Women’s midlife crisis. Most of us silence questions such as “what’s all this for” with comforting distractions: work, sex, trips. But the fear remains

So when does it start?

When you wake up at night in a cold sweat and you think: “what’s my role in all this, what do I want? How did I get here, where am I going? What for?”

Time to get serious? Life is not a dress rehearsal?

You can say so.

Does age matter?

No. When we begin to realise that a lot of life is behind us, we may be 50 or 30.

I have many friends who already have the symptoms. They are sick of their work, they suffocate in their relationships. But others slap them down: go to Facebook, find yourself a sex-friend, and don’t complain. Are they right to do so?

I wouldn’t underestimate these emotions. Although suppressed, they persist in us and, if we ignore them, they cause depression. And in the end, we have to handle them, whether we like it or not.

These nightly questions are a call, a call of the soul to look at what is happening in us. For that to happen, we have to stop. Stay in touch with ourselves for longer. But we don’t have time, we’re constantly busy. Unless we experience some loss: separation with a partner, death of a loved one, accident, our own illness. Then we brake sharply.

Most of us silence questions like “what's all this for?” with comforting distractions: admittedly my job is pointless, but I have a position and a company car, so I’ll survive, counting down to retirement or planning a vacation. And when I retire, it will all fall into place.

These “pills” – position, success, money – no longer work in the second half of life. Or they desensitise you for a while and then the questions, fear and anxiety come back. I have experienced it myself. In the first half of my life, I responded to what the world expected of me. We all do it at this stage: we want to be champions and we want everyone to see it. We strengthen the ego.

This need no longer exists in me. I did what I was supposed to do in my professional life. That’s enough. I have no need to go higher and higher forever.

Stop and give the world a break from yourself? As in the title of Wojciech Eichelberger's book?

Oh yes, it feels fantastic, it’s very liberating! Being the centre of attention is so tiring.

Or as Carl Gustav Jung said, “We have the first half of life for other people and the second half for ourselves”.

The second half of life is not the time for declaring values any more. Enough has happened in life for us to find out who we really are, to be able to honestly say to ourselves: this is me and this is not.

What I find valuable is what defines me internally. And what defines me is that we can sit here right now and talk about what is important to you and to me. No one – neither you nor me – needs any prestige.

It’s nice that I managed to achieve a lot professionally, but if I’m really proud of something in life, it’s that I raised my autistic son to be a cool and happy boy.

I value my time more and more. I constantly think about how I invest it. I don’t want to use it to pay for things that I don’t think are worth it, e.g. for a new expensive dress – although I love them.

That’s why I don’t take another job just for money. I cannot afford a job that takes my time and does not live up to my values.

10 or 15 years ago, when I wanted to get something, I would come in it without thinking about the price I would have to pay for it. Today I need time to read, to walk in the woods, to be with my son, to meditate, to talk to my friends. Although I still feel that I work too much.

Life and work are not perfectly compatible. We gain something and we lose something. It’s always something for something.

I woke up one morning after my Dad died and thought: I’m mortal. Up to that point, I lived as if I would never die. Today, like you, I scrutinise every moment like a banknote, considering whether it’s worth spending it.

You realised something that you could no longer deny. Death and suffering are around us. We live long enough to find out that it is all built on a very fragile structure that doesn’t take much to collapse.

So what if prestige and position can give me a sense of power when it is enough for me to get my medical test results to find out what I am really capable of... that I’m not capable of anything.

“Death is the teacher of life” is a very important sentence for me. Being aware of our own mortality means also knowing that the perspective of our own life is limited. And it becomes more and more important to be able to answer the question: do you really want to devote another month, perhaps the last month of your life to THIS?

If, as Sartre said, we have been thrown into the chaos of the world and we may be swept off it at any moment, if we are here for now, what for? This is the most important question for me at the moment.

What is the dark forest that you say we symbolically have to enter in order to live the second half of our lives in a meaningful way?

These are very difficult questions that you must have the courage to answer. Is this life mine? Do I live according to my own script or one that someone wrote for me? To what extent can I be myself and to what extent do I play someone else?

And the fundamental question: who would I be without all that I have and all that I function in?

What do I want to do with the rest of my life? I understand that not everyone must be thrilled at the prospect of dealing with them. Not everyone has to be willing to embark on this journey. I perfectly understand this dilemma, I experience it myself.

This can happen in therapy, but also through reading, meditation, talking, being with others. I know people who learn the most about themselves when they are in the forest, by the lake, in the mountains.

Such a trip into ourselves can be difficult, because it turns out that we are different than we would like to be. We discover how often fear determines our actions. However, if we want to live an authentic life, we must say to ourselves: no more living according to someone else’s values. Our human task is to be ourselves, not to obey.

“If you undertake spiritual work on yourself, people will be blessed enough for you to sit next to them” – you quote your mentor. What does it mean?

We work on ourselves to be better for others as well. Then we can show other people who we really are without fear, without pretending. To succeed in this, you have to detach yourself from thinking whether others will accept who you are. Some will, some won’t. In either case, it’s fine. Someone’s words of criticism will only be destructive if we don’t accept ourselves. If we accept ourselves, we can easily deal with the fact that someone may not like us.

“What you say is stupid. You mean nothing to me. You are ridiculous”. Is it bearable?

People have the right to comment in different ways on what I do and say. If I am not hurting anyone, I have the right to follow myself. Then this criticism is more about them and less about me.

It is easier to function in a community when one is obedient. A friend of mine who works in a corporation, when she hears about authenticity, taps herself on the forehead and says, “If I take off my armour, my enemy will stab me in the back”. So out of fear we leave it on and play roles that have little to do with us.

If you live and work in a place where rules are inconsistent with your basic values and desires, sooner or later it will end with neurosis or depression. Because you function in a state of deep inner incoherence.

I personally accept that someone may not like my authenticity.

Your friend talks about the dilemma of functioning in a group. We have learned that if we fail to meet the expectations of others, we will be rejected.

The fear that revealing your desires will result in exclusion creates a kind of inner tension. We constantly have to choose when we want to show what we think and feel and when we don’t want to do it.

Sometimes we prefer to be silent because we like symbols of what is socially perceived as success: positions, cars, houses, good dresses, suits. We are subconsciously convinced that we don’t mean anything without them. And if we say something that we really think, we can lose it all.

Our spirituality – or the psyche, if you will – never sleeps, its voice resounds in us constantly and its wisdom cannot be deceived in the long run.

We can cut ourselves off more and more radically: through alcohol, drugs, a lush social life, sexual adventures or simply workaholism. But eventually we will get into a conflict between what we want and what others expect of us. When the pressure rises, the choice should be obvious.

You quit your job.

This applies not only to work, but also to social roles. For example, as wives or mothers we tend to serve everyone around, while we push our inner life and aspirations way aside so that they don’t disturb anyone: our husbands, our children, or our parents.

In such a traditionalist country as Poland, the power of these social expectations is enormous and it puts immense pressure on women. I love Marta Frej’s memes, in which she shows the clash of a woman’s inner life, her real desires and vivid, real feelings, also unpleasant ones, with a false image of a woman who is always nice and serves everyone around her.

She’s smiling as she’s painting her nails.

She never gets angry. It’s just torment.

I will say something unpleasant for us: I often have the impression that this stereotype is much more strongly imprinted in women than in men. It is easy to think that men are chauvinists. What is harder to accept is that women themselves pass down to each other and demand from each other the patriarchal pattern of femininity, i.e. of a humble and submissive woman. The foundation of such traditional thinking about male and female social roles is, of course, largely the influence of the institutional Catholic Church.

In my opinion, we should value our own expectations of ourselves more than social expectations. Why are women on autopilot of the latter and not the former, even if no one expresses them directly? Why is it society that tells me what is good and acceptable? Why isn’t it me?

Exactly: why?

Among other things, we raise girls to be quiet and humble, to suppress their feelings and not to fight for their rights. And this rules out the pursuit of what is important. Because looking after your interests often means fighting and confrontation.

Girls are brought up not to confront other people. And boys – not to accept girls who confront others.

In the second half of their lives, these girls, previously suppressing their own needs, wake up and ask: okay, where am I in all this? Which needs are the needs of other people and which are mine? With death approaching, how do I want to live the rest of my life that I have left so that I don’t die frustrated, but with the feeling that I have been myself in life at least for a while?

People comment on women in their 50s who change jobs, start businesses, leave their husbands or start travelling, “What a hag, she went crazy”.

It’s not surprising. People see a woman who has to become a mother, raise her child, take care of the house and work at the same time.

Nobody asks her, “What do you really want?” She often doesn’t either.

Women in their 40s, whose children are becoming independent, begin to take a real look at their relationships and work. They start to wonder if they really want to spend the rest of their lives with these partners, in this job. And it turns out that the answers are completely different from what has happened in these women’s life for the last 20 years.

So I am not surprised that the environment is shocked when they start doing what they really want. This show is like a banner unfurled as a sign of all that has been suppressed. All it takes to explode is a little freedom.

What is freedom anyway?

Do you know?

I’ve been wondering all my life.

Me too. This is one of the most important values for me: to be free and to decide for myself autonomously.

I live in constant tension between freedom and enslavement. Sometimes I run away: to the mountains, to writing, to the forest.

So you accept that you don’t have something and find a niche elsewhere. I also run away, I leave everything behind, I go to the seaside or the countryside and “play truant”. And it’s great. My only concern is: if I don’t want to go back to normal life this much, there must be something wrong with it.

We will never be completely free.

Of course not. There is no freedom without responsibility, and the two are in conflict. If someone wants to be completely free, they cannot take a full-time job, have a husband or children. Our freedom is limited by responsibility.

I would like freedom which is a kind of internal consistency, that is, if I do something, it is because I want to do it and I am totally committed to it.

I remember the notion of Genpo, a Zen teacher, who said that we are afraid to do nothing in our life, but we are also afraid to do something all the way. So we are afraid to say, “I’m in from start to finish. And I’m doing my best”.

Why are we afraid?

Because there is a risk involved. What if it doesn’t work out? Will I not be criticised? Will I be hated?

And how do you answer the question of what is important to you?

I can only deal with what is really important and what is not just for me. I don’t have time for anything else.

Four years ago, together with Ania Dawidziuk-Łęczycka, we established our own therapeutic centre. Not for fame, money or self-development, but because I believe that one of the main causes of the crisis in the world is that we have lost our core competencies in building relationships in small communities. We are completely atomised, everyone lives only for themselves. Loneliness leads to suffering.

Susan Pinker proved it very well in the book “The Village Effect”. The loneliness of societies generates economic and social problems that entire countries struggle with.

But how can you, a psychotherapist, reverse this?

I work with patients so that, when they come back to the world, they treat themselves and other people better. To make others feel better with them.

Every revolution has to start inside of us. From understanding my limitations in dealing with people and what I have to do to change my attitude towards myself and others.

We live in a vicious circle: we treat others just as we treat ourselves. And we treat ourselves as we were once treated in our childhood. The main character of Dorota Masłowska’s “Other People” – I recently saw the staging of this book by Grzegorz Jarzyna – says, “Everything belongs to my husband, my body is the only thing that is mine, so I will use it as I want to. And as I don’t want to, too”. She treats others like objects. She even calls Kamil, whom she makes love with whenever she feels like it, “the flush”. Because she treats herself as an object.

In “Other People”, you can see that in Poland it doesn’t matter whether you are from Warsaw, live in the countryside or in a block of flats. We all have the same problem: people experience excruciating suffering due to loneliness. Kamil says, “I used to know my neighbours, I knew that I could count on the people from my block. And now I don’t even know who lives next to me”.

This is a wise, true, but scary book.

While reading it, I realised that we are forgetting something fundamental: the cancer of our civilisation is a lack of a sense of meaning and a lack of a sense of community. If we don’t rebuild it, we’ll die.

Do you know places where such a community exists?

My friend, who lives in a Romanian village, told me with great affection that her neighbour had died. For three days she lamented with the village women over the open coffin. Then the procession followed in sixes and stopped in front of each house. And the priest talked about who the family living there was to the deceased. The widowed family has the support of their neighbours until the funeral. Some people take the cows to pasture, others bring food, and still others look after the hens. My friend was very impressed with how people share their feelings without shame, and this allows the family of the deceased to really experience these difficult, strong emotions.

Meanwhile, in Warsaw we say goodbye to the dead quickly, leaving the family with suppressed feelings. I once went to a funeral, during which the mourners were asked to leave the chapel because another funeral had to start. And mourning takes time. There is also such a community in Kawkowo near Olsztyn, where I go to workshops. Some make cheese, others bring eggs, and others bake bread. They meet to do yoga or watch movies on a portable projector – in a different house every week.

If we are able to get along on such basic issues, not even politics will divide us.

I have a friend who at the age of 40 burned all correspondence and threw away all the photos. It was the gesture of starting a new life. What do you recommend at the beginning of the second half of life?

I think that in the second half of life you have to give up the magical thinking that if we do something good, we will get a reward. The principle of “if I do good, I will have a good life” doesn’t work.

The reality is not fair. On the contrary, it is full of unfair experiences that each of us can experience at any moment. The world is a chaos with a lot of things happening beyond our control.

That is why decency is so important – living in harmony with yourself and your values.

What’s left?

To trust yourself. Accept that we’ll manage anyway.

I once attended a workshop led by Alfried Längle, student and collaborator of Viktor Frankl, psychiatrist, author of the famous “Man’s Search of Meaning” about rebuilding yourself after the concentration camp experience.

And at one point Längle said, “No matter what, a man always has themselves”.

I asked him, “What does that actually mean?”.

And the old man looked at me piercingly and said, “Ma'am, when you understand this, you will be able to embrace and lift yourself with such tenderness and love as when one touches a newborn child”.

I have goosebumps when saying this. This is what it is all about: we have ourselves when we can accept and embrace ourselves with love and tenderness just the way we are: fragile, imperfect, errant, lost, doomed to death – because we are all doomed to death. We need to embrace our desperate efforts to find meaning in our life, give it value, and allow ourselves to experience happiness and fulfilment. This is a challenge.

We are just to start thinking about ourselves. And about ourselves in the world.

Maybe I should buy a plot of land, start growing tomatoes?

Yes. And talk to your neighbour about these tomatoes. And then on other topics.

 

Aleksandra Klich talks with Martyną Goryniak

Graphics: Marta Frej

• Martyna Goryniak – psychologist, coach and therapist. Four years ago, she co-founded Pracownia Psychoterapii i Treningu ISTDP (the Psychotherapy and ISTDP Training Studio). Together with Maciej Wiśniewski, she conducts workshops entitled “How to Find Meaning in the Second Half of Life”.

Interview published on wysokieobcasy.pl on 28 November 2020