Category Archive for Personal Evolution/Life Transition

There are times in life when nothing seems right. Midlife or middle school, the “crisis” is the same.
On Tuesday teacher and blogger Dan Brown in Huffington Post told why New York’s mayor is completely off track in his approach to middle school improvement:

Rather than making school a nurturing and personal experience, kids, as early as kindergarten, are jammed into overcrowded classrooms, denied support services like fundamental skills tutoring, denied much-needed counseling, and are supervised by administrators more worried about test scores than their real needs. It’s no wonder that they “stop doing what you tell them to do,” as the mayor says. Bloomberg is blaming the victims here.

Here are 10 more reasons why middle school kids’ scores drop (While you’re reading this, think of your current or last chaotic life transition episode):

1. Loss of sense of self.

Just when they need people around them who know them, to give them a sense of belonging and connectedness, sixth and seventh graders are put into a massive school, into multiple classes, with teachers who may have over 100 kids/day.

2. Leslie Ritter.

In 1963 Leslie Ritter showed up for the first day of sixth grade with ratted, hair-sprayed hair, eye makeup, and pale, almost white lipstick, a tight skirt, and shaved tan legs. Leslie Ritter changed the rules and upped the ante. Life shifted for us all.

3. 8 times 7.

Just ask any kid having real problems with math. That child never mastered the basics and then was expected to do fractions and long division. Years of toil with stupid charts. Perfectly intelligent children
dread math–or reading or writing–every day, feeling stupid, losing hope. The more they worry about it, the harder it is to learn. It’s a private, stress-filled hell and then there’s. . .

4. Homework hell.

Slammed with daily homework since kindergarten, kids expect to get even more now. Gone is any hope
of time to themselves, rest, freedom, creative time, time to run wild, to experience nature, to explore life together.

5. Reorganizing brains.

This feeling of chaos and confusion comes with the breakdown of a childhood brain and the building of an adolescent brain, all accompanied by hormonal storms. It’s a creative process, not breakdown. No one’s telling them that. But then major life transitions are poorly understood at every life stage in this culture.

6. Lack of sleep.

Kids get up as early as 6 a.m. to catch the bus for school. Often they can’t sleep until 10 or later because of their biological clocks or because they have so much homework or because they’ve spent so much time doing video games or on the phone with friends. They need 10 hours of sleep to feel normal but Saturday morning they are roused out of bed for chores or sports. They are accused of laziness and bad attitudes when their problem is fatigue.

7. Malnutrition.

They aren’t hungry at 7 a.m. (those biological clocks again) and rely on snacks–sugar and caffeine–at 10. Many drink sodas instead of milk and too many don’t have protein until noon. Dinner isn’t until after sports after a long day at school. They’re starving. And often overweight because of this cycle–They fuel up their malnourished, starving bodies with junk.

8. Bummer news.

They are confronted with cynicism, with demands, with pressures. Where are the ideals? The dreams? The visions of a good, clean life? Where’s the Beaver and the Cleavers?

9. Recreational drugs.

Finally, some relief to all this. A vacation from the mess of their brains and their lives. A vacation from the brass band blasting in their heads.

10. Chaotic schools.

School could be a safe haven from the mess of life. A place of refuge for poor and disadvantaged children, for children from angry, crazy households. But it has become another unpredictable mess.

Apply the same list to midlife crisis and the workplace, to women after childbirth with young children, to men on verge of retirement, to 20-somethings at a loss in the work world, and to empty-nesters. Leslie Ritter has to shift to some other model of the next stage and you’ll have to get creative with #3. And you don’t get to blame the school system.

Sometimes nothing’s right.

Work is wrong. Love is messed up or nonexistent. Life is not what it’s supposed to be.

You might be in a college that you thought was right for you, finding that nothing is right anymore. You don’t know your major. You don’t know who you are anymore, and no one else does either.

You might be out of college, well-into the working world, doing a job that you thought you’d love, but finding it’s harder and more stressful than it should be. You feel like you’re watching your miserable life stretch out before you.

You might be having babies, slammed with doing it all, and feeling that your man and your career aren’t at all what you want anymore. Suddenly, they no longer fit your values or your priorities — whatever they are.

Or maybe the kids have flown, your money is not at all where you’d hoped it would be, and your relationship no longer feeds you.

It’s transition time again. Once so sure of yourself, you’re stumbling around like an adolescent. You’re supposed to be an adult, a pillar of the community, together and smart like everyone else seems to be, but you feel lost and unsure.
Here’s my take on it:

1. This is a good thing.
2. So what if you don’t know yourself? Your “self” is growing. Losing track of yourself is part of living life. It’s these changes in our thought processes that define who we are — and who we will be.
3. Stop volunteering. Focus on yourself first.
4. Welcome chaos.
5. Step back from fear.
6. You’re changing your relationships to your relationships.
7. Forgive everyone. You begin to see that everyone’s on a continuum of struggle. Everyone’s doing the best he or she can.
8. Add joy. Do simple things to make your day good. Take a bath instead of a shower. Put on music. Clean out a closet. Play with your child. Pack dinner up and take it to a park.
9. If you’ve mixed drugs and/or alcohol into this, get help.

Remember, nothing in life is more true or real than change. It WILL happen. Change is life, crisis is part of all change, and sometimes it can suck.

Play with it.

Explore the opportunities. True, change is not for sissies, but the result can be a great gift — perhaps a life you’ve never imagined. Take it in stride, and use this time to learn more about your self.

For more thoughts, see Chapter 9: “When It All Goes Wrong”

Classic quarterlife, or any time of life, transition. You think life is one way. Then it isn’t. You shed the old. Go through a bit of chaos. Then emerge to a new level of “getting it.”

I asked Peggy, who’s 26, to open Men Are Easy to any page and point. She emailed, “I got the Ugly Coat story and it was so apropos for me that I kind of got on a roll.” Wow. Here’s more:

I’ve started a new job, and, for the first time in a long time, I feel like I’m actually living my life. Life as I somehow always sensed it was supposed to be.

This started me thinking about “The Ugly Coat Story” in Chapter 3. Intellectually, I understood the metaphor. It made complete sense: we arm ourselves against the things that are out of our control. We fabricate systems and carry out routines that help us classify and process our day-to-day interactions with other people, our work, our lives. And it works for a while. We’re comfortable, living in our comfort zone, content and without stress. Or so we imagine. Then, out of the blue, something comes along that we didn’t prepare for, and suddenly, rather than protecting us, the coat becomes a burden. It weighs us down, disabling our ability to adapt to the change. It firms its grip on us (and we on it), and like a strongly rooted tree in a storm, we tip over.

A mixed metaphor. I love it!

Quitting my safe job and going for an unknown new career has been one of the hardest things I’ve done. It’s required a level of faith in myself that I’ve never invested before: faith that I do know what is best for me, that I do have all that I need, and that my choices have the capacity to improve my life.

Before, I’d been so beaten down by my job, by stress, by the cultural expectations of what I “should” do and what I “should” want, that I’d lost all perspective. I had no sense of the toll it was taking on my life. I hadn’t come up for a breath of fresh air in 2 1/2 years — and I didn’t even realize it. Only now, after taking a moment to reflect on the leaps and bounds I’ve made in so little time, do I realize that this is how it’s supposed to be! THIS IS. What I left behind isn’t the norm — nor should it be. And a part of me is embarrassed that I allowed it to be for so long.

A classic statement. Looking back you wonder how you could be so stupid. It’s a sure sign that you’re in a higher level of consciousness. Get used to it. If you’re really learning, it keeps coming!

All the depression/stress/anger seems so much more manageable now. I don’t even need my coat anymore. (And, believe me, mine was/is heavy.)

Whew.

And the thing that’s been most surprising — and encouraging — is the way others are responding, too. Everyone I see seems to comment on how great I look, or how much happier I seem. I haven’t had a night out in 3 weeks, where a man hasn’t asked for my number. It’s uncanny!

We have to give the guys credit. They really do go more for soul than looks. They just aren’t good at mining for it. (The metaphors are flying!)

Fundamentally, I really haven’t changed. I’m the same person I’ve always been — only smarter. I stand up straighter, smile more, and am more ready to speak my mind. I do have everything I need. And people take notice. I’m playing more, without the fear that I might break something. I’m treating my life like a rubber ball, not a glass figurine. It’s durable, dynamic, and the momentum can take it in any number of directions.

Of course, the irony now is, with all this at my fingertips, I am scared. Each day I struggle not to fall back into my old behaviors. Being this open makes me more vulnerable — that’s why I had my Ugly Coat in the first place. I just have to keep reminding myself that this is what life is about: a time to play, to remember the rubber ball and be fearless. To think less, act more.

Ah, yes. The old and familiar negative, confused thinking pops up. But now it’s just a little reminder to wake up and look around, not a way of life.

I watch girls work so hard in high school, then go to very good universities, and then go to work. Too often it’s crash-and-burn hours, pay that you don’t want to give up, the old pressure to get As in everything. But then, if you’re lucky, you discover that it doesn’t have to be like this at all. Work can be rewarding. People can be fun. Stress really is something that you can leave at the door. Go Peggy!

For the past few weeks, I’ve been telling you all to “get curious,” and today, I’m taking a little of my own advice…

I once took birth control pills for five days. I instantly turned into a bipolar, weeping wreck. Every few years thereafter, a new, lower-dose pill would come out, and, being the modern woman I was, I’d try again. Every time, it turned out to be a disaster.

The pill was (is) a seminal component of the women’s movement. Instantly, women had more time, choices, and opportunity. The secret to having it all was simple: one pill, once a day.

Today, though, I see young women dealing with all the same issues I did and more. The urge to nest away, to care for everyone around us (all hormonally driven), has expanded from the home into the working world. It inevitably becomes overwhelming.

While contemplating my daughter’s similar experiences with birth control pills, I ran across this article, and it made me wonder:

How many women started taking the pill in puberty and really don’t know themselves today? How many are needlessly stressed, struggling with life crises, and nervous about everything from dating, to work, to their futures? Could it be because their natural chemistry has been altered for so long?

At scienceblog.com, one post says that estrogens may increase brain cell viability; another says that estrogens may be a cause of mental illness in young women.

Geez.

I’m not categorically down on hormone manipulation. Certainly, for some women, estrogens are a lifesaver. I just wonder: How much of this stress I see — in my clients, family, friends — might be due to estrogens?

To be continued…

In yesterday’s NY Times magazine, Bruce Stutz in his article “Self-Nonmedication” writes about his midlife breakdown, how he went on antidepressants, and then the horrific experience of withdrawals from them.

I wrote the following email:

Hello Bruce,

Thanks for your lovely article, for your clarity and honesty. A beautiful description of a
classic radical life transition complicated by fear and ignorance and then medication.

I have so many questions for you:

What if, when you were going through that craziness, your psychiatrist had said that what you were going through was not only normal but an essential brain reorganization? What if he/she had said that you were in the process of a “system upgrade” and that in a year or so you would be at a higher level of functioning, that it is not just normal but something to welcome?

Without the fear and as an observer of your own process–something that you are obviously very good at–I suspect that the experience would have been very different.

I flipped out for a while when my children were 4 and 2. We had a mortgage-free oceanfront home with pool and hot tub on Maui, great work and friends, world travel. Everything. And I was nuts. I was ready to leave it all for a man with nothing but the time to listen to me. Fortunately, I freaked him out, I really didn’t want to blow out my life, and my husband has an amazing sense of humor. My husband and I both grew up and moved on, much better off because of the experience.
This is my take on it all:
We are medicating people at 6, 13, 19, 25, postpartum, on and on.
A loss of sense of self is considered a disabling disease. Adolescence is pathology.

A loss of sense of self is the normal process of metamorphosis from one stage to the next. Okay, some transitions are more radical than others. Some you sail through and some are so disorienting that you blow out your marriage, home, and life’s work.

But, if someone had told you that the mind chaos you experienced was not breakdown leading to death but a creative breakdown that will lead to a higher level of functioning, then what would your response had been?

It’s the fear and the diagnosis of permanence that is freaking people out. Craziness in
any form is seen as permanent. Medication, the answer.

This pervasive medicalization of normal processes has been tackled before. Kubler-Ross did it for death and dying. La Maze did it for childbirth. Now someone needs to do it for the natural, painful and disorienting processes of life transitions.

I’ve written about it in Chapter 9 of my book Men Are Easy. It deserves its own book.
I’m considering just pulling out descriptions like your’s–One could argue that Betty Friedan’s “problem with no name” was a classic description of mothers/women in transition–and asking the questions.

Once you see life this way, so much makes sense. We are not machines with broken parts. We are complex evolving systems living within complex evolving systems of family and society. With a few shifts of perspective, the entire picture changes.

I’m inspired.

Aloha,
Lynn

Does this make sense to you? Have you had similar experiences?