Every stage of life I work with teaches me something different. But midlife can be messy, magical, and often both at once. This resonates with me personally right now as well.
I want to take a moment to honor what I’m witnessing, in my clients and in myself: a season of change, loss, and hard questions, but also authenticity, empowerment, and healing when we meet it with compassion, curiosity, and kindness.
This is a season we’re all finding our way through, in our own time and our own way. Brené Brown calls it an unraveling, a time when we stop being who we think we should be, and start being who we want to be. We begin to unpack the defenses we built in the first half of our lives, so we can find our way back to a more authentic self.
Why the Defenses Formed
There’s a reason those defenses formed in the first place. Gabor Maté describes how, when we’re young, we often choose secure attachment over authenticity. We bend ourselves to keep others’ love and our own sense of safety intact. Some of us do this more than others; some rebel against it instead, building different defenses that can also carry us away from our true selves. Either way, a pattern can get set early: who we have to be, in order to be loved and safe.
Understanding the unraveling is one part. Moving through it is the work.
So I’ll ask you what I often ask my clients: what are the defenses you have built? Who were you shaped to be, in order to feel safe, loved, or approved of?
For me, it was the good girl; good grades, good behavior, quietly pleasing. It served me well for a long time, until it didn’t. I didn’t really start discovering myself until I created some distance, literally and otherwise, from the people and expectations I’d been shaping myself around.
This isn’t about villainizing our families of origin, or placing blame. Our families were shaped by their own histories too. So at this stage, we often start to form compassion with boundaries. We come to understand our families’ stories, and arrive at a place where they did the best they could with the resources they had. We may forgive, but not condone, and for those in abusive situations, separate completely.
The First Shift
When did you notice your first shift? Often it takes a disruption to start the awakening. A move, a loss, a conflict, a relationship ending, a general unhappiness. I ask clients to notice when a coping strategy stopped serving them. For me, the good girl strategy got boring. There was no one left to please but myself, so I started taking small risks, loosening my grip on being perfect, choosing differently.
Coming Back Around
That kind of shift doesn’t happen once. It comes back around, often when we least expect it. A couple of decades later, life is fully built, career, family, roles firmly in place, and that same unsettled feeling can return. Who am I beyond the roles I’ve played? What do I actually want for this next stage?
If that question is stirring in you right now, you’re not alone, and you didn’t make the wrong life choices. But you may be feeling a loss, a sadness, even an anger you can’t quite explain. Grief for the version of yourself, or the life you thought you’d have. You may be unraveling, which I believe is a natural developmental phase of midlife. And if Brown and Maté are right, it might be exactly where the return to yourself can fully begin. That’s the magic part. The messy part is: who is that person?
I encourage you to consider embracing the messy. This path isn’t as straightforward as it may have felt when you were younger. Following others’ expectations can feel “easier” than establishing our own. And that doesn’t mean we can’t bring forward some of what we learned from the loving relationships in our lives. That, too, can be a kind of honoring. My mom is quirky in all the best ways, with a spirit of loving the moment and living simply. I work to embrace that in my own daily life, and I thank her for it.
Where to Begin
I encourage you to grab a journal, talk with your best people, or find a counselor to support you through this unraveling. Here are some reflective questions to help you get started, or continue your journey:
- What roles have I been playing, and which ones still feel true to who I am?
- If I wasn’t worried about disappointing anyone, what would I choose differently?
- What did I have to become in order to feel safe or loved growing up? Is that still serving me?
- When did I first notice this unsettled feeling return, was there a specific moment, or has it been building quietly?
- What parts of my family or upbringing do I want to carry forward, and what am I ready to set down?
- Where in my life am I still performing, rather than being?
- If I could offer myself the same compassion I’d offer a close friend going through this, what would I say?
- What’s one small, low-stakes risk I could take this month to loosen my grip on “who I should be”?
There’s no timeline for this work, and no version of it that looks the same from person to person. Wherever you are in the unraveling, you’re allowed to take it slow, circle back, and figure it out as you go.
This post reflects general themes I see often in my work and in my own life—it’s meant to offer perspective and companionship, not to replace individualized therapy. If any of this resonates and you’d like support working through it, I’d be glad to talk with you.
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