Reflections: What If You Are Not Falling Apart?

Stephanie: Hi, friend. It's Steph here with some additional thoughts on the recent episode with Dr. Deborah Heiser. If you haven't listened to it yet, don't worry. It's not a prerequisite to be here today and there is no quiz. This isn't so much a recap as it is an examination of how Debra's story fits into the framework and illustrates some of the motifs that come up during this midlife transition.

But if you did listen to the conversation, you might remember that Debra talked about stepping out of a secure, stable, safe research career and into a life that finally felt like her own. She shared about the deep emotional shift that happens at midlife, the one that allows us to trust our own authority, rethink the lives we've built, and start listening to the parts of ourselves that we've ignored for years.

I think one of the most powerful ideas she offered is that midlife is not a crisis, it's a transition. And I know this is something that many people in this 35 to 45 age range are really struggling with these days. They hate the concept of the midlife crisis. It doesn't resonate with them. It feels stereotypical. It feels like it belongs to an earlier generation. And you're right.

But this period in midlife, this transitionary stage is a developmental turning point, where your inner world finally catches up to your outer life. And if you don't understand what's happening, it can feel disorienting, confusing, or even like things are wrong.

But there was so much in that conversation that I just wanted to keep exploring, especially the parts that might help you make your midlife transition feel a little less chaotic and a little bit more easily navigable. So today I wanna dig deeper into a couple of the themes that Debra introduced in our conversation that I think are truly game changing, how our emotional growth continues to rise through adulthood even as our bodies start showing signs of aging.

I'm also gonna dig into something she presented as a bit of a framework for considering midlife, an easy two word question that you can apply, which brings me to this. If you're feeling unsettled, you don't have to interpret it as a decline.

Instead, maybe think of it like a software update is being installed. And unsettled may look different for everyone. I know for me in my late thirties, unsettled, look like pretty much everything in my life blowing up, the fancy job, the relationship, starting a new business, panic attacks, but for you, it might be a little less dramatic. Maybe for you feeling unsettled looks like a restlessness, you can't quite explain. You are still showing up in your life. You're still checking the boxes. Nothing's out and out wrong, but there's like a low hum inside of you whispering that the life you built in your twenties and thirties doesn't fit as well anymore.

You might feel bored in a job you used to love, irritated by a schedule that used to feel manageable, or just vaguely aware that something is shifting, even if you can't name it yet.

Feeling unsettled can also feel like emotional static. Maybe you're more sensitive than you usually are, or more impatient, or you cry in the car for reasons that you can't quite figure out.

And. Uh, you could also maybe look around at your relationships, your work, your routines and think, whose life is this? How did I get here? Is, is this really what I wanted? And you don't even have to be able to name the feeling. A lot of people in this transitional stage can't. All they know is that something feels off.

So if you're feeling any of this, here's the important part. There is a reason for it. It's not random. It's not you. You're not falling apart. This is a predictable stage of adult development. And these feelings seem to peak in are late thirties or in early forties, despite life not being as linear as it was in like the seventies or eighties. But this is the part of your adulthood when your inner world finally catches up to your outer life.

For most of us in our twenties and thirties, we build our lives by following the map that somebody else drew. Parents, teachers, bosses, mentors, the culture, the shoulds, the timelines, the expectations.

We pick a career because it seems smart, we'll always have a well-paying job. We stay in a relationship because it looks good on paper. Maybe you tell yourself he'll make a good dad. You climb ladders. You set goals. You try to be the adult you were told that you should be, and for a while that works. But somewhere in your thirties or early forties, your brain and your emotional development hit a new level of maturity. Level unlocked, if you will, that software up update I mentioned.

You've lived enough of your life and gathered enough experience and trust me, made enough mistakes and learned enough lessons that your internal authority finally strengthens to the point where you believe that you can trust it. And that's where that friction begins. You start noticing the gap between the life you built and the person you're becoming, or the tension between what the world told you to do and what you actually want.

This is not a crisis. Like Deborah said, it's a transition.

You're outgrowing that old operating system and that's why it feels unsettling. You are shedding identities that once fit you, or identities that you used to place value in are being taken away from you. Your questioning routines you used to tolerate or even like or love. You're noticing misalignments that you are always able to ignore before now. And once you start seeing more clearly, that clarity can feel like disruption before it feels like freedom.

And that's why this unsettled feeling peaks during this decade. It's this natural point where emotional growth and self-awareness and lived experience converge, and your inner voice finally gets loud enough that you can hear it over all the rest of the noise. And this is where Deborah's what if framework becomes so helpful.

This is one of the clearest, simplest frameworks I think I've encountered so far on the show, 138 episodes now.

What if gives us a low stakes, curiosity driven way to examine parts of our life that feel tight. Ill-fitting, outdated, or misaligned. It gives us a gentle way to start shifting without. Blowing up your whole life.

Maybe you just start asking questions. What if I stopped doing that thing that drains me? What if I said yes to something I've been avoiding? What if I let myself want something different? Oh, that's a big one.

And it's interesting when you're in this midlife transition, things can feel urgent. You can feel the discomfort. You can feel the misalignment. You can feel the nudge that something isn't working anymore. And the instinct for a lot of us, especially high functioning adults, is to jump straight into, I need to fix this. I need to make a big decision. I need to over haul my life. I need to make a change. But what I've learned in all of these conversations that I've had over these last several years is that urgency is very often a trauma response and not a truth response. And when we force change, that tends to create chaos, not clarity.

But curiosity on the other hand, is gentle. It's open, it doesn't demand anything of us. It lets you explore possibilities without committing to them. And if you listened to my most recent conversation with Lauren Hayes, she shared a really beautiful story of curiosity and exploration when her husband of many years approached her with the statement, I feel like there's something more out there for me. Whew.

If you're interested, look for episode 1 37, uh, Turning 40 and Rewriting the Rules of Love.

But curiosity can sound like, what if I changed this one tiny thing? What if I just paid attention instead of reacting? When you approach this midlife transition and the changes that are coming with curiosity, you can actually take that fear and quiet it down.

You can reduce the resistance to change because you're not actually blowing up your life. You're not committing to anything. You are merely thinking about new ideas and scenarios. Merely considering the implications of doing something differently. At most, you're running small experiments. You're gathering data. You're learning about yourself in real time.

And most importantly, curiosity keeps you calm. Forced change can throw you into survival mode, which will shut down your creativity, your intuition, and any clear thinking that you're trying to do. But curiosity keeps all those things open and it lets your body and your brain feel safe enough to explore some new possibilities. And the safety is what lets real aligned change happen.

So curiosity is the doorway, and big change is the hallway on the other side, but you don't have to sprint down the hallway. In fact, big change only happen one step at a time. So all you have to do right now is open the door and see what the hallway looks like. How long is it? What kind of floor does it have? Is there any wallpaper? Are there windows? What's the lighting look like? How many doorways can you see? Does the hallway turn? Are there stairs? You get what I'm saying here.

But once curiosity has softened your system and opened that mental doorway, you're in a perfect position to try something else that Debra mentioned, which is, the what if framework lets you experiment with self-care by subtraction. And I know a lot of us learned, were indoctrinated, the very opposite. We were taught to do more, try harder, be better, add habits, add routines, add commitments, be more efficient, be more effective.

But in midlife at this point in time, subtraction is often where relief starts, and here's why. Your body already knows what doesn't fit, and it's giving you clues. It's been giving you clues. They may look or feel like a tightness in your chest every time someone's name pops up on your phone. Feeling depleted after certain meetings or social plans. Exhaustion that starts before you show up somewhere. A sinking feeling when you open your calendar. And irritation you can't explain, but also can't ignore. These are clues.

You may think they're irritation or exhaustion, but they're trying to tell you something more. So if you start subtracting the things that drain you, whether it's people or obligations, you are going to start seeing shifts in your world.

Subtracting something, whether it's merely uncomfortable or if it's toxic or outdated, creates space. Peace. And once you have space and peace, you can start to tune into what it is that you want. And the problem is that when people think about subtraction, they often jump into the big dramatic ideas, quit your job, end the relationships, sell everything and move to Portugal, van life. You know. And you may well end up there, but you don't need to start there.

Subtraction can be incredibly small and still incredibly powerful. Again, think of it like an experiment, just collecting data. What if I stopped doing this thing for one week? What if I protected just one night a week for myself? And what if I didn't force myself to keep that particular friendship alive?

These micro subtractions have the ability to create micro spaciousness, and that spaciousness is what lets clarity bubble up. You don't have to commit to anything forever. Simply give it a try and gather the data. Pay attention to how your body responds when you remove one of these things. Do your shoulders drop? Do you breathe a little deeper? Did you feel a sense of relief? Did you say, oh, thank God. That is information. And that's what this transitional period is really asking us to tune into.

By the time we reach our thirties and forties, our lives are full, sometimes overflowing. Responsibilities, roles, routines, identities, a lot of which we never intentionally chose. We just accumulated along the way.

Subtraction gives you your agency back. It creates space for your own voice to come through. And once you create that space, your what if questions start to get even clearer. Your emotional arc gets louder. Your sense of alignment becomes more evident. And, well, the next steps then become harder to ignore. That much is true as well.

But all of this is to say, listen, if you are feeling unsettled or irritated or stuck or stagnant, in a rut, or like nothing matters anymore. Yes, change may be in your future, maybe even big change. But it doesn't have to start with that.

Your next step could simply be quiet contemplation that you keep all to yourself while you work things out in your mind. And then maybe a few small experimental subtractions to see what happens. Then back to that quiet contemplation to think about the data. So trust me, you don't have to do anything scary just yet.

The time will come for that. By then, you'll have a better idea of what it is you're committing to and you'll feel more comfortable about it.

So if you want a place to start, choose one tiny what if question, and sit with it this week. No pressure, no action, no to-do lists. Just curiosity.

I hope this helps you feel a little less alone and a little bit more grounded as you move through your own version of this transition.

Thanks so much for listening today. I'll see you next time.

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