How many crisis are out there: Quarter life crisis, Mid-life Crisis...

[Tracysherm]

I think that the only people who have these age-related life-stage crises are the people who subscribe to some artificial deadlines for common life milestones. They feel "behind" with regard to a milestone that they associate with a certain age, they feel a "crisis."

I say, set your own goals for your professional and personal life, and as long as you are moving toward those goals, not going backward, not stagnating for a prolonged period, and you won't have age-related life crises. Don't measure your "success" in response to some imaginary deadline, or the age you see your peers achieving the goal. Set the goal for yourself. Even if you don't meet your own personal deadline, as long as you can see that you're still moving in the right direction, you're not going to feel like a failure. You'll only feel a "crisis" if you are stuck in the same place and not moving, or you're going backward, away from your goal.



Also, keep in mind that as soon as the media or pop psychology comes up with a new phenomenon, like a life stage crisis, people who never perceived any such crisis will jump onto the bandwagon once they've read about it. I remember reading the book Passages by Gail Sheehy in an undergrad psych class "lifespan human development." That book came out in the early 80s and established how all these life stage crises were supposedly "normal," and our professor discussed how after that, more and more people decided they were having a crisis, or used it as an excuse or explanation for some behavior. The point was that Sheehy just summarized very common, nearly universal things that people tend to go through at different periods of life, and people related to it (of course) and thought it was profound. Then they interpreted anything that came up around that time as evidence of some "crisis." But the whole notion of life stage crises is just a construct--something that really didn't exist until someone defined it.

[elhelmete]

Originally Posted by TracySam

I think that the only people who have these age-related life-stage crises are the people who subscribe to some artificial deadlines for common life milestones. They feel "behind" with regard to a milestone that they associate with a certain age, they feel a "crisis."

I tend to agree. I think when the 'crisis' (although I would use a different word) happens depends on when someone achieves certain things, like moving out of the house, having a few career years under their belt, marriage, etc.

[RageX]

Originally Posted by keraT

Do you think that has something to do with past life expectance being approximately 30-50 years? that for eons human have survived this many years & now that we live much longer we are replacing death with "change in life". As it was pointed out, many divorce and huge career change takes place around that age. Where as in past death sort of took care of the change one might want

This ...makes sense...