What are life crises?
A crisis can arise when several areas of your life change at the same time, in ways that make you rethink your choices, your values or your life. There is often an element of surprise: something that was not planned, or that you did not see coming.
Examples of life crises I can help with in therapy:
- Becoming a parent
- The end of a relationship
- Divorce
- Bereavement
- Being made redundant, or changes in your working life
- Big life choices (for example, should we have children, where should we live, how do we want to live)
- Illness
- Betrayal
- Identity crisis
- Moving, including moving to a new country
How does a life crisis feel?
A life crisis can feel like losing your footing and your sense of meaning in your situation. Sometimes we see it coming; other times it feels as if the rug has been pulled out from under us. Many people experience it as a kind of loss of control, where we no longer feel fully in charge of our lives. You may feel a strong urge to find answers, but often it is more about exploring which changes are at play, and how we relate to our feelings about them. When we turn towards our feelings, we discover which parts of ourselves have been affected, and what we need to find meaning and security again.
Typical reactions to a life crisis:
Uncertainty and doubt
In a life crisis, we often experience a great deal of uncertainty and doubt, because we are facing big choices or unwanted changes in life. This can come with a feeling of insecurity, and we may begin to doubt whether we have made the right choices for ourselves.
Feeling low and racing thoughts
In a crisis, we often become emotionally overwhelmed by the changes and the decisions we are weighing up. Over time, the pressure can build so much that we feel low, because we boil over in our attempts to solve it. Sometimes the strong wish to fix the situation leads to racing thoughts that actually use up our resources without bringing us any closer to a solution.
Anxiety, stress and burnout
When we are in a life crisis, the body sends signals that we are working overtime. This can show up as tension, feeling stressed or anxious, increased tiredness and so on. Because change comes with uncertainty, it puts the body under pressure as it tries to create a safe life again. If that isn't possible straight away, the overload can lead to exhaustion and burnout.
Fear of the future
During an existential crisis or life crisis, fear of the future often arises. This fear usually stems from something unknown or changing in the situation that makes the future feel less predictable. It can feel like a loss of control, which can be very uncomfortable to be in the middle of, and which we tend to want to escape.
How do you get through a life crisis?
Life crises are an unavoidable part of being human, but that doesn't mean they have to define us. They only do if we get stuck and don't manage to handle them in a helpful way. Handling a crisis can look like many things: understanding what it means for our identity, learning new strategies (for example more self-care), or staying with and working through any grief and shock. Below is an overview of my advice on how you can begin, and which steps you can take, when working through a life crisis:
- Acknowledge that it is a crisis for you, whatever others may think
- Talk to someone to understand what is difficult
- Seek help and support, whether professional or from the people around you
- Explore what the crisis means for your feelings and your story, through conversation or by keeping a journal
- Know that time is on your side and that healing and understanding happen gradually. It isn't meant to be resolved in the moment; the point is to find ways of being with it so that it feels less heavy
How can online therapy help you through a life crisis?
Professional help can support you through a life crisis by helping you get an overview of which parts of the crisis feel especially hard. Here we can look at feelings, relationships, the stories you tell about yourself, or changes in your sense of worth and meaning in life. In therapy, we will often work on understanding and developing the way we take care of ourselves and handle our feelings, the way we are in our close relationships, or both. This can bring a greater sense of freedom to be ourselves, or to be the way we need to be in the world. In other words, important changes can happen on the inside, which are then reflected in our outer world.
What my clients say
I came to Marlene with one central question I wanted to find an answer to. For me, the therapy became a really lovely journey of learning, where I not only got more clarity about my situation, but also had the chance to look deep into myself and reflect on my own patterns and core conflicts. Marlene is good at holding on to the essential questions and feelings, and at supporting and nudging me with care when needed.
Marlene is committed and empathetic, and creates a safe space where it is easy to share, especially because she invests herself in the conversation too. I was very glad to have a course of therapy with Marlene, and I would definitely recommend it to others, and use it again myself if I ever needed to.
We are so incredibly glad to be in therapy with you, and from session to session we can feel how we are changing for the better, both individually and together. You are wonderfully skilled at guiding the conversation and the space between us. We want you to know that.
Couples therapy has helped us in different ways. I have come to know T’s motives in a different way from what I assumed before. T has learned to listen better than before, and not necessarily to look for solutions, but simply to listen.
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I can also help with
- Couples therapyAre poor communication, recurring conflicts or a lack of security getting in the way of your relationship?
- Family therapyDo you often feel misunderstood, or find your feelings running high in close relationships, for example with your children?
- Low self-esteemDo you tend to be hard on yourself and put other people's needs before your own?
- AnxietyDoes it feel as if you are often on high alert? We all have an alarm system that helps us when we face danger, but when we have anxiety...
- DepressionAre you struggling with a lack of motivation, strong feelings of guilt, tiredness, or generally feeling low?
- StressDo you feel as if you are drowning in your own life? Stress is not a diagnosis but a state of overwhelm that arises when there is far too much on our plate.