A 42-year-old client says he is in a constant state of transition. “In my 20s and 30s, I felt I had to give everything to my work so that my business could settle. Now, in my 40s, I’m caught between caregiving for my unwell parents and trying to develop a sturdy relationship with my teenage children. There is no breathing room or moment to sit and savour, even though I have the resources.”
Another 39-year-old female client says while being single feels great given the autonomy she has, there are days she feels deeply lonely. “My happiness has been dipping for a year and it’s not about companionship. What I earlier found fascinating no longer feels attractive. I feel stuck and have forgotten what it means to feel alive.”
In my work as a therapist, a consistent and major theme is that the period between age 37 and the mid-50s is one of the most challenging times in people’s lives. Often this gets grouped under the umbrella term of “mid-life crisis”, of which I’m not a big fan.
My sense is that how we navigate these years determines how we will step into our second innings of life. These years pose an existential dilemma as we stand at the crossroads, deciding which path to take and how to move forward. The choice is largely about what to prioritise, what to accept, where to accommodate, what to let go, and whether this relates to values, our relationship with our body, work, or people in our inner circle. This demands a recommitment to who we want to become and how we want to lead our lives.
I remember the year I turned 40: I got reading glasses, and then a frozen shoulder, which kept me company for more than a couple of years. I remember thinking how the body has a way of reminding us that we are getting old, whether we accept it or not. For many of us, accepting that our energy levels are shifting—and that the responsibilities we carry affect the capacities of both body and mind—takes courage and humility.
It’s a reminder that, beneath our differences, most of us navigate remarkably similar human limits. Many disruptions in these years are connected to how our perspectives change. I often hear clients say this is the age they seem to become more pragmatic and have more courage to say no. For both male and female clients, this life stage also becomes a reason to pause and state needs they want to act on. All this hinges on the realisation that there is limited time.
There is a beauty in holding an awareness of inevitable death and then repurposing life with that understanding.
This life stage comes with caregiving, managing parents’ illness and grief, all of which reminds us of our own fragility and highlights how precious every minute is. At the same time, these years feel draining as people navigate caring for a parent or being part of a treatment plan for a loved one for whom we have mixed feelings. Hospitalisations, cognitive decline of parents brings fear, a reminder of how little one can control and a desire to live life fully when one is healthy.
That’s why one of the biggest challenges of these years is staying open-hearted and hopeful—finding ways to rediscover vitality instead of becoming bitter, fearful or paranoid. I ask clients to examine the core values that shaped their pivotal decisions and then view repurposing through that lens. Those who attach themselves to control and very solid goals struggle because they lose the capacity for flexibility. As we get older our well-being rests on recognising interdependence and mindfully sustaining meaningful relationships.
When I was at a monastery, one of the monks mentioned, “Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.” I think recognising the beauty of this is what makes these years a little easier amidst chaos and yet allows us to hold hope gently.
Sonali Gupta is a Mumbai-based psychotherapist and author.