From the author: Article - synopsis for a TV program with the same topic. 2008. Having completed half my earthly life, I found myself in a dark forest... Dante Alighieri1. The concept of crisis. Why crisis? What it is? In essence, our whole life in one way or another consists of certain age-related crises. It turns out that emerging from one crisis, living through one age stage, we soon enter a new one, the next one. The fact is that each age has its own tasks. Therefore, you should not be afraid of this word, this concept. A crisis is a point that prepares a changed future; it is necessary for a more complete development of the individual. Therefore, we can call these periods simply a transitional moment. Since the time of Pythagoras, scientists have been interested in the characteristics of age. There are many periodizations of age development. Formation period 0-20 (spring). Young man 20-40 (summer). A person at the peak of his strength is 40-60 (autumn). An old and declining person is 60-80 (winter). The ancient Chinese classification calls 30-40 years the age for performing public duties. And 40-50 years means learning your own mistakes. Another classification (Goedefroy): early adulthood 20-40 = intense personal and professional life. And 40-60 = stability in professional and social relationships. And stability can be where something has already been created. So we are trying to understand - what have we created, what have we achieved? Physiological regression, according to many scientists, is an illusion. There are no pathological changes in human physiology. Those. there are no physical obstacles to further advancement in life and creativity. On the contrary, various types of activities assume a certain age as sensitive, i.e. the most successful. For example, for mathematicians, the peak of first creative activity occurs at age 23. For psychologists – 30 years. For physicists, this is 27. And these numbers are processes, i.e. these are pointers along the path, not the end of the path: “Stop and think, change something.” Now we understand that each age has its own goals. A 3-year-old child is experiencing a painful “I-myself” crisis. The student must learn to communicate, work in a team, and regulate his emotions. A teenager, a 20-year-old person, must choose a professional reference point, learn to create long-term relationships, relationships between the sexes. At 30, we enjoy strength, achievement, growth, and can change our focus. “At 20, we need letters of recommendation. At 30, we already have letters of recommendation. At 40, we can already write letters of recommendation.” It is important to note that the so-called There is no precise figure for the crisis age. Those sensations and tossing about which are discussed here can begin to accompany you both at 37 and at 48. Therefore, let’s take the age of 40 arbitrarily. What does the so-called midway crisis require of us? 2. Components of the crisis of 40 years. 40 years old, midway crisis. This is a crisis of worldview. Unlike, for example, 20 years, when the main thing is relationships. The concept of searching for the meaning of life is associated with a crisis of any age, and especially 40 years old. This is the main task of this age. But you can no longer determine the meaning, as, for example, at 20 years old. And to understand - did I choose correctly? Is this how I live? Am I fulfilled? And the difficulty is that our own answers to these questions do not bring satisfaction. The difficulty is that by the age of 40, an intrapersonal conflict awaits us. What is this? Conflict + / + For example, an offer for two jobs of equal interest and money. Or a choice of two women. One is a friend, the other is a lover. Who will be more happy with Conflict + / - Go to a creative job where you can realize yourself, or stay in this hated job, but allows you to support your family. Work, family. Should I leave or stay? What is dying must be allowed to die. Conflict - / - Stay in a painful relationship that has already outlived its usefulness, or go live in a small rented apartment. I often give my listeners and clients an example of a very complex crisis, an intrapersonal conflict: A manslightly over 40. Lived normally, had a business, income, house, wife, 3 children. And so, this question arose: why do I live? What do I want? What is a sense of life? I started looking. I realized that I was ready for a deeper spiritual quest. I wanted to go and live in Tibet, leaving everything behind. What should I do? People around you judge. How to leave children? The feeling of guilt is growing. But there is only one life. And she is yours! All decisions in such a period are not easy, painfully difficult. But a person needs to make these decisions on his own. The transition period of 20 years forces him to answer the questions: Who am I? Where should I go? And at 40 years old we need to answer the questions: Who am I? Was I going the right way? Where should I go next? Separately, we can touch on the issue of gender characteristics of the age crisis. It is believed that the problem of midlife crisis concerns mainly men. Here there is “gray hair in the head, a devil in the rib,” and creative stagnation. This is partly true. After all, the biological, evolutionary determinant of male behavior is achievement, conquest, conquest. Nature is stricter towards men. She asks: So how? Did you kill a big mammoth? Have you lived up to your biological destiny? And a man must give an account. A woman, relatively speaking, can always answer nature: I raised children, I looked after the home fire. Demand is less. And indeed it is. The function of a man in nature is achievement. Even the symbol of masculinity is an arrow. And the function of a woman is to preserve what a man has obtained, what a man has found new. Preserve and pass on to next generations. And one of the symbols of the feminine principle is a vessel. Of course, the modern woman also strives for achievements; she is not satisfied with the role of a housewife. Although, more often than not, a woman who competes with the world of men is “overtaken” by a crisis. After all, the feminism movement is just over a century old, and human evolution, in which men and women performed evolutionary tasks, is many millennia old. But this is a topic for another conversation. For a woman, the internal theme of the crisis is, as before, the choice between career and family. If by the age of 40 she has a family, the children have already grown up, then there is freedom for realization. By whom? Where? How? - main questions. If a woman is single by the age of 40, these are the questions: What was it all for? What's next? Where can I get a family? It is the female component that requires implementation. There is an opinion among scientists that, as in many things in life, periods of crisis for men and women do not coincide. Just at the age of 40, as we said, a woman can feel a new surge of creative strength and a thirst for renewal. And at the same age, a man begins a period of decline and rethinking.3. Ways to resolve the crisis. There is an understanding that life is finite. All our questions about our own lives arise more than once - they accumulate over several years. And an insignificant event can provoke a collapse. The way out of the crisis can be different, and the resolution of this intrapersonal conflict can have 2 ways: 1-leads forward, to a new stage of development, to higher levels of achievement, to new states, a new level of relationships, more mature .2-leads to increased discomfort, this can be depressive states, alcoholism, unexpected changes in partners, suicidal thoughts. But these are extreme options, of course, and are given as an example. We are trying to avoid meeting ourselves. And this is normal, our psyche protects us and does not allow us to get closer to pain. That is why sometimes a specialist is needed, a person on the contrary, someone who will help overcome these protective mechanisms of the psyche. So, we must try to communicate with ourselves. After all, how does a crisis state manifest itself? We may just feel bad. On all fronts. We get annoyed, we are annoyed by our colleagues, our boss, traffic jams, our child’s diary, our spouse’s clothes. Although, of course, these components can be annoying even without any crisis. The main thing is that we don’t find the reason - why is everything around so bad? Attempts to cope with anxiety can be different. Leaving for work, love relationships, entertainment. Extreme sports are also an option)