to procrastinate is our system trying to tell us something.

‘The sooner I fall behind, the more time I have to catch up’.
Author Unknown

In the west we tend to be driven by what is termed ‘the Protestant work ethic’. Most people work long hours to the exclusion of family, friends and their own life and fulfilment. Yet very few people actually like their work life. I work with thousands of people who wake on a Monday with the dread of another week in their workplace. They would rather be doing anything else. Procrastination does not always mean to do nothing, doing something else instead is often termed displacement.

‘Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn’t the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment’.

Robert Benchley

Displacement activity is something that you do to avoid doing what you don’t want to do, or a way of dealing with a difficult situation. For example a rabbit that is cornered and is about to be eaten by a fox and knowing there is now escape will displace this energy of fear into the activity of washing itself. Charlotte in her blog post suggests that displacement activity might actually be productive and fun.

In psychology, procrastination refers to the act of replacing more urgent actions with tasks less urgent, or doing something from which one derives enjoyment, and thus putting off impending tasks to a later time.
Wikipedia

The clue in this definition is ‘enjoyment’. The protestant work ethic goes alongside with ideas like ‘life is hard’, ‘life is earnest’ and ‘everyone has their cross to bear’. Well I don’t buy any of that, I am in the school of life should be fun and life should be fulfilling. It seems that we have no problem finding the energy to do things that we do want to do, things that make us feel good. While, those things that we don’t want to do, sap our energy and take away our motivation.

My approach to life is that when I feel the need to procrastinate or displace, I look at and enjoy the process, and at the same time I look at what I need to do with my life so that I feel engaged and connected and restore the balance between what I need to do and what I want to do. This is often described as ‘work life balance’. Ed and I will be talking about this topic in one of the, soon to be released, audio podcasts.

In the end if you are living the life that you really want the issues of procrastination and displacement do not exist because you are enjoying and fulfilling yourself in the present moment so that getting out off bed on any day, even Monday is never a problem.

‘The best way to get something done is to begin’.
Author Unknown

That comes back to what do you really, really, really want to do with your life. Until you answer this question you will be forever procrastinating and displacing. Becoming aware of when and why you procrastinate will help you answer the question of what do you really want. So there may be times when procrastination is really something we should celebrate.

I’d like to procrastinate but I can’t be bothered

Take care and live in the present
Sean x

I guess that it had to happen. The movie industry has hit another all time low and, we now have Fifty Shades the movie. I decided that it was timely to revisit the blog that I wrote at the time of the publication of the first book and reading the movie reviews it would seem that the movie would appear to be as bad as the book, hey ho, and two more to come, goodie.

Fifty Shades has a Facebook page that shows nine million likes and that makes me, and my views on Tantra, Sex, Orgasm and Meditation at least, a potential minority. My books, courses and therapy are all about people discovering themselves in the most positive way.

My working world encompasses therapy for those who are both the subject of sexual abuse and domestic violence, as well as dealing with the perpetrators. The victims are mainly women though men are also victims of sexual abuse and violence. Just as the perpetrators are mainly men, women can also be violent and sexual abusers.

For me Fifty Shades asks us all a question – “What is it that turns you on?” From where I see it we seem to be at a point in the evolution of human consciousness where we are confused between eroticism, violence and love. The neurological issue is that the centres in the brain that are activated by pleasure are also those that are activated by pain and here the confusion begins. Unless you are awake to the inner workings of your mind/brain you can create unhappiness for your self and for others.

Inside your mind/brain there are a millions of concepts. A concept is like a box full of information. It is your internal collection of facts and ideas, normally termed a paradigm that enables you to explain to yourself what you experience in the world, these are termed our percepts.

The law of perception is that you cannot have a percept without a concept. So in your head there is a dog box (Concept) that contains all that you have learned about dogs. When you see a dog (Percept) you can look in the dog box and know that what you are experiencing is a dog. You know it is not a cat because it doesn’t fit into your cat box.

Among all the concept boxes that you have there is your sex box. What is in your box? Let us say that in your experience rice pudding becomes a part of your sexual experience you may find that rice pudding has slipped into your sex box(Concept) so that you cannot feel sexy or become eroticised unless rice pudding is involved in the act (Percept).

When people attend psychotherapy the work is about removing unwanted things from concept boxes or putting missing items in. This maybe more obvious in the common problems of stress, confidence, phobias and so on, it is commonly true of your sex box.
It would seem that according to 50 shades, many people have violence, domination and submission in their sex box, nine million at least, according to Facebook!

As a therapist I would say that if you are turned on by 50 shades have a look in your own sex box and ask yourself why? If you need to dominate others why is this, where did it come from? You certainly did not come out of the womb that way, you learned that behaviour and pleasure. In the same way if you need to be sexually or physically dominated and become submissive, or if violence is related to you satisfying your sexuality, from my point of view, you probably have a problem. Perhaps a few sessions of psychotherapy would help you resolve what is, really, a disorder.

As far as the movie goes the reviews would suggest that it is as badly written, boring and wooden as the original book.

Take care

Sean x