The path of life is difficult. It is replete with successes, failures, and unexpected twists and turns. And chances are high that as you wander along this road, your "fellow traveler" will be an identity crisis. Now, reading about this, you probably imagine him as a huge monster that cannot be bypassed or overcome. But remember the words of the great Friedrich Nietzsche: "What does not kill us makes us stronger." It turns out that your crisis can be useful to you!
But how and with what, you ask? We will talk about this.
What is a crisis?
A crisis is a clash between the old and the new, between the familiar past and the possible future, between who you are now and who you could become. What used to be good and effective is no longer so. The goals set are not achieved by the old means, and there are no new ones yet. Quite often, latent conflicts and inconsistencies are manifested in a crisis.
Psychological crises of personality differ in that a person is placed in such conditions - he can no longer behave in the old way, his behavior no longer brings the results he needs. That is why, when you find yourself in a crisis, you most often feel a sense of a dead end and try to find a way out of it. But there is still no way out ...
The crisis is also experienced by many people as a period of anxiety, fears, uncertainty, sometimes emptiness, meaninglessness of existence, a stop on the way - each person comes up with his own metaphor. Here's what they celebrate different people, speaking about their experiences and feelings during the crisis:
- "I seemed to freeze alone in some space and did not move."
- “No one was around, and there was a feeling that no one would help me, and the whole world around was crumbling.”
- "I experienced tremors, weakness, heaviness, tension and stiffness."
- "It was like a dive - it embraced me completely, and I could not hide from it anywhere."
- “I seemed to be in a transparent hot-air balloon and an invisible film separated me from other people. "
- "I really wanted someone else to help me."
- "I didn't want anything, nothing at all!"
- “It seemed to me that the whole world seemed to have closed around me and was about to crush me.”
- "I was exhausted and lacked the strength for anything."
- “My life no longer belonged to me, I was no longer its 'author'.
- “Time inside me seemed to have stopped, but outside something was happening and happening ...”.
- "I wanted to find a way out of this impenetrable darkness as quickly as possible."
All this is about him, about a psychological crisis. Separately, the words of each of the women do not mean anything and can mean anything, but together they make up a picture of a personal crisis. Agree, a difficult and unpleasant picture comes out. Still, it is no coincidence that this condition is one of the most frequent reasons for referring to a psychologist.
What crises are there?
There are actually a lot of them. In fact, there are three types of crises in personality development: an age crisis, a situational crisis, and a personal one. As a rule, when people say: “I have a crisis!”, Then it comes about the third option. But we will consider everything - to know when to wait and gain patience, and when - to ask for advice from friends or look for a way out in literary sources.
So, age crises. In general, this is actually the norm of life. Almost every person has them, and in more or less the same format. An age crisis is when a person already wants something, but the environment still does not give him this. There are many such crises, and they arise almost from infancy. Childhood crises occur at the end of the first year, at three years old, at seven years old, and throughout adolescence... They are all related to the child's acquisition of independence and new skills. For example, at the age of three, the child already wants to dress himself, but his mother does not allow him yet, since it takes too much time. And the child starts to rage. In this situation, the mother needs to accept the growing up of the child and specially carve out time for the child to dress himself - otherwise he will never learn to do this, and his growing up will stop.
Of greater interest to us are age-related crises in adulthood. The first such crisis is 17-18 years old. During this period, the first meeting with adulthood takes place. A person begins to determine himself and is looking for his place in the world. The second crisis occurs between 30 and 40 years - the so-called mid-life crisis. A person looks over his life and answers for himself the question: have I done everything that I wanted? The next crisis - pre-retirement - happens at the age of 50-60 and is associated with retirement and the change from a dynamic lifestyle to a more relaxed one. And the last age crisis is an end-of-life crisis - for everyone it happens in different ages... He is associated with overall assessment lived life - positive or negative.
Another type of psychological crisis is situational crises. They have their own reason, quite humanly comprehensible. For example, you want a husband - rich, and kind, and caring, and smart, and cheerful - in general, and eat a fish, and climb a pine tree. But all together does not work out, and the woman finds herself alone with this “does not work”. Or, for example, you want to have time to build a career and create an ideal hearth, but you don't have enough time and energy for everything. All these “dead ends” are quite transparent. All you need to do is prioritize, turn around and get out of this trap. Well, you may be a little upset, but living with it is quite possible.
And the last type is personal crises. It is they who are distinguished by the complexity and confusion of experiences, it is from them that it is so difficult for you to find a way out. They can have completely different reasons. We all know about crises associated with sad events: grief, loss, loneliness, a sense of meaninglessness. But few people know that crisis experiences can be triggered by something essentially joyful - the birth of a child, a wedding, or a long-awaited promotion. The result is always the same: a person feels that something has changed inside, and today he can no longer live the way he lived yesterday. He becomes different. These crises will be discussed further.
What awaits you: stages of experience
Thank God, the personality crisis develops gradually, as no one can withstand such a sudden weight. There are a number of stages that a person goes through, and you can rejoice - a crisis always ends with a way out. It's just that everyone has their own way out. A strong and healthy person is always able to find an option that suits her. But you are just such a person?
So, the stages of experiencing the crisis:
1. Dive stage. As a rule, at the very beginning of a crisis, a person is disturbed by unpleasant sensations in the body. But you do not yet realize that you have an identity crisis - you just feel bad. You are tense and constrained, feeling weak and heavy. Since there is something to be done, you do, but these movements are very fussy and meaningless.
Your thoughts remind viscous porridge, and you chew it for an infinitely long time. When you think about one thing, it immediately pulls an even more unpleasant thought out of your memory. You are vulnerable and unprotected from these and other unpleasant feelings. It looks like a huge black hole, and you fall into it. This is the first stage of the crisis.
2. Stage of the impasse. It is accompanied by feelings of loneliness and lack of support. You are immersed in thoughts and endless introspection - sorting through events, asking yourself questions about the causes of the crisis and cannot find answers. However, your thoughts and feelings are no longer linked into one unpleasant lump - they are more and more experienced by you separately.Your past no longer helps, you are afraid to be “here and now”, and you gradually begin to make predictions for the future. A feeling of exhaustion and lack of strength pervades you. You understand that outside help will not come, and your desire to find a way out of this impasse is growing more and more. But one cannot get away from these feelings - they must be experienced, and then the light appears for the first time at the end of the tunnel.
3. Stage of the fracture. Against the background of complete moral decline, you begin to pull yourself out of the space of the crisis. At first, this exit manifests itself literally - you hide under the covers and shut yourself off from everything - and then psychologically. As if there are “you” and “you are in crisis. Your consciousness is freed from old non-working thoughts and attitudes. Crisis experiences visit you less and less often, and always one by one. A personality restructuring takes place and a readiness for a new experience arises.The world around you seems to be re-opening, and you are in harmony with it. You are free and feel lightness in your body. You are not abandoned by the thirst for new sensations and impressions - sometimes you even want to break loose and embark on a journey. You finally have your desires, and you feel the strength and opportunities to satisfy them. The feeling of happiness does not leave you, and you can finally say to yourself: “I did it! I went through an identity crisis! ”
Unfortunately, the crisis does not always end so rosy - sometimes the opposite happens. Psychologists include neuropsychic and psychosomatic disorders, suicide, withdrawal from society, post-traumatic stress, various crimes, alcohol or other addiction, etc., to bad scenarios for the development of events.
As we can see, the crisis does not just test the strength of the personality - it can also destroy it.
How to survive the crisis?
After reading everything that is written, you are probably horrified at the thought of what you will have to go through. But don't worry too much. A personal crisis may not overtake everyone, and if this happened to you, rejoice, because it means a lot high level mental development. Well, if not, then all the more rejoice, because we have already noted that this is one of the most difficult and unpleasant conditions in life.
To our deepest regret, the way out of the crisis cannot be circumvented or accelerated. Remember - you have to survive the crisis, and only then will there be a way out. “And what, it’s impossible in another way? Perhaps there is some magical psychological remedy? " - you ask hopefully. And we will have to upset you: "No, it does not exist." There really are no magic remedies. But there is your personality and your own resources. God himself commanded you to use them.
So, how to make it easier for yourself to live through the crisis?
1. Find support. Yes, you heard right. As much as you would like to distance yourself from this world sometimes, support and sympathy will be very useful to you. Even in a crisis, you remain a person who needs communication, love and care, so wouldn't it be better to get them from a person who is aware of what is happening? It could be a close friend, your spouse, distant relative or even random person on some forum. The main thing is that he should be sympathetic and pleasant to you, and also sincerely interested in what is happening to you. Agree that you will share with him the most intimate and important to you. It is necessary that he listens to you and does not condemn you. Your communication should be honest, and sincere expression of feelings is the key to this.
2. Keep a personal journal. Write there everything that concerns important events for you, experiences, bodily sensations, thoughts and attitudes to what is happening, as well as those images and metaphors that pop up in your head. Keeping a journal will help you become more aware of what is happening to you and also help you separate one experience from another. Through these recordings, you kind of share your experiences with others.
3. Locate the inner support. The world around you is crumbling, everything is turned upside down, and in order to survive this, you need to find an island of stability in this world of chaos. Such an island of stability and support can be your conviction in the justice of the world, in its benevolence and the right device... You are an important part of this world and you can control your life. Such attitudes allow you to experience despair and loneliness without collapsing, maintaining faith in the future. Thanks to them, your life regains meaning, based on the experience of all of humanity.
4. Experience everything that happens to you. Don't run anywhere, be aware of your feelings. Separate them from each other and unravel this lump of despair. Immerse yourself in them - all this is an invaluable experience, without which you cannot become what you can become. This will require all your efforts and resources.
5. Don't give up, be persistent. Especially in those moments when you want to run away, fly to another planet, or just disconnect. Hold on! This is your strength. When things get really bad, rely on people who are important to you and on your diary. By the way, later it will be interesting to re-read everything that happened to you during this dark period of your life.
6. Be prepared for unexpected discoveries. For example, that you are not at all as kind as you thought you were. Or that sometimes you are so lazy to do something that you might overlook something special. It is important not just to make these discoveries, but to accept them for yourself. Gradually, you will realize that the world is not black and white - it contains gray and a bunch of colors and intermediate shades. Seeing them is accepting things as they are.
7. Catch the rhythm of your life. It's no secret that each of us has our own rhythm of existence. During a crisis, it gets lost, and you need to restore it. There are three ways you can use it. The first is joining natural rhythms (flickering of fire, the sound of pouring water, the sound of rain), the second - to mechanical (the sound of wheels in a train, the ticking of a clock), and the third is inclusion in rhythms created by other people (rhythmic singing, dancing, round dances, songs and dances).
8. Talk to people who have already experienced an identity crisis. Firstly, it will give you the feeling that you are not alone on this planet (after all, it is loneliness that we are often most afraid of), and, secondly, someone else's experience will be useful to you in terms of discovering new means of experiencing a crisis. Each person is unique and, adapting to difficult situation, invents something of his own. What if his "his" will be useful to you too? It doesn't hurt to try.
9. Try new things. Direct continuation of the previous point! But seriously, you should try something new when you are ready for it. If you decide to skydive at a dead end, your condition may worsen. Listen to yourself, and if you feel small needs inside for new sensations and global changes, do not forget to satisfy them.
10. Remember that the crisis is finite. Sometimes hopelessness can roll over you. It will seem to you that the end and the edge are not visible to the entire black maelstrom that has drawn you in. In these moments, do not forget that there will definitely be an end, and it will be good. It all depends on you. Stay optimistic even in the most difficult times.
This is all you wanted to know about personality crisis but were afraid to ask. Well, maybe they weren't afraid, but now one way or another you all know. The most important thing to remember is that the crisis is experienced and final, and its result is your new, brilliant and mature personality.
A personal crisis is similar to teething: it hurts, it is difficult, you can try to alleviate it, but you cannot skip this period (for example, removing teeth from the gums with a special apparatus). And it is thanks to the erupted teeth that you can finally bite and chew.
It is the same with a personality - after going through a crisis, you will gain new experience, maybe even some knowledge and skills. After the crisis, many situations that seemed difficult to you will be perceived as elementary: “And because of this I was worried ?!” In general, in a global sense, a crisis is good and good. So do not be afraid, dare, and you will succeed!
Throughout life, a person is faced with various crises, due to his biological, mental and professional development.
Age crises caused by maturation, restructuring, aging of the human body. Changes in mental abilities are a consequence of age-related changes. Hence, it is legitimate to consider age-related changes in a person, generated by biological development, as an independent factor that determines age-related crises. These crises refer to the normative processes necessary for the normal progressive course of personal development.
Professional development crises are caused by the change and restructuring of leading activities (for example, from educational to professional). A variety of professional crises are creative crises caused by creative failure, lack of significant achievements, and professional helplessness. These crises are extremely painful for representatives creative professions: writers, directors, actors, architects, inventors, etc.
Crises of a neurotic nature are associated with intrapersonal changes: a restructuring of consciousness, unconscious impressions, instincts, irrational tendencies - everything that generates an internal conflict, a mismatch of psychological integrity. They are traditionally the subject of research by Freudians, neo-Freudians and other psychoanalytic schools.
Along with the named groups of psychological crises, there is another huge layer of crisis phenomena caused by significant abrupt changes in living conditions. The determinants of these life crises are such important events as the end educational institution, employment, marriage, childbirth, change of residence, retirement and other changes in the individual biography of a person. These changes in socio-economic, temporal and spatial circumstances are accompanied by significant subjective difficulties, mental tension, restructuring of consciousness and behavior.
And finally, one more group of crises should be distinguished, caused by critical life circumstances, dramatic and sometimes tragic events. These factors have a destructive, sometimes catastrophic outcome for a person. There is a radical restructuring of consciousness, a revision of value orientations and the meaning of life in general. These crises run on the brink of human capabilities and are accompanied by exorbitant emotional experiences... They are caused by such abnormal events as disability, disability, divorce, involuntary unemployment, migration, unexpected death. loved one, imprisonment, etc. Let's call this group critical crises.
The first three groups of personality crises have a relatively pronounced chronological, age-related nature. They are normative; all people experience them, but the level of severity of the crisis does not always take on the character of a conflict. The predominant tendency of normative crises is constructive, developing personality.
The second three groups of personality crises are of a non-normative, probabilistic nature. The time of the onset, life circumstances, scenarios, participants in the crisis are random. These event crises are caused by coincidence of circumstances. The way out of such crises is problematic. Sometimes it is destructive, and then the society gets cynics, outcasts, homeless people, alcoholics, suicides.
Of course, personality crises can occur at any age and it is hardly possible to predict them.
Nevertheless, in a large number of people, life crises occur at approximately the same age, which serves as the basis for dividing and describing these stages of development of a mature personality.
Twenty-year-olds usually deal with career choices and starting a family, set goals in life, and begin to pursue them. Later, about thirty, many come to reassess their previous elections career, family, life goals. Sometimes it comes to a cardinal change in life's tasks, a change in profession and the collapse of family or friendships. After thirty years, a person, as a rule, goes through a period of getting used to new or newly confirmed elections. Finally, at the end of their careers, people are faced with a new crisis due to the forthcoming departure from vigorous activity and retirement. This crisis is especially difficult for managers who are accustomed to everyday activity, a sense of the importance and necessity of their work, to their leadership role in the organization.
Each of the described age crises can affect the activities of the organization. However, while crises at the beginning and end of a career are usually perceived as natural, then a mid-life crisis often seems paradoxical and unexpected. Therefore, we consider it necessary to consider it in more detail, touching upon the psychological problems underlying it.
The first stage of middle age begins around the age of thirty and progresses to the beginning of the next decade. This stage is called the "fatal line decade" or "midlife crisis." Her main characteristic is the awareness of the discrepancy between dreams and life goals of a person.
People's dreams and plans almost always have some unrealistic features. By the age of thirty, a person has already gained enough experience to realize that many of his fantasies are illusory. Therefore, the assessment of their discrepancy with reality at this stage is colored, as a rule, in emotionally negative tones. Life ceases to seem endless, and time turns out to be so fleeting that it is impossible to have time to do something important and worthwhile in life. The gap between dreams and reality suddenly turns out to be an irresistible chasm. The idea of a future happy and dignified life that awaits you is replaced by the feeling that “life has passed by” and it is too late to change anything in it. Until recently, they could say about you: "Well, this one will go far." Now you feel that the time of hopes is leaving, and whether you want to or not, you have to state with bitterness that you will no longer become either a mayor or a sir, or a member of the Duma, or a member-correspondent, or even a foreman in your native SMU.
Delusional release, which is not uncommon for a 30-year-old, can be self-threatening. Dante described his own confusion at this age this way:
Earthly life, passing to the middle,
I found myself in a dark forest
The path is right
Lost in the darkness of the valley
Biographies of many creative personalities often show some kind of dramatic change in their life somewhere around 35 years old. Some of them, for example Gauguin, were just beginning at this time. creative work... Others, however, on the contrary, lost their creative motivation for about 35 years, and some even passed away. The death rate of many gifted or completely untalented people increases abnormally between the ages of 35 and 40.
Those who survive this decade while retaining their creativity usually find significant changes in the nature of creativity. Often these changes relate to the intensity of their work: for example, brilliant impulsivity gives way to mature, calm skill. One of the reasons is that the "impulsive brilliance" of youth requires great vitality... At least in part, these are physical forces, so no one can keep them indefinitely. A manager leading a stressful life by the age of 35 must change the pace of his life and not "give all his best and throw away". Thus, the problem of limitation physical strength inevitably arises in the life of a person of any profession.
For many, the process of renewal, which begins when they find themselves in the face of their illusions and decline in physical strength, eventually leads them to a more peaceful and even happier life.
After 50, health problems become more pressing and there is a growing awareness that "time is running out." And people begin to understand that the main disadvantage of old age is that it passes away, and a person, as he is born, also leaves life without hair, teeth and illusions.
The second chapter of our work will be devoted to the main types of personality crisis. V psychological science various approaches and views on understanding the essence of crisis phenomena and their typology are presented. In our opinion, all personality crises that occur on the path of life can be divided into two large groups, namely "Crises of the material and social" I "and" Crises of the spiritual "I"
We will consider crises of the material and social "I" through:
Professional crises
And we will consider crises of the spiritual "I" through:
Critical semantic crises
Life crises
According to the strength of the impact on the psyche, three stages of the crisis can be conditionally distinguished: storey, deep and deep.
· Floor crisis manifests itself in the growth of anxiety, anxiety, irritation, incontinence, dissatisfaction with oneself, one's actions, plans, relationships with others. One can feel confusion, tension in anticipation of the ill-fated development of events. Indifference to everything that worried arises, once stable interests are lost, their spectrum is narrowed. Apathy directly affects decreased performance.
· A deeper crisis manifests itself in a feeling of powerlessness in front of what is happening. Everything falls out of hand, the ability to control events is lost. Everything around is just annoying, especially the nearest ones, which must endure outbursts of anger and remorse. Activities that have always been easy now require significant effort. A person gets tired, becomes sad, perceives the world pessimistically. Sleep and appetite are disturbed in it. Aggressive reactions may occur depending on the individual. All these symptoms complicate contacts, narrow the circle of communication, and contribute to the growth of alienation. One's own future causes more and more serious fears, a person does not know how to live on.
· A deep crisis is accompanied by a feeling of hopelessness, disappointment in oneself and others. A person is acutely experiencing his own inferiority, worthlessness, uselessness. Falls into a state of despair, which is replaced by apathy or feelings of hostility. Behavior loses flexibility, becomes rigidity. A person is no longer able to spontaneously express his feelings, be spontaneous and creative. She goes deep into herself, isolates herself from family and friends. Everything that surrounds her seems unreal, unreal. The meaning of existence is lost.
Our task in this chapter is to examine and study the main types of "personality crisis" encountered in humans.
Crises in the material and social "I"
As mentioned earlier, to crises of the material and spiritual "I" we refer to such crises as:
Mental development crises
Professional crises
We will consider crises in the material and social “I” through crises of psychological development.
Development crisis is the next basic element of the human development mechanism. A developmental crisis means the beginning of the transition from one stage of mental development to another. It occurs at the junction of two ages and marks the end of the previous age period and the beginning of the next. The source of the crisis is the contradiction between the increasing physical and mental capabilities of the child and the previously established forms of his relationship with the people around him and the types (methods) of activity. Each of us has encountered manifestations of such crises.
V Russian psychology the term "age-related crises" was introduced by L.S. Vygotsky. L.S. Vygotsky understood an age-related developmental crisis as the concentration of abrupt and capital shifts and displacements, changes and fractures in the child's personality. A crisis is a turning point in the normal course of mental development. It arises when “when the inner passage child development completed a cycle and the transition to the next cycle will be a turning point ... "
In our work, we distinguish the following crises:
Newborn crisis. Associated with a sharp change in living conditions. A child from comfortable habitual living conditions falls into difficult ones (new nutrition, breathing). Adaptation of the child to new living conditions.
Crisis 1 year. It is associated with an increase in the child's capabilities and the emergence of new needs. A surge of independence, the appearance of affective reactions. Affective outbursts as a reaction to misunderstanding on the part of adults. The main acquisition of the transition period is a kind of children's speech, called by L.S. Vygotsky autonomous. It differs significantly from adult speech and in sound form. Words become ambiguous and situational.
Crisis 3 years. The boundary between early and preschool age is one of the most difficult moments in a child's life. This is destruction, rethinking of the old system social relations, the crisis of the allocation of their "I". The emergence of the phenomenon “I myself”, according to Vygotsky, is a new formation “external I myself”. "The child is trying to establish new forms of relationship with others - a crisis of social relations."
The motivation of the child's behavior is changing. At the age of 3, he first becomes able to act contrary to his immediate desire. The tendency towards independence is clearly manifested: the child wants to do everything and decide for himself. In principle, this is a positive phenomenon, but during a crisis, a hypertrophied tendency towards independence leads to self-will.
The crisis of 3 years is associated with the awareness of oneself as an active subject in the world of objects, for the first time a child can act contrary to his desires.
The crisis is 7 years old. The isolation of this crisis in the development of the child is associated with the name of L. S. Vygotsky. He noted that the older preschooler is characterized by demeanor, capriciousness, deliberately pretentious, artificial behavior, agility and clowning. And in general he is distinguished by the general lack of motivation of behavior, stubbornness, negativism.
Analyzing these manifestations, L.S.Vygotsky explained them by the loss of childlike spontaneity, involuntary behavior, which disappears as a result of the incipient differentiation of external and inner life... Vygotsky believed that another distinctive feature of this critical period was the emergence of a meaningful orientation in his own experiences: the child suddenly himself discovers the fact of his own experiences, reveals their belonging to him and only to him, and the experiences themselves acquire meaning for him.
L. I. Bozhevich wrote that a child of this age develops an awareness of his "social" I ". It was at this time that games "to school" and imitation of the "work" of adults appeared. According to L.I. Bozhovich, the basis of the crisis of 6-7 years is a conflict arising as a result of the collision of qualitatively new needs formed in the process of development with the unchanged way of life of the child and the attitude of adults towards him. The latter interferes with the satisfaction of the child's needs and causes frustration and deprivation of needs in him, which are generated by the mental new formations that arise by this time.
The pubertal crisis (from 11 to 15 years old) is associated with the restructuring of the child's body - puberty. The activation and complex interaction of growth hormones and sex hormones cause intense physical and physiological development. Secondary sexual characteristics appear. Adolescence is sometimes referred to as a protracted crisis. Due to the rapid development, difficulties arise in the functioning of the heart, lungs, blood supply to the brain. In adolescence, the emotional background becomes uneven, unstable.
A sense of adulthood appears - a feeling of being an adult, a central neoplasm of younger adolescence. There is a passionate desire, if not to be, then at least to seem and be considered an adult. The teenager strives for emancipation.
Also at this age, the “I-Concept” is formed. It includes "I-real" and "I-ideal". "I-ideal" is a kind of "ideal image" with which a teenager associates himself. "I-real" is who the teenager really is in the social environment. The discrepancy between "I-real" and "I-ideal" leads to pubertal crisis.
Intimate-personal communication becomes the leading Activity during this period. There are also bright, but usually replacing hobbies.
Crisis 17 years old (15 to 17 years old). Arises exactly at the turn of the usual school and new adult life. May be displaced by 15 years. At this time, the child is on the verge of real adult life.
The majority of 17-year-old schoolchildren are guided by continuing their education, a few are looking for work. The value of education is a great blessing, but at the same time, achieving the set goal is difficult, and at the end of grade 11 emotional stress can increase dramatically.
Those who are going through the crisis for 17 years are characterized by various fears... Responsibility to oneself and one's family for the choice, real achievements at this time is already a big burden. Added to this is the fear of new life, before the possibility of error, before failure when entering a university, for young men - in front of the army. High anxiety and against this background, pronounced fear can lead to neurotic reactions, such as fever before graduation or entrance exams, headaches, etc. An exacerbation of gastritis, neurodermatitis, or other chronic disease may begin.
A sharp change in lifestyle, inclusion in new types of Activities, communication with new people cause significant tension. New life situation requires adaptation to it. Mainly two factors help to adapt: family support and self-confidence, a sense of competence.
Striving for the future. Personality stabilization period. At this time, a system of stable views of the world and their place in it - a worldview - is taking shape. Known associated with this youthful maximalism in assessments, passion in defending their point of view. The central neoplasm of the period is self-determination, professional and personal.
Midlife crisis. (30 to 55 years old).
A midlife crisis is a special age stage in the structure of a person's life path, which can be successfully overcome only if there is a meaningful attitude towards personally significant motives or needs, which are defined by everyone as leading or basic. Around the age of 30, sometimes somewhat later, most people experience a crisis. It is expressed in a change in ideas about one's life, sometimes in a complete loss of interest in what was previously the main thing in it, in some cases even in the destruction of the previous way of life.
A mid-life crisis arises as a result of the failure to fulfill a life plan. If at the same time there is a "reassessment of values" and "revision of one's own Personality", then we are talking about the fact that the life plan in general turned out to be wrong. If life path is chosen correctly, then attachment "to a certain Activity, a certain way of life, certain values and orientations" does not limit, but, on the contrary, develops his Personality.
The midlife crisis is often called the crisis of the meaning of life. It is with this period that the search for the meaning of existence is usually associated. This quest, like the entire crisis in general, marks the transition from youth to maturity.
A person is acutely experiencing dissatisfaction with his life, the discrepancy between life plans and their implementation. A.V. Tolstykh notes that this is complemented by a change in attitude on the part of work colleagues: the time when one could be considered “promising”, “promising” is passing, and a person feels the need to “pay bills”.
Apart from the problems associated with professional activities, a midlife crisis is often caused by an exacerbation of family relations... The loss of some close people, the loss of a very important common side of the spouses' life - direct participation in the life of children, daily care for them - contributes to the final understanding of the nature of the marital relationship. And if, apart from the children of the spouses, nothing significant binds both of them, the family may fall apart.
In the event of a mid-life crisis, a person has to once again rebuild his life plan, to develop a largely new “I-concept”. Serious changes in life may be associated with this crisis, up to a change of profession and the creation of a new family.
The crisis of aging and death.
Undoubtedly, the problem of death is age-specific. Nevertheless, it is precisely for the elderly and the elderly that it does not seem far-fetched, premature, transforming into the problem of natural death. For them, the question of attitude towards death is transferred from the subtext to the context of life itself. The time comes when the intense dialogue between life and death begins to sound distinctly in the space of individual being, the tragedy of temporality is realized.
The actualization of thanatological reflections is due not only to pathological changes leading to a deterioration in health and an increase in the likelihood of death, but also to the peculiarities of the old person's lifestyle. The latter include a certain monumentality of internal subjectivity, distance from momentary social irritants, a significant weakening of the motives for achieving success, comfort, and career. A person, freed from everything trivial and superficial, can concentrate on the sphere of the deep and essential.
Aging, fatal diseases and dying are perceived not as integral parts of the life process, but as a complete defeat and a painful lack of understanding of the limited ability to control nature. From the point of view of a philosophy of pragmatism, which emphasizes the importance of achievement and success, the dying person is the defeated person.
A religion capable of being a significant support for the dying person has largely lost its meaning for the average person. Western religions have been relegated to the level of formalized rituals and ceremonies that have lost their inner meaning. The view of the world, developed by science based on materialistic philosophy, increases the severity of the situation of the dying person. Indeed, according to this approach, nothing exists outside the material world. Physical destruction of the body and brain is the irreversible end of human life.
The elderly and the elderly, as a rule, fear not death itself, but the possibility of a purely vegetable existence devoid of any meaning, as well as suffering and torment caused by disease. We can state the presence of two leading attitudes in their attitude to death: firstly, the unwillingness to burden their loved ones, and secondly, the desire to avoid excruciating suffering. Therefore, many, being in a similar situation, are experiencing a deep and all-encompassing crisis that simultaneously affects the biological, emotional, philosophical and spiritual aspects of life.
Therefore, personality crises are normal, inevitable stages of development. Replacement of the outdated reality editor.
Unfortunately, sometimes it happens that a person cannot cope with the upcoming changes, cannot in any way move to a new quality, which is required of her by her own inner world or the circumstances of outer life. Often this is due to the so-called "personality deformations", which make it difficult to reformat the internal editor of reality. Then they talk about the pathological course of the crisis, and in this case, urgent help from a psychologist is required: the crisis itself is an extremely difficult period, which, in the presence of complicating circumstances, alas, can become fatal.
In psychology, there are several types of crises: situational, age, existential and spiritual.
Situational crises
With situational, everything is most understandable, they have a clear objective criterion: this is when a person is suddenly overtaken by an ass on several fronts. The passage of this crisis is obvious: you cannot help the cause with complaints, you need practical action, you need to get out of the crisis. You don't need to be a psychologist to think of this: "When the guns speak, the muses are silent."
The help of a psychologist sometimes becomes necessary after the crisis situation has passed: for the integration of the experience gained - that is, in other words, in order to continue living normally, having learned that “it happens too”. This becomes especially difficult when the experience is outside the normal range. In this case, a person often “collapses the whole world”, and here the help of a psychologist is simply necessary.
Age crises
Age-related crises, like situational crises, have objective reasons. For the most part, they are determined by age, corresponding physiological changes and change social roles... Age-related crises include childhood (there are many), adolescence, entry into adulthood, middle age and aging.
Of all of them, only a midlife crisis is not accompanied by pronounced hormonal changes and is rather indirectly associated with a change in social roles. Therefore, there is definitely something existential in him, although formally he is not existential.
Existential crises
With existential, unlike the previous ones, not everything is so clear: they have no objective reasons, they do not happen to everyone, although those existential given that serve as their themes - these givens relate to everyone:
1. Death
2. Freedom
3. Insulation
4. The meaninglessness of life.
These four existential realities are capable of plunging a person into the abyss of a crisis at any age. Such problems at the objective level are fundamentally unsolvable - that is why they are called existential, because we all live with this. Nevertheless, the awareness of such a given in its entirety often, as it were, brings a person to a new level. In the rough language of psychological protocol, the maturity of the psychological defenses, which has a beneficial effect not only on the comprehension of these final data themselves, but also on general level life.
Spiritual crisis
Unlike the previous ones, clearly classified and described in detail in the literature, with a spiritual crisis, strictly speaking, nothing is clear at all. There is no generally accepted concept and evidence base. This is due to the fact that it is in a spiritual crisis that a person encounters on his own experience a feeling of non-duality, unity and absence of opposites - the verbal descriptions of which, in our dual world, cannot but be contradictory and vague.
A spiritual crisis is often the result of intense spiritual practices, when a person does not have enough opportunities to integrate the experience gained into ordinary life... But this contact with non-duality is not so simple. Quite expectedly, causal cause-and-effect relationships do not work in this area: sometimes a spiritual crisis overtakes a person without objective reasons, without any spiritual practices, for nothing. I, as a person spoiled by causation, still look for subjective reasons: an unconscious request, when the psyche needs more and more powerful resources to function, at some point gives an appeal to the most powerful resource of all. In other words, you will be rewarded according to your needs: whoever needs a resource will receive a resource. And whether he will be able to chew it - this is the question. How it goes.
The experience of the numinous experience of non-duality, given to us in sensations, is the most resourceful experience of all. In practice, this is an endless resource of the collective unconscious - it is the Holy Spirit, it is Atman, it is Tao, etc. The ability to deal with this resource is often not enough for a person, and this force is sometimes experienced so painfully that the likelihood of dying becomes quite obvious.
However, most crises in their pathological course have death as an alternative to overcoming the crisis: the most attractive alternative to “live as before” in a crisis, alas, does not last very long. Crises, in fact, are therefore called crises: they combine not only opportunities, but also dangers. Fortunately, the dangers are not as dire as they feel. But the possibilities are unimaginable.
The main thing to remember is that they are.