00:00 

Hey there, this is Tanya Hale with Intentional Living and this is episode number 89, "Midlife Teenage Angst." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:21 

Alright, hello there, my friends. So so happy to be with you here today. Love what we're talking about today. But before we start I just want to remind you that if you have not yet signed up for my "weekend win" email, go on to my website tanyahale.com. Scroll down to the front page, the home page, and down at the bottom. There's just a quick place where you can sign up. I promise the "weekend wins" are quick. They are short and they're thoughtful. They'll give you something really great to think about over the weekend and a different way to view life. And the other thing I want to remind you of this year: my goal is to do 300 free coaching sessions. That is an outrageous amount. So I need you to get on my website as well and go to the "contact me" button, and you can book a free coaching session there. I just love coaching and I want to share this with as many people as I can. 

01:18 

Alright, that being said, let's jump in today So what in the world is midlife teenage angst? Okay, well, let's just jump in because this is a little connection that I made a few weeks ago that I am just loving, and I'm seeing it more and more around me and I want to share it with you. So as many of you know I teach in a middle school. More specifically, I mostly teach eighth graders, and I absolutely adore them. And one thing I love about it so much is that they are just going through such a change in their lives. And I love being here at this time in their lives, hopefully making a positive impact. 

02:02 

So let's start off with the most obvious change that these sweet kids are going through, and that would be puberty. So this is the time that their bodies are changing from little kid bodies into adult bodies. And for this to happen requires a lot of energy and a lot of hormones. And all of these hormones surging through their bodies creates quite a stir, to put it lightly. For the girls they will find themselves crying uncontrollably and seemingly without cause at the drop of a hat and they're totally confused by this. There will be absolutely no reason for them to be crying and yet they are. They feel irrational and justified in it all at the same time. I remember being a young woman and waking up some mornings and just knowing that I would cry at some point that day. Absolutely no reason. There was nothing going on in my life to make me cry. I could just feel it coming on. I just knew at some point something would set me off and then I'd end up crying. And I did. And it was just strange and seemingly uncontrollable. 

03:13 

And it's not much better for the boys. These boys who have been mostly even-tempered will, all of a sudden, start finding themselves raging. They get so angry at small little things and they don't know how to deal with these surges of anger. And so they punch walls and they kick things and they lash out and they have no idea where it's coming from. They didn't used to get so angry. 

03:39 

So hormonally these teenage bodies are going through some pretty amazing changes, surging with hormones that are making them feel a little out of control with their emotions. Hmm sound like middle-age much? Good heavens! Menopause and the change of hormones wreaks havoc with our bodies. Some of the symptoms of menopause are a general feeling of being out of control with reports of, and I quote from something I found online, "reports of increased irritability, anxiety, fatigue, and blue moods." That sounds an awful lot like being a teenager, right? It's amazing the impact hormones can have on our bodies and on our minds. And what about the hot flashes and the sweating, right? We are going through similar changes hormonally as teenagers are. Just as their bodies are gearing up to have their hormones in full swing for adult life, our bodies are gearing down to slow down a lot of hormones for our older age. And all of this hormone shifting is causing a  lot of emotional angst that can feel and look a lot like a teenager, right? 

04:58 

Okay, so let's talk about something else that teens deal with that correlates with middle age. One thing I love about hanging out with my middle school kids is that they are on the verge of starting to discover who they are. This is the time in their lives that they're starting to ask themselves what kind of people they want to be when they grow up. They begin to question the religious beliefs and the life values they've been taught. They start for the first time really to start asking real life questions about who they are and what they want to be. What kind of a person do they want to be? This is the time when they really start to discover what they love. 

05:33 

Often as elementary kids they just like to do whatever with whoever. But in middle school they start to find things they really like and things that they really don't like. And a lot of relationships at this age start to change because two kids who may have hung out a lot as younger kids may now find that they like different things. One may start to spend a lot of time playing more sports or maybe more video games or loving art while another may find they are loving the theater or choir or band. And this is a natural progression of them changing and growing and becoming who they really feel like they are inside. It doesn't mean they're bad at relationships when these friendships grow apart, it just means they're discovering themselves and their closer friendships are often reflecting these changes. 

06:28 

So let's take a look at the correlation with mid-agers, shall we? This is the stage in our lives where I feel we go through another discovery of who we are. Many of us have spent 20 to 30 years, if not more, constantly caring for other people, probably most often our spouses and our children. And through this process many of us find that we have shelved so many of our own wants and even our own needs for the development and the progress of those people whom we love the most. As we have spent all of these years focusing on other people, often we find that we have lost touch with ourselves. We struggle sometimes to even know what we love to do and we may even find that many of our interests have changed since we were younger. I've known many middle-aged women who find when their children have grown that that what they got a degree in when they were in their 20s they are no longer interested in now that they're in their late 50s or maybe not even late 50s, I mean early 50s right. And I have a lot of friends in that place. They've come to become very different people over the course of those 30 years and they haven't really had the time or space yet to work through their differences of ideas. 

07:45 

And just as the teenagers are starting to realize who they really are, we are in a similar phase of life. We are discovering all over again who we are, what we love, what we don't love, what we enjoy. There's a whole process of self-discovery in our mid-age life that is exciting and new and in some ways feeling like the whole world lies before us. Whereas a teenager has their whole lives ahead of them, I find myself starting a new career as a life coach with a good 20 to 30 years of amazing contribution that I can still make. That's how much time I spent in the phase of life when I was raising my children. So in many ways it kind of is a lifetime still to live. And just as teenagers feel some pressure to be moving in a productive direction, I think as mid-age women we do as well, especially when we start seeing other women around us starting to step into their own and figure out the direction of their next path in life. 

08:48 

And that pressure can be overwhelming and even daunting at times. If we're one of the ones who is still struggling to find our mid-age path, we can feel like we don't fit in or that we're a little lost and confused. So many around us may be finding their thing, going back to work or changing careers, and we may be paralyzed by not knowing, struggling with clarity about how we can best contribute at this new stage in our lives. It's like teenage angst all over again, right? What am I gonna do? Who am I? What do I wanna be? 

09:24 

So here's something else that teenagers struggle with. Now, relationships are changing a lot for teenagers, and we already talked about how friend relationships change, but family relationships change a lot as well. Teens can really struggle with finding themselves stuck between wanting to be dependent upon their parents and still be close to them, but also desperately wanting to be independent and become their own person. They're moving out of that childlike love for a parent where their parent can do no wrong, where there's a lot of dependency, and they're moving into a more autonomous relationship. They start to separate themselves from their parents and siblings during their teen years, and this is when they really start to develop their own sense of self. And this dichotomy of emotions can be really difficult and confusing for teenagers. They desperately want to still be close and dependent upon their parents, but they also desperately want to be independent and grow into their own space. 

10:26 

And do you see the same thing happening with us during middle-age? Because I totally do, especially if we've been raising children for many years. Our relationships with them begin to change. Our children are no longer dependent on us, or if they are we really don't want them to be anymore, right? Though we love our children desperately and sometimes feel as though our hearts will break as we let them go, we also desperately want them to be independent. We want them to launch out on their own and be successful adults. Just move out of the house already, right? I love having independent children, but I'm still struggling with wanting them to feel wanting me to be really close to them. 

11:17 

In fact just yesterday I cried two different times while saying goodbye to two of my children. One was visiting for the weekend and when he headed out the door to head back to college three hours away I totally just broke down and started crying. I'm just so proud of how independent he is but my heart just aches to have him close to me. I just love him and miss him so much. And the same thing when I spoke with my missionary daughter. At the end of our conversation again I started to cry, which I tend to do about every single week when we chat. I love where she is, I love what she's doing, and I love absolutely adore the person she's becoming. I am so proud of her. It aches sometimes, but I also ache to have her with me. Do you ever feel like a real physical ache in your arms to just hold your kids close to you like you used to when they were little? And my chest can fill an ache as well to just have them near me, to just have them close. But the dichotomy for me is that I also just really don't want them to never move out. I want them to grow up and grow into their own. I want them to experience the richness of life and the joy of contribution and independence. 

12:42 

So again we're experiencing similar things as our teenagers. A dichotomy in our family relationships, a desperate longing for both dependence and independence at the same time. It is crazy making to be sure. We want two opposite things at the same time, except when our kids are being super ornery, then we just want them to be independent and move away. Anybody besides me feel that way? Just go away. Just go to your thing, right? 

13:15 

Okay, so another aspect of teenagers that causes them so much angst is their desperate longing to be seen and heard. As they start stepping into their own, they start creating their own opinions, their own wants, their own needs and desires, and many times for them it can feel as if nobody sees or acknowledges those wants and needs. Teenagers can get so ornery because with this newfound drive to become their own person. Often they don't feel as though others are acknowledging them as a person. They can speak and speak and speak to their parents and yet their parents don't hear them. They won't sit down and truly listen to and understand where their teenager is coming from. The parents just want to be heard and obeyed and the teen feels as though nobody is seeing them and nobody is hearing them. 

14:11 

As mid-agers we can sometimes feel the same way. We've taken a back seat for so many years, all the while feeling as though we have so much to offer, so much to give the world to make it a better place. But sometimes because of where we are in life, we feel we don't have a platform to be seen and heard. We can feel as though we have so much to say and do and nobody is acknowledging what we have to offer. Maybe we've been a stay-at-home mom for 30 years and we have a vast vault of knowledge and experience, but it doesn't seem to be directly transferable to a job outside the home. We're smart, we have knowledgeable opinions, we have some amazing skills, but people can't see them and can't see how they can fit into the real world. 

15:01 

Or maybe you've been the breadwinner and you've felt a little out of the loop as far as the intricacies of the family dynamics are concerned, and now you feel a bit like an outsider who is struggling to find your voice and feel like you're being seen within your own families. And all this feeling of not being seen or heard can wreak havoc. Teenagers and mid-agers alike feel great frustration, and even anger, and possibly a loneliness that breaks down the connections with other people they want to feel connected to. So much angst going on. 

15:37 

And you know, another thing, it's fascinating to me that our school counselors pull in our seventh graders and start working to do career planning with them because those are the standards that the counselors are required to fulfill their jobs. Okay, interesting that in the 10 years I've been teaching, that's gone from ninth grade down to eighth grade and now it's in seventh grade, right? But really, these poor kids don't even know who they are at 12 and 13, let alone what they want to do with the rest of their lives. And yet there is so much pressure that they should be figuring it all out by now. So these sweet kids can be feeling way behind the curve, thinking they should know more than they do, feeling like they aren't quite smart enough or clever enough or intuitive enough since they don't have the rest of their lives all figured out. 

16:27 

And don't we sometimes feel that way in this middle-age part of life? That we should have it all figured out by now? And sometimes the pressure to know all of the answers and to be sure of ourselves in the midst of all the questions can feel a bit overwhelming. Very often we feel we should know more than we really do and we don't feel smart enough or clever enough or intuitive enough since we don't seem to have life all figured out by now. But here's the deal. Of course we don't have it all figured out by now. Just as we look at these 13 and 14 year old kids, we realize it's ridiculous to expect that they should have their whole lives figured out by now, because everything is new to them. They're just figuring out who they are, the kind of person they want to be, their independence and their dependence. 

17:18 

And just as these great kids are in the midst of a mess, so are we. Everything we're encountering as mid-agers is new to us. It's okay to be going through some mid-ager angst. It's okay to not know all of the answers to what we want to do with our lives. We've never been at this stage before. Of course we're figuring it out as we go. But we do have some things that those amazing teenagers don't have: wisdom and experience. Our 40 years or so since we've been a teenager have given us experiences that help us understand ourselves a little better. A lot better, actually. We have more empathy for others and we understand our strengths and our weaknesses better. We've encountered relationships that have been wonderful and healthy. And others that have been difficult and unhealthy. We've experienced love more deeply than we could ever imagine. And we've also been burned more deeply than we could ever imagine. 

18:25 

And how amazing that all of these experiences have made our lives better and worse than we ever could have imagined when we were teenagers. I know that from my own personal perspective, I am in the best place of my entire life. I absolutely love where I am. I love what I'm learning and how I'm growing. And I love the person I'm becoming. But even after four plus years, I'm also still floored that I'm divorced and single. And I have been working consistently during that time through my own emotional issues that were created through 24 years of a dysfunctional marriage. There are some pretty hefty negative patterns of behavior that get created in that much time. And even though I've done a lot of work, there's still a lot of work to do. 

19:20 

So is it okay if I'm feeling some mid-age angst? Absolutely. Because just as those teenage years are brimming with possibility, with a feeling that everything amazing is just on the horizon, that they have their whole lives ahead of them, our mid-age years are exactly the same, brimming with possibility, seeing an amazing life on the horizon and recognizing that we still have a whole life ahead of us to do amazing things and to become our best yet version of ourselves. So angst away, my friends. Feel all of the feels. Start getting your emotional crap together. Enjoy the process of becoming and create joy along this treacherous and amazing path called middle age because angst isn't necessarily a bad thing. It might just be exactly what we need to become exactly what we are meant to become. 

20:28 

I love growing up, don't you? It's amazing to me, best place ever to be able to put all of this in perspective to start taking all of these pieces we've received our whole lives, all of these this nuggets of information and start putting them together to see a whole picture. Beautiful place to be. 

20:48 

Okay, and that being said again if you would like a free coaching session, if you feel like you are stuck in this mid-aged angst and you need some help and some guidance to work through it, I have got a free coaching session waiting for you. Go to my website tanyahale.com. Click on the "contact me" button, sign up for a free coaching session and let's get you started. This may be exactly what you need to help get you out of your middle life funk and moving into the best place of your entire life. 

21:23 

Okay, and that being said, if you have not left me a review yet please go to iTunes. You can access that even on your computer that is not an apple and you can leave me a review. You can subscribe if you haven't. And please share this with your friends and neighbors. And let's do this, my friends. Life is amazing, life is great, and it is just waiting for us to step into it. Have an awesome day and I'll talk to you next week. Bye. 

21:56 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya.