Don’t you want different?
Some stages in life feel like defeat
And if you’re used to winning, you have all the tickets to enter a downward spiral.
In fact, the more of a winner you are, the more brutal the non-winning stages of life can feel.
Is this you?
The silent “Why?”
It’s the question that wakes you up at 3 a.m. and follows you into your morning coffee:
“Why am I such a mess?”
You’ve always faced problems and challenges with grit. And grit is behind some of your most brilliant achievements.
- So why do you feel that life is getting to you?
- Why do minor things break you?
- Why do you feel you’re increasingly about to crash?
And then, there’s the fear of what if the internal mess expands to your external environment.
The lack of “Where To?”
There’s at least one area of your life here you’re unhappy and tired of trying.
And as much as you’d like for things to be different, you have the strange feeling that you’ve reached the end of the road.
It’s just that … it’s can’t possibly be, because you’re only in your 40s or 50s.
For someone who always had a next step ready, not knowing what comes next feels like a personal failure.
And let’s not even go into the shame that comes with being “successful” on paper while feeling completely unanchored behind the scenes.
The exhaustion of problem solving
You’ve faced and solved major challenges before.
But this invisible thing inside you, this lack of internal signal? You can’t just problem-solve it.
And it’s not that you’re not trying.
You’re probably trying to think your way out of this – even obsessively. But the intellectual effort is becoming a burden of its own.
It feels like constant internal noise: a repetitive, grinding analysis that offers zero progress and 100% exhaustion.
Backward steps
When you’re in defeat season, you’re not only not moving forward. Some days, it seems you’re taking backward steps.
There’s a crippling sense of internal incompetence. Choosing what to cook for dinner or which email to answer first feels like a major hurdle.
So you wonder …
If you can’t handle the basics, how can you handle your life?
Then, your self-trust starts to fracture, and this makes you snappy and irritable – with yourself, or with others.
It’s not a passing thing
You’re not the type of person who gets caught up in moods. You plow through.
So when this sense of defeat first appeared, you did what you do best and kept moving.
But by now, you’ve realised this isn’t a passing thing. It’s still there, and some days you have the feeling it’s getting worse.
It just won’t let you go.
It’s almost like life is asking something of you, but you can’t decipher the question.
You don’t recognise yourself
Whatever you were known for before, it’s kind of … gone.
- If you’ve always been cool-headed, now you lose it quickly.
- If you’ve always had a steady pulse, now you’re hypersensitive.
- If achievement was your middle name, now you struggle to meet the baseline.
It’s like you’re living with a stranger you don’t recognise. A stranger that acts exactly the opposite of the person you always were.
This feels almost tragic when you’re already dealing with internal pressure and exhaustion.
I know … and I see you.
Some people call this a midlife crisis; others say that’s not a real thing. Honestly? The label doesn’t matter.
What matters is your experiential reality, here and now, and what you’re making out of it.
Stuck in a midlife crisis?
My name is Damaris and I work with competent adults who feel they’ve lost the plot in their 40s and 50s.
With responsible people who learned to function no matter what, and who don’t know what to do during the dysfunctional seasons of life.
I’m not a therapist and I don’t do motivational content.
I’m a cartographer of internal chaos (aka midlife crisis), a space I know very well after spending inside it a long season of 7 years.
This space you’re in is the edge of your map. And the sense of defeat is not lack of ability; it’s a structural limit created by not knowing what this edge is made of.
Beyond this edge is “different“: a different life, a different you, a different way of being and doing.
My work involves in-person intensive sessions with small groups, where people leave knowing exactly where they are in the boundary that runs between old and new.
This is incredibly valuable when you’re at the edge of the map.
We have a lot in common – Explore my resources on the midlife crisis reset:
I’ll see you around – hopefully, in person!
And remember, different is possible – even in seasons of defeat.