A midlife crisis is so passé! I tried a midlife reset instead – The Sunday Times Style, October 2024
By Jessica Salter
First published: 6 October 2024, online and in print.
Turning 40 was the perfect moment for Jessica Salter to take stock of her life — and, she discovers, she’s not alone
There’s a moment on a call with my new therapist when I feel like a huge fraud. She’s taking me through an “MoT” — yes, I’m literally being checked under the bonnet for dodgy parts, but in my life, not my motor — and I say, “There’s nothing really wrong, everything is fine.” But then, of course, we dig a little deeper.
I turned 40 this year and I feel lucky: top line is things are good. But in the extreme business of my stage of life (full-time job, not full-time childcare, friends, family, life …) I live calendar day by calendar day. I feel that if you sliced open my brain, out would fly to-do lists, not poetry. I do not make much time for reflection. The thought of shrivelling into a husk of a person with nothing left to say is terrifying.
I’ve always been curious about therapy — I’ve seen people around me transformed by it in times of crisis, and then seen how their onward approach to life has changed — but never really had that moment of urgency to book in (that and my long-lapsed dental appointment).
But an advert for Self Space, the online and London-based therapy service, caught my eye, in particular its 90-minute MoT with a therapist that promises to help you reflect on the significant cornerstones of your life, from friendships to work satisfaction. It’s part of a new breed of coaching-cum-therapy services that offer a chance to give yourself a sort of midlife review. It’s something that many of us should do. “Midlife is a great time to take stock and evaluate where you are at, where you have been, and decide what it is you want from the next half of life,” says Jodie Cariss, the founder of Self Space. “It’s a time to really think about what you want, who you want in your life and what’s going to bring you the most joy, most peace and most interest moving forward.”
Cariss says that, rather than seeing the changes in midlife as a “crisis” (that clichéd sports car purchase that perhaps masks something deeper), “I think it has the potential to be one of the richest, most exciting life stages.” If, that is, “we are much more able to be present in our lives and put ourselves first”.
That means less of the just “cracking on” (how many of us are experts at this?) and instead actually making time to work out what to tweak. My MoT was simple enough in concept. My therapist asked me to look at a circle segmented into “money”, “family”, “friends”, “work” and more, all with numbers running from one to ten. The aim was to mark each one out of ten and to see, when we finished, how much like a circle the shape would be if we joined the numbers (indicating how balanced I thought my life was) and how big the circle would be (showing overall contentedness). If any were out of whack, that was a reason to pause and consider tactics to tackle them.
I found that my friendship segment was the one that gave me most pause for thought. My therapist suggested that instead of feeling guilty about not seeing the people I thought I should, I needed to think deeper. Friendships, she said, are a mirror game with ourselves. To have good friendships, we need to have a better understanding of ourselves first. She suggested I need to take myself on a few solo dates to work out “what you bring and what you can receive”. I resisted my in-built laugh-at-therapy reflex and nodded along, actually picturing myself sitting with a coffee in a waterside café on a sunny day.
Some changes might be more painful than simply factoring in more “me time”. “It might be a time for shedding skin — friends, relationships and work identities that don’t serve you any more,” Cariss warns. She says it’s a stage of life where we can focus less “on being secure in our outward lives — kids, houses, careers — and move towards more internal security, which can see us shedding aspects of our old lives”.
One area that the personal development coach Claudia Guinness often sees is people who feel stuck in a job or career they don’t love. “We often make career decisions when we’re really young, perhaps influenced by parents or what we like at the time, and then get relatively high up and it feels fearful to start again,” she says. She starts any session with a new client by working out their “values”, something that sounded a bit wishy-washy until I was on the receiving end of the barrage of quickfire questions from Guinness, ranging from what podcasts I listen to, to what dinner party conversation would most pique my interest, to where in my house I felt most at peace. At the end she presented me with an astoundingly accurate picture of me — one I would have struggled to articulate myself.
Guinness’s introductory sessions then springboard into action plans for any life problems such as the common female paralysis of imposter syndrome. “When [clients] see how certain things truly drive them — things they’re knowledgeable about and deeply interested in — it often boosts their confidence and helps them feel more secure in who they are and what they contribute,” Guinness says.
Getting to the nub of what drives us and where we are holding ourselves back is similarly what sparks Dalbir Bains. A former fashion executive for global brands, handling budgets of billions, she was killing it professionally. “But I realised I was really unhappy. I loved my work but the rest of my life was out of balance.” She says this is the most common problem she hears from women, particularly those in their forties and fifties, in her new coaching venture, Santalan.
Bains had coaching at work and had been on health retreats, but found that the two didn’t marry up well enough, so decided to connect the gaps. Santalan starts with a four-day retreat where therapists, coaches and nutrition experts help clients work out what areas they need to address, then they create a bespoke 12-month coaching plan. “I think there are four pillars women need to examine,” she says. “Their health and wellbeing, their career, their relationships and their personal branding. I’ve actually come to realise that last one can be one of the most significant things to hold women back.”
By personal branding she means how we put ourselves out in the world. “It’s not only how others perceive you but also a crucial aspect of how you see yourself,” she says. In our modern world, image matters, “yet I see so many women uncomfortable with even having their picture taken”. Much as it might not appear that way with the accompanying picture on this page, I am one of those; I’m extremely critical of any that I do see (my Gmail profile picture is my ten-year-old wedding photo). When I had a short-lived attempt at posting more on Instagram (which is a work-based account), I felt a burning shame when a former (older) colleague asked me, cuttingly, if I was now an influencer. So I stopped.
Bains tells me that one step would be to schedule a photoshoot “to capture an image that truly reflects your appearance and personality”. Gulp. Then she and her team will “assess how well your current personal brand aligns with your actual life and goals. Often there is a disconnect here, so depending on your objectives, we will work together to enhance your personal brand both online and in person.”
It’s an exhausting — and time-consuming — process, all this self-reflection. But having dipped my toe in the water, I can see how beneficial it’s already becoming. I realise that I want to slow down a bit, not always say “yes” to every work opportunity, fearful that it might be the last, while trying to squeeze every minute of family time in as well. Instead, I need to focus on the quality of my relationships — and yes, that probably means starting with myself.
MoT, £165 for 90 minutes, theselfspace.com. Introductory session, from £80, claudiaguinnesscoaching.com. Retreats, £2,300, and monthly coaching fee, £300, santalan.com