113. This week, Savvy Psychologist Dr. Ellen Hendriksen channels her best Talking Heads and asks, on behalf of every middle-aged adult: "How did I get here?" Plus, Dr. Hendriksen explains why time seems to fly as we get older.
113. This week, Savvy Psychologist Dr. Ellen Hendriksen channels her best Talking Heads and asks, on behalf of every middle-aged adult: "How did I get here?" Plus, Dr. Hendriksen explains why time seems to fly as we get older.
Find Dr. Ellen Hendriksen on Substack.
Find a transcript here.
Have a mental health question? Email us at psychologist@quickanddirtytips.com.
Find Savvy Psychologist on Facebook and Twitter, or subscribe to the newsletter for more psychology tips.
Savvy Psychologist is a part of Quick and Dirty Tips.
Links:
https://quickanddirtytips.com/savvy-psychologist
https://www.facebook.com/savvypsychologist
https://twitter.com/qdtsavvypsych
https://www.maximiliankiener.com/digitalprojects/time/
Welcome back to Savvy Psychologist! I'm your interim host Dr. Ellen Hendriksen. And I'm happy to say I'll be sneaking a few more episodes before your host arrives. Today I'm back with an oldie but a goodie from the archives because I often hear people talking about mid-life, looking back at the first half of their life and wondering how they already got to this point. And is it downhill from here? To answer that question, please enjoy this episode from 2016 where I do my best to help you understand the midlife crisis and why time seems to be going so fast. And I'll see you next week with a brand new episode.
Hi everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Savvy Psychologist. I'm Dr. Ellen Hendriksen, and every week, I will help you meet life's challenges with evidence-based research, a sympathetic ear, and zero judgment.
So this week, I'll channel my best talking heads and, on behalf of every middle-aged adult, ask: "How did I get here?" Plus, why time seems to fly as we get older.
So the midlife crisis, while not an actual diagnosis, is enough of a cultural phenomenon to instantly conjure up images of balding guys in impulsively purchased red sports cars, or women of a certain age getting nipped and tucked. But while not everyone has a wine-soaked midlife crisis accessorized with an Ashley Madison account, there is certainly developmental evidence that middle adulthood—defined as approximately ages 40 to 65—can be a difficult stage.
So what is it about midlife that is so challenging? Well, last week in our episode about the quarter-life crisis, we talked about Erik Erikson's psychosocial stages of development. And guess what? There is a challenge for middle adulthood as well. It's the seventh of the eight life stages, and it's called Generativity versus Stagnation.
And as the name implies, the challenge is to be productive. To give back through a career, to be active in our community, raise good kids to send forth into the world, or otherwise care for those around us. Anything that benefits others falls into the generativity bucket.
Stagnation, on the other hand, is being self-absorbed, taking more than you give, or choosing not to contribute. So, therefore, health problems that keep you from giving don't count against you here. But stagnation, predictably, leads to feeling disconnected or alienated, which in turn can set the stage for crisis.
But you don't have to have been navel-gazing for a couple of decades to have a crisis. It's also around this age that kids start to leave the nest, which may leave middle adulthood types feeling irrelevant or unnecessary, particularly if they stayed home to raise their children. Likewise, you may be giving back actively but still have regrets, like not completing school or pursuing a dream.
Or, a midlife crisis may not be related to feelings of regret or irrelevance at all. It might be sparked by loss. Because it's at this age that losing a parent becomes more common, which sets us up to feel like we're next in line on the generational escalator to eternity. So, this new salience of mortality can often make us feel like we have to kick things up a notch, or at least pay more attention to our one and precious life, which seems to be flying by at breakneck speed.
And this phenomenon—time speeding up as we age—isn't new. The founder of American psychology himself, William James, wondered about the increasing speed of life all the way back in 1890. And in his classic book, Principles of Psychology, he wrote that our perception of time is affected by two things. So first, it's what we do with the time. And second, it's whether we're in the thick of things or looking back through the rearview window.
So to quote, he says: "In general, a time filled with varied and interesting experiences seems short in passing, but long as we look back. On the other hand, a tract of time empty of experiences seems long in passing, but in retrospect short. A week of travel and sightseeing may subtend an angle more like three weeks in the memory, and a month of sickness hardly yields more memories than a day."
Okay, so in short: when you're bored, time seems to crawl by. But look back on that same time, and it feels short precisely because not much happened. On the other hand, when you're busy or engaged in something, time flies by. But look back, and whatever you did at the beginning of that day, week, or month seems eons ago.
So this phenomenon explains why on Friday, I have no idea where the week went, but when I go to write our yearly holiday card, I can't believe how much actually got packed into a year. The things that happened in January feel like a million years ago.
Now, here's another possibility. So Paul Janet, the French philosopher and James's contemporary, noted that time seems to speed up because the proportion of a given unit of time to one's lifespan gets smaller and smaller. So to illustrate, let's take one year. If you're five, a year is 20% of your entire life. But by the time you're 50, a year is just 2% of your life. So from childhood on, as the proportion shortens, time seems to speed up.
So put these two theories together, and next time you hear "Are we there yet?" from the back seat, you'll know why. To a little kid, time—and especially boring time—really does seem to go by more slowly.
Okay, so what does all this have to do with the midlife crisis? Well, as time seems to go by faster and faster and the future seems shorter, we start to evaluate what we've generated thus far. And if we don't like what we see, we may be struck by a need to reassess. Which brings us to our three tips.
Tip number one is: Add more firsts.
If you're 30 or older, think back to high school or college. And how long do those four years seem? Probably a lot longer than four years seems these days. Why? Well, if we go with William James's theory, a lot of memorable events got packed into those four years. Lots of firsts, lots of novelty. So, take advantage of the effect by adding more novelty to your life. Change things up. But change-ups don't have to be drastic like divorce, or expensive like an around-the-world cruise. It can be simple: switch up your schedule, take a new route home, use this weekend to explore your community. When each day or week follows a certain sameness, the time seems short. So change things up, and when you look back, the time will seem longer.
By contrast, if you want to feel like time is passing more slowly as it happens, take a break. Do nothing. Close your eyes for one minute. Or sit on your couch, but don't look at a screen. Just sit. At most, look at the flowers in your window box. And poof! Magically, time slows down.
Tip number two is: Reconsider what it means to be happy.
Or in the words of Pharrell, clap along if you know what happiness is to you. So, all of us set our goals within a context of time. So as we age, our goals change. And as the future gets shorter, our goals may naturally shift from competition to connection. Spending time with family and friends, seeing the world, or pursuing small pleasures—the things that create fulfillment rather than, say, victory or excitement—start to take center stage.
Okay, to back this up with some science: a 2013 study out of Stanford surveyed 136 people, ages 18 to 93, about feeling good. And younger participants valued what the researchers called "high arousal positive affect," like feeling excited or proud. As well as "low arousal positive affect," like feeling calm, peaceful, and relaxed. However, older participants increasingly preferred "low arousal positive affect." And what's more, they achieved it more often than the youngsters. Indicating that as we age, happily, the gap narrows between how we want to feel and how we actually feel.
Which brings us to Tip number three: Know the best is yet to come.
So there's a phenomenon called the "Happiness Curve," where happiness over the lifespan is roughly the shape of a U. Our happiness is generally high in childhood but declines over the first couple of decades of adulthood and hits bottom, on average, in the mid-40s. But after that, happiness starts to increase with age. And many people report being happiest in life in old age.
A 2011 study, also out of Stanford, followed nearly 200 people, ages 18 to 94, for 10 years and found that people reported not only better emotional well-being over time but also greater emotional stability. So, more happiness and less drama? Those are definitely two things worth aging for.
You can check out Paul Janet's 1897 theory of time speeding up in a 2016 way on Facebook. I'll share a link to an interactive graphic by German artist Maximilian Kiener that makes this point beautifully. It takes a lot of scrolling, but that's the point. You can also find a link in the show notes.
If you enjoyed today's episode, come on over to substack and join the community at my newsletter: How to be Good to Yourself When You're Hard on Yourself. It's free. Plus you'll find lots of resources for those of us who are wired to be our own worst critic. I'd love to see you there. Just search How to be Good to Yourself When You're Hard on Yourself or my name Ellen Hendriksen. See you over on substack.
Savvy Psychologist is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thank you to the team at QDT: Steve Riekeberg who audio-engineers the show, director of podcasts Holly Hutchings, Morgan Christianson in advertising and Rebekah Sebastian and Nathaniel Hoopes in marketing. Follow Savvy Psychologist on Apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.