When the old self dies: midlife transition explored

Photo by Pew Nguyen

Many women arrive in my therapy room during perimenopause or menopause describing a feeling that's hard to name.

Something feels like an ending.

Not just the monthly cycle, not just the changing body, but something much deeper. A version of themselves they've been carrying for decades feels like it's slipping away. And alongside the physical changes and the broken sleep, there's often a quiet sense of mourning - although it is rarely voiced as that.

The experience is very real.

The physical changes of this life stage are visible and well-documented. But what often catches women off guard is the psychological unravelling that can accompany them. The hormonal shifts of perimenopause don't just affect sleep and temperature regulation. They can loosen the grip of long-held coping strategies, defensive patterns, and ways of relating to the world that have quietly shaped a whole adult life. The mental load that was once manageable starts to feel crushing. The tolerance for situations that have never quite fitted starts to collapse - and emotions that were previously containable arrive with new force and urgency.

What I see clinically is this: midlife often brings to the surface everything that has been held down. The people-pleasing that kept relationships intact. The self-silencing that kept the peace. The relentless striving that substituted for a deeper sense of worth. The performance of being fine.

For a long time, these adaptations worked well enough. Then, somewhere in the middle decades of life, the energy required to maintain them starts to run out. What's left is something rawer, more honest, and often more than a little disorienting.

This can feel like falling apart. And in some ways, it is.

Second ‘individuation’: what's really happening

There's a concept in psychoanalytic and Jungian literature sometimes referred to as the ‘second individuation’ of midlife. This term was first developed by Blos (1967) in relation to adolescence - and later extended to midlife by analysts such as Stein (2014) and it sits within a broader Jungian tradition of understanding individuation as a lifelong process.

Individuation refers to the psychological process as we each develop our own authentic identify. The first individuation occurs in childhood, and involves the realisation by the child that they are separate from others including their parents/caregivers and begin to form their own identity.

The second individuation is about questioning whether that identity still fits - and exploring what's underneath. Who were you before you became who everyone needed you to be? What did you want before you learned what you were supposed to want? These aren't easy questions, and they tend to surface not as calm philosophical enquiry but as restlessness, irritability, grief, or a sudden inability to keep doing things you've done for years without complaint. It's a quieter crisis than adolescence, but it goes just as deep.

Jung, in his 1930 essay The Stages of Life, argued that midlife is when the psyche demands a reckoning with everything that has been unlived. Developmental psychologists such as Levinson et al. (1978) reached similar conclusions, albeit through different routes, seeing midlife as a period of fundamental identity restructuring rather than simple continuity.

Grief is part of the process

A feeling of grief is appropriate here. Although that may bring some raised eyebrows to associating grief with this stage of life. But we grieve because something real is ending.

And as a society, there is little outlet for this. The younger self, with all her strategies and striving and fear, deserves acknowledgement before she's let go - and yet there is no cultural ritual for this. No ceremony that marks the passing of who you were and makes space for who you're becoming. Women are largely expected to manage it privately, among other responsibilities, without making too much of it. Skipping this grief, patching over it, trying to stay productive and functional through what is actually a profound interior shift, tends to cost more in the long run.

Of course, this is not to say that we get the support we need through HRT or any other approach to managing symptoms; rather, this is an invitation to consider the psychological dimension alongside the physical one. Hormonal support can make the passage more navigable.

But the passage itself still asks something of us.

What the passage asks for

What does that passage ask for? Slowdown. Reflection. A certain willingness to sit with uncertainty and not immediately solve it. A curiosity about what's emerging alongside the grief for what's leaving.

Women who can find space for this, in whatever form is available to them, often describe arriving on the other side with a clarity and groundedness they didn't have before. Less performative. Less driven by fear. More willing to say what they actually think, and to stop doing what never truly fit.

What therapy can offer

Therapy during midlife transition provides a space that can hold the complexity of what's happening without rushing to resolve it.

In practice, that means slowing down enough to actually feel the grief rather than manage it away. It means looking at the patterns that developed early in life and asking whether they still serve you. It means untangling identity from role, from approval, from productivity, and beginning to locate a sense of self that isn't contingent on any of those things. For many women, this is work they've never had the space or permission to do before.

It also means having somewhere to bring the parts of this experience that are hardest to articulate to the people closest to you. The rage that seems disproportionate. The longing for something unnamed. The strange coexistence of loss and possibility. These things make sense in the context of what's happening psychologically, and they're far more workable when they're named and understood rather than suppressed or dismissed.

You don't have to do this alone

If you're in perimenopause, menopause or post-menopause right now and things are feeling too much, it might be worth having an initial conversation with me to see if I might be able to support you.

You don't have to make sense of it alone.

References:

Blos, P. (1967). The Second Individuation Process of Adolescence. The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 22(1), pp.162–186. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/00797308.1967.11822595.

Jung, C. G. (1930/1969). The stages of life. In The collected works of C. G. Jung (Vol. 8, pp. 387–403). Princeton University Press.

Levinson, D.J. and Darrow, C.N. (2007). The seasons of a man’s life. New York: Ballantine Books.

Stein, M. (2014). In midlife : a Jungian perspective. Asheville (N.C.): Chiron Publications, Cop.