The path of life is a complicated thing. It is replete with successes, failures and unexpected twists and turns. And it is highly likely that as you plod along this road, your "fellow traveler" will be an identity crisis. Now, reading about it, you probably imagine it as a huge monster that cannot be bypassed or overcome. But remember the words of the great Friedrich Nietzsche: "That which does not kill us makes us stronger." It turns out that your crisis can be useful to you!
But how and why, 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 set goals are not achieved by the old means, and there are no new ones yet. Very often hidden conflicts and inconsistencies find their manifestation in a crisis.
Psychological personality crises are distinguished by the fact 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, getting into a crisis, you most often experience a sense of impasse and try to find a way out of it. And there is no way out...
The crisis is also experienced by many people as a period of anxieties, fears, uncertainty, sometimes emptiness, the meaninglessness of existence, a stop on the way - each person comes up with his own metaphor. Here's what they say different people, speaking about his experiences and feelings during the crisis:
- “It was as if I was frozen alone in some space and did not move.”
- “There was no one around, and there was a feeling that no one would help me, and the whole world around was collapsing.”
- “I experienced trembling, weakness, heaviness, tension and stiffness.”
- “It was like an immersion - it covered 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 close around me and was about to crush me.”
- “I was exhausted, and I didn’t have enough 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 the psychological crisis. Separately, the words of each of the women mean nothing and can mean anything, but together they make up a picture of a personality crisis. Agree, the picture is heavy and unpleasant. Still, it is no coincidence that this condition is one of the most common reasons for contacting a psychologist.
What are the crises?
There are actually a lot of them. In fact, there are three types of crises in the development of a personality: an age crisis, a situational crisis, and a directly personal one. As a rule, when people say: “I have a crisis!” we are talking about the third option. But we will consider everything - in order to know when to wait and gain patience, and when - to ask friends for advice or look for a way out in literary sources.
So, age crises. 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 does not give it to him yet. There are quite a lot of such crises, and they arise almost from infancy. Childhood crises occur at the end of the first year, at three years, at seven, and throughout adolescence. They are all associated with the child gaining independence and new skills. For example, at the age of three, a child already wants to dress himself, but his mother does not allow him yet, because it takes too much time. And the baby starts to cry. In this situation, the mother needs to accept the growing up of the child and specifically find 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 the age-related crises of adult life. The first such crisis is 17-18 years old. During this period, the first meeting with adulthood takes place. A person begins to self-determine and seeks his place in the world. The second crisis occurs in the interval from 30 to 40 years - the so-called mid-life crisis. A person takes a look at his life and answers the question for himself: did I do everything I wanted to? The next crisis - pre-retirement - happens at the age of 50-60 and is associated with retirement and a change from a dynamic lifestyle to a calmer one. And the last age crisis is the crisis of the end of life - it happens to everyone in different ages. He is associated with general assessment lived life - positive or negative.
Another type of psychological crisis is situational crisis. They have their own well-understood reason. For example, you want a husband - and rich, and kind, and caring, and smart, and cheerful - in general, and eat a fish, and climb a pine tree. But everything together does not work out, and the woman finds herself face to face with this “does not work out”. Or, for example, you want to have time to build a career and create an ideal hearth, but there is not 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, maybe a little frustrated, but it's possible to live with it.
And the last type is actually personality 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 may 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 caused 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 later.
What awaits you: stages of experience
Thank God, the personality crisis develops gradually, since no one can withstand such a suddenly fallen 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 for everyone this way out. A strong and healthy person is always able to find an option that suits her. But are you that kind of person?
So, the stages of experiencing a crisis:
1. Stage of immersion. As a rule, at the very beginning of a crisis, a person is disturbed by unpleasant sensations in the body. But you don't realize yet that you're having an identity crisis - you just don't feel well. You are tense and constrained, experiencing a feeling of weakness and heaviness. Since something needs to be done, you do it, but these gestures are very fussy and meaningless.
Your thoughts are like viscous porridge, and you chew it endlessly. 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's like a huge black hole and you fall into it. This is the first stage of the crisis.
2. Deadlock stage. 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 increasingly 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 help from outside will not come, and your desire to find a way out of this impasse grows more and more. But you can’t get away from these feelings - you must definitely experience them, and then for the first time there is light at the end of the tunnel.
3. Stage of fracture. Against the backdrop of complete moral decline, you begin to withdraw yourself from the space of crisis. At first, this exit manifests itself literally - you hide under the covers and isolate yourself from everything - and then psychologically. As if there is a “you” and a “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 alone. There is a restructuring of the personality and there is a readiness for a new experience.The world around you seems to be re-opening, and you are in harmony with it. You are free and feel light in your body. The thirst for new sensations and impressions does not leave you - sometimes you even want to break loose and embark on a journey. You finally have your desires, and you feel the strength and ability 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. To bad scenarios, psychologists include neuropsychiatric and psychosomatic disorders, suicide, withdrawal from society, post-traumatic stress, various crimes, alcohol or other addictions, etc...
As we can see, the crisis does not just test the personality for strength - it can 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 endure. But don't worry too much. A personal crisis may not overtake everyone, and if this happened to you, rejoice, because it means very high level mental development. Well, if not, then rejoice all the more, because we have already noted that this is one of the most difficult and unpleasant conditions in life.
To the deepest regret, the way out of the crisis cannot be bypassed or accelerated. Remember - the crisis must be experienced, and only then will there be an opportunity to exit. “And what, it is impossible in another way? Perhaps there is some kind of magical psychological remedy? you ask hopefully. And we will have to disappoint you: “No, it doesn’t exist.” There really are no magic bullets. But there is your personality and your own resources. God told you to use them.
So, how can you make it easier for yourself to live through a crisis?
1. Find support. Yes, yes, you heard right. No matter how much you sometimes want to step back from this world, support and sympathy will be very helpful to you. Even in a crisis, you remain a person who needs communication, love and care, so isn't it better to get them from a person who is aware of what is happening? It can be a close friend, your spouse, distant relative or even random person on some forum. The main thing is that he should be nice 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. He needs to listen to you and not judge you. Your communication should be honest, and the key to this is a sincere expression of feelings.
2. Keep a personal diary. Write down 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 diary will help you become more aware of what is happening to you, as well as separate one experience from another. Through these recordings, you kind of share your experiences with others.
3. Find inner support. The world around you is collapsing, everything is turning 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 correct 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, while maintaining faith in the future. Thanks to them, your life regains meaning based on the experience of all mankind.
4. Experience everything that happens to you. Don't run away, be aware of your feelings. Separate them from each other and unravel this clod of despair. Immerse yourself in them - all this is an invaluable experience, without which you cannot become who 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 escape, fly to another planet or just pass out. Hold on! This is your strength. When it gets really bad, lean on the people who are important to you and on your diary. By the way, then 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 can lose sight of something special. It is important not only to make these discoveries, but to accept them for yourself. Gradually, you will come to the realization that the world is not black and white - it has gray and a lot of colors and shades in between. To see them is to accept 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 methods you can use. The first is joining to natural rhythms (the flickering of fire, the sound of pouring water, the sound of rain), the second - to mechanical ones (the sound of wheels on a train, the ticking of a clock), and the third is inclusion in the 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 often fear the most), 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 “own” will be useful to you? It doesn't hurt to try.
9. Try new things. A direct continuation of the previous paragraph! But seriously, you should try new things when you are ready for it. If you decide to skydive in a dead end state, 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 you can feel hopelessness. It will seem to you that there is no end in sight to the whole black pool that has drawn you in. In these moments, do not forget that the end will definitely come, and it will be good. Everything depends on you. Keep optimism even in the most difficult moments.
This is everything you wanted to know about identity crisis but were afraid to ask. Well, maybe not afraid, but now one way or another you all know. The most important thing to remember is that the crisis is over and over, and its result is your new, brilliant and mature personality.
A personal crisis is similar to teething: it hurts, it’s difficult, you can try to alleviate it, but you can’t skip this period (for example, taking teeth out of the gums with a special device). And it is thanks to erupted teeth that you can finally bite and chew.
It is the same with the personality - after going through the 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, go for it, and everything will work out for you!
Throughout life, a person faces various crises due to his biological, mental and professional development.
Age crises due to maturation, restructuring, aging of the human body. Changes in mental abilities are the result of age-related changes. This means that 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 are among the normative processes necessary for the normal progressive course of personal development.
Crises of professional development are caused by a change and restructuring of the leading activity (for example, from educational to professional). A variety of professional crises are creative crises caused by creative failure, lack of significant achievements, 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: the restructuring of consciousness, unconscious impressions, instincts, irrational tendencies - all that generates an internal conflict, a mismatch of psychological integrity. They are traditionally the subject of study by Freudians, neo-Freudians and other psychoanalytic schools.
Along with the mentioned groups of psychological crises, there is another huge layer of crisis phenomena caused by significant sharp changes in living conditions. The determinants of these life crises are such important events as the end of educational institution, employment, marriage, childbirth, change of residence, retirement and other changes in a person's individual biography. 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 singled out, caused by critical life circumstances, dramatic and sometimes tragic events. These factors have a devastating, 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 flow on the verge of human capabilities and are accompanied by emotional experiences. They are caused by such abnormal events as disability, disability, divorce, involuntary unemployment, migration, unexpected death. loved one, deprivation of liberty, etc. Let's call this group critical crises.
The first three groups of personality crises have a relatively pronounced chronological, age-related character. 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 prevailing tendency of normative crises is a constructive, developing personality.
The second three groups of personality crises are non-normative, probabilistic in nature. The time of onset, life circumstances, scenarios, participants in the crisis are random. These event crises are caused by a combination of circumstances. The way out of such crises is problematic. Sometimes it is destructive, and then 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, for 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 choosing a career and starting a family, setting life goals and starting to achieve them. Later, around thirty, many come to re-evaluate their previous elections career, family, life goals. Sometimes it comes to a radical change in life 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 choices. Finally, at the end of their careers, people face a new crisis due to the upcoming 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, if crises at the dawn and dusk 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 moves into the beginning of the next decade. This stage is called the “decade of doom” or “mid-life crisis”. Her main characteristic is the realization 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 is already gaining enough experience to realize the illusory nature of many of his fantasies. Therefore, the assessment of their divergence from 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 unbridgeable abyss. The idea of a future happy and dignified life that awaits you is replaced by a 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 hope is running out, and whether you like it 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 corresponding member, or even a foreman in your own SMU.
Disillusionment, which is not unusual at the age of thirty, can be threatening to the individual. Dante described his own confusion at this age:
Having passed the earthly life 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 people often show some dramatic change in their lives somewhere around the age of 35. Some of them, such as Gauguin, at that time had just begun creative work. Others, however, on the contrary, lost their creative motivation for about 35 years, and some even passed away. The frequency of death of many gifted or incompetent people between the ages of 35 and 40 increases abnormally.
Those who make it through this decade with their creativity usually find significant changes in the nature of creativity. Often these changes relate to the intensity of their work: for example, brilliant impulsiveness is replaced by 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 that no one can keep them indefinitely. A manager leading a busy life by the age of 35 must change the pace of his life and not be so “given all the best and scatter”. Thus, the limitation problem physical strength inevitably arises in the life of a person of any profession.
For many, the renewal process that begins when they face their illusions and physical decline eventually leads them to a more peaceful and even happier life.
After 50, health issues become more pressing and there is a growing awareness that "time is running out." And people are beginning to understand that the main drawback of old age is that it passes, and a person, as he is born, and leaves life without hair, teeth and illusions.
The second chapter of our work will be devoted to the main types of personality crisis. IN psychological science different 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 "Crisis of the material and social "I"" and "Crisis of the spiritual "I""
We will consider the crises of the material and social "I" through:
Professional crises
And we will consider the 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, in-depth and deep.
· Floor crisis is manifested in the growth of anxiety, anxiety, irritation, incontinence, dissatisfaction with oneself, one's actions, plans, relationships with others. One feels confusion, tension of expectation of the ill-fated development of events. Indifference to everything that worried arises, once stable interests are lost, their spectrum narrows. Apathy directly affects the decline in performance.
· Deep crisis manifests itself in a sense of powerlessness in front of what is happening. Everything falls out of hand, the ability to control events is lost. Everything around is only annoying, especially the closest ones, who 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. Depending on the individual characteristics, aggressive reactions may occur. All these symptoms complicate contacts, narrow the circle of communication, and contribute to the growth of alienation. Their own future causes more and more serious concerns, a person does not know how to live on.
· A deep crisis is accompanied by feelings 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 a sense of hostility. Behavior loses flexibility, becomes rigid. A person is no longer able to spontaneously express his feelings, to be spontaneous and creative. She goes deep into herself, isolates herself from relatives and friends. Everything that surrounds her seems unreal, unreal. The meaning of existence is lost.
Our task in this chapter is to review and study the main types of "personality crisis" encountered in humans.
Crises in the material and social "I"
As mentioned earlier, we refer to the crises of the material and spiritual "I" such crises as:
crises of mental development
Professional crises
Crises in the material and social "I" we will consider through the crises of psychological development.
The crisis of development is the next main element of the mechanism of human development. The crisis of development 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 growing 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 experienced manifestations of such crises.
IN domestic psychology the term "age crises" was introduced by L.S. Vygotsky. Sam L.S. Vygotsky understood the age crisis of development as the concentration of sharp and capital shifts and shifts, 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 internal move child development completed a cycle and the transition to the next cycle will be a turning point...”
In our work, we highlight the following crises:
Neonatal crisis. Associated with a sharp change in living conditions. A child from comfortable habitual conditions of life gets into difficult ones (new nutrition, breathing). Adaptation of the child to new conditions of life.
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 emergence of affective reactions. Affective outbursts as a reaction to misunderstanding on the part of adults. The main acquisition of the transitional period is a kind of children's speech, called L.S. Vygotsky autonomous. It differs significantly from adult speech and sound form. Words become ambiguous and situational.
Crisis 3 years. The boundary between early and preschool age- one of the most difficult moments in a child's life. It's destruction, revision of the old system social relations, the crisis of highlighting one's "I". The appearance of the phenomenon “I myself”, according to Vygotsky, is a new formation “the 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 changes. At 3 years old, for the first time, he 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, the 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, the child for the first time can act contrary to his desires.
Crisis 7 years. The identification 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 mannerisms, capriciousness, deliberately pretentious, artificial behavior, fidgeting and clowning. And in general, he is distinguished by a general unmotivated behavior, stubbornness, and negativism.
Analyzing these manifestations, L. S. Vygotsky explained them by the loss of childish spontaneity, involuntary behavior, which disappears as a result of the beginning differentiation of external and inner life. L. S. Vygotsky considered another distinctive feature of this critical period to be the emergence of a meaningful orientation in one’s own experiences: the child suddenly discovers the fact of the presence of his own experiences, discovers that they belong to him and only him, and the experiences themselves acquire meaning for him.
L. I. Bozhevich wrote that a child of this age has 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 crisis of 6-7 years is based on a conflict that arises as a result of a 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 impedes the satisfaction of the needs that arise in the child and causes in him the phenomena of frustration, deprivation of needs, which are generated by the mental neoplasms that have arisen by this time.
Pubertal crisis (from 11 to 15 years) 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. In connection with 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, the central neoplasm of younger adolescence. There is a passionate desire, if not to be, then at least to appear 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 a teenager actually is in a social environment. puberty crisis.
Intimate-personal communication becomes the leading activity during this period. There are also bright, but usually successive hobbies.
Crisis 17 years (from 15 to 17 years). It arises exactly at the turn of the usual school and new adult life. It can move up to 15 years. At this time, the child is on the threshold of real adulthood.
The majority of 17-year-old schoolchildren are oriented towards continuing their education, a few - towards job searches. The value of education is a great blessing, but at the same time, achieving the goal is difficult, and at the end of grade 11 emotional stress may rise sharply.
For those who are going through a hard crisis of 17 years, it is characteristic various fears. Responsibility to yourself and your 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 a mistake, before failure when entering a university, for young men - before 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 another chronic disease may begin.
A sharp change in lifestyle, inclusion in new activities, communication with new people cause significant tension. New life situation needs to be adapted to it. Two factors mainly help to adapt: family support and self-confidence, a sense of competence.
Aspiration to the future. The period of stabilization of the Personality. At this time, a system of stable views on the world and one's place in it is formed - a worldview. Known associated with this youthful maximalism in assessments, passion in defending their point of view. Self-determination, professional and personal, becomes the central new formation of the period.
Mid-life crisis. (30 to 55 years).
The mid-life 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 to personally significant motives or needs that are defined by everyone as leading or basic. Around the age of 30, sometimes a little 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 used to be the main thing in it, in some cases even in the destruction of the former way of life.
The crisis of "middle life" arises as a result of unfulfilled life plan. If at the same time there is a “reassessment of values” and a “revision of one's own Personality”, then we are talking about the fact that the life plan turned out to be wrong in general. 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 crisis of "mid-life" 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 whole crisis, 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 a change in attitude on the part of colleagues at work is added to this: the time when one could be considered “promising”, “promising” is passing, and a person feels the need to “pay bills”.
In addition to the problems associated with professional activity, the crisis of "mid-life" is often caused by an exacerbation family relations. The loss of some close people, the loss of a very important common side of the life of spouses - direct participation in the lives of children, everyday care for them - contributes to the final understanding of the nature of marital relations. And if, apart from the children of the spouses, nothing significant connects both of them, the family may break up.
In the event of a “middle life” crisis, a person has to once again rebuild his life plan, develop a new “I-concept” in many respects. Serious changes in life can be associated with this crisis, up to a change in profession and the creation of a new family.
Crisis of aging and death.
Undoubtedly, the problem of death is all-age. Nevertheless, it does not seem far-fetched, premature, especially for the elderly and the elderly, transforming into the problem of natural death. For them, the question of attitudes towards death is translated from subtext into the context of life itself. There comes a time when a tense dialogue between life and death begins to sound clearly in the space of individual existence, the tragedy of temporality is realized.
The actualization of thanatological reflections is due not only to pathological changes leading to poor health and an increase in the likelihood of death, but also to the peculiarities of the lifestyle of an old person. The latter include a certain monumentality of internal subjectivity, distance from momentary social stimuli, a significant weakening of the motives for achieving success, comfort, and career. A person who has freed himself 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 painful misunderstanding of the limited ability to control nature. From the point of view of the philosophy of pragmatism, which emphasizes the importance of achievement and success, the dying is the defeated.
Religion, while capable of being a significant support for the dying, has largely lost its meaning for the average person. Western religions have been reduced to the level of formalized rites 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. Indeed, according to this approach, nothing exists outside the material world. The physical destruction of the body and brain is the irreversible end of human life.
Elderly and elderly people, as a rule, are not afraid of death itself, but of the possibility of a purely vegetative existence devoid of any meaning, as well as the suffering and anguish caused by diseases. We can state the presence of two leading attitudes in their attitude towards death: firstly, 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, affecting simultaneously the biological, emotional, philosophical and spiritual aspects of life.
Therefore, personality crises are normal, inevitable stages of development. Replacing the outdated reality editor.
Unfortunately, sometimes it happens that a person cannot cope with the upcoming changes, cannot in any way move into a new quality that his own personality requires from him. inner world or circumstances of outer life. Often this is due to so-called "personality deformities" that make it difficult to reformat the internal reality editor. Then they talk about the pathological course of the crisis, and in this case, emergency 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-related, existential and spiritual.
Situational crises
With situational ones, everything is most clear, 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: complaints will not help the cause, practical actions are needed, we 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: to integrate the experience gained, that is, in other words, in order to live normally, having learned that "this happens too." This becomes especially difficult when the experience goes beyond the normal. In this case, a person often “destroys the whole world”, and here the help of a psychologist is simply necessary.
Age crises
Age crises, like situational ones, have objective causes. For the most part, they are determined by age, the corresponding physiological changes and the change social roles. Age crises include childhood (there are many), adolescence, entry into adulthood, middle age and aging.
Of all of them, only the 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 it, although formally it is not existential.
existential crises
With existential ones, unlike the previous ones, not everything is so clear: they have no objective reasons, they do not happen to everyone, although those existential givens that serve as their topics - these givens concern everyone:
1. Death
2. Freedom
3. Insulation
4. Meaninglessness of life.
These four existential givens can plunge a person into the abyss of crisis at any age. Such problems are fundamentally unsolvable at an objective level - that's why they are called existential, because we all have to live with it. Nevertheless, the awareness of such a reality in its entirety often takes a person to a new level, as it were. Speaking in the rough language of the psychological protocol, the maturity of the used psychological defenses, which has a beneficial effect not only on understanding these final givens 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 the 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 intensive 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 no reason. I, as a person spoiled by causality, still look for subjective reasons: an unconscious request, when the psyche needs more and more powerful resources for functioning, 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 will it go.
The experience of the numinous experience of non-duality, given to us in sensations, is the most resourceful experience of all possible. In practice, this is an endless resource of the collective unconscious - it is the Holy Spirit, it is the Atman, it is the Tao, etc. The ability to deal with this resource is often not enough for a person, and this power is sometimes experienced so painfully that the probability 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 “living as before” in a crisis, alas, does not last very long. Crises, in fact, are called crises because they combine not only opportunities, but also dangers. Fortunately, the dangers are not as dire as they seem. But the possibilities are unimaginable.
The main thing to remember is that they are.