Welcome to your mid-life crisis?

September 30, 2021 3:47 AM

Midlife Crisis: What Happens To Your Brain!. Mitch and Greg of AsapSCIENCE in their Sidenote Podcast goes into midlife crisis mode...

This week we will be discussing the ever dreaded MIDLIFE CRISIS. What science has to say about your brain in a midlife crisis, what your brain looks like in a midlife crisis and the fact that humans are not the only species to experience this!!

.
posted by zengargoyle (31 comments total)

Is there a transcript?
posted by eviemath at 5:40 AM on September 30, 2021 [13 favorites]

I didn't see a transcript but several of the studies they discussed are linked in the description (the video includes discussion of criticism of those studies' methods/conclusions).

One thing that struck me was that as they discussed how a major driver of the drop in happiness is probably loneliness or a lack of strong relationships they kept comparing that with a stereotypical idea of a middle-aged guy buying a sports car and working on it alone. What they didn't mention was that buying a fancy car is a shortcut to automatically joining a community, and one that is stereotypically nonthreatening to middle aged men. There are car clubs and events and even just driving it around and talking to strangers about the car has a set, safe, script for a guy who might not want to or know how to do the emotional labor to create or maintain relationships in other contexts. You see the same thing with other objects or hands-on hobbies, or even video games. They give you a thing to talk to people about without needing to talk about your feelings.

I don't know exactly where I'm going with this but it's in my brain after listening.
posted by Wretch729 at 9:11 AM on September 30, 2021 [32 favorites]

It seems interesting but I don’t have the patience this week for the intro section. Is there a time stamp I could skip to when the discussion starts in earnest?

(The style of jumping into something mid-sentence or mid-thought while also not actually talking about much of anything / the purported podcast topic for the first little bit seems to be a popular thing in podcasts that folks seem to recommend often here on Metafilter. I imagine it’s supposed to feel conversational, and likely many other people appreciate it as a style. Personally, I find it a bit frustrating though - I click on a podcast to learn about the topic, and instead it feels like I have to wade through some random group’s in-group friend chatter - that I’m not at all interested in because I don’t know the podcasters and their buddies personally - for half the podcast.)
posted by eviemath at 9:22 AM on September 30, 2021 [23 favorites]

The whole thing is pretty conversational and full of tangents and asides, but the "start" is more or less at 3:00 in.
posted by Wretch729 at 9:37 AM on September 30, 2021 [2 favorites]

Good thing I was poor when I was middle aged so I could dodge the mid-life crisis by burying it in the more general and psychologically understandable ongoing poor person crisis.
posted by srboisvert at 9:56 AM on September 30, 2021 [11 favorites]

The discussion of what you like vs what you want is so interesting. I'm so so so so stoked to finally live alone! I like it so much better than living with people. But supposedly the thing that will actually make me more crisis-resistant is a life where I'm constantly sharing my space with a bunch of people...a thing which demonstrably makes me unhappier?

Which seems like exactly the sort of stupid-ass shit my brain WOULD pull because it has always hated me. But is the idea...subsume your crisis in the crisis/noise/input of others? Not notice the crisis of existence because I'm in a low-level crisis of "omg, these fucking assholes I live with"?
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 10:33 AM on September 30, 2021 [8 favorites]

My midlife crisis is way too many guitar pedals, a self-designed CNC-cut pedal board to put them on and a bass guitar I'm taking lessons for.
It's going swimmingly so far.
posted by signal at 10:45 AM on September 30, 2021 [5 favorites]

I continue to be disgruntled that my midlife crisis seems to have been one of two things:

1. Spending several years in a tailspin dealing with my ex's midlife crisis which culminated in him leaving me for someone younger after nearly 30 years (I suggested a convertible, sigh);

2. Just me sitting around being sad for several years (ongoing).

Unfair.
posted by Occula at 12:14 PM on September 30, 2021 [19 favorites]

This is gonna involve some fMRI phrenology isn't it?
posted by sjswitzer at 12:33 PM on September 30, 2021 [3 favorites]

I don't feel like I had a midlife crisis so much as a dawning and deepening awareness of just how crap everything is.

I wish I was making a joke...
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:47 PM on September 30, 2021 [15 favorites]

This episode is also available in audio-only format on their podcast RSS feed: https://rss.acast.com/sidenote
posted by Tehhund at 12:48 PM on September 30, 2021 [2 favorites]

Y'all are my people. Last year a shitload of things happened more or less simultaneously: turned 50, dad died after ~3 years of decline from dementia, got engaged, bought a house with and moved in with fiancee + kids, and then pandemic happened and nobody left the house anymore. Fuuuuuuck.

I love these people. Living with people is ... iffy. And as Greg_Ace says, "a dawning and deepening awareness of just how crap everything is" is sort of my ongoing everyday-ness.

But... when I can pull my head out of my ass and care about other people, I honestly do feel happier with this family. When they're not annoying the shit out of me. Because I'm easy to annoy, and also who the fuck just puts half a damn lime back in the fridge, un-wrapped? Or an empty food container back in the damn pantry? FFS.

Um. What were we talking about, again?
posted by jzb at 12:58 PM on September 30, 2021 [5 favorites]

My midlife crisis was a gender transition!
posted by Faint of Butt at 1:26 PM on September 30, 2021 [23 favorites]

I bought a Onewheel! It is lots of fun. Truly we live in a golden age of midlife crisis toys that we buy to re-experience youth by facing the imminent mortality of a rapid close encounter with pavement or a tree.. Electric unicycles, wingsuits, rocket flights, nukes, knives, sharp sticks…
posted by BeeDo at 1:46 PM on September 30, 2021 [1 favorite]

My midlife crisis was a gender transition!

Lol I came in to say that a couple of years ago I thought I was having a midlife crisis but actually I'm just trans.

It was wild though.
posted by an octopus IRL at 1:54 PM on September 30, 2021 [22 favorites]

I've constantly felt in crisis (especially with regard to feeling like I'm never as productive with my projects as I want). This has only gotten worse as time has gone on. Since about 35 I really started to feel like ... something. Coincidentally I was drinking a lot and just got sober this year, and now I feel super stupid (to quote Mike Patton from "RV" - "Would anyone tell me if I was getting stupider?")

And I can't tell if it's just brain cell death from all the liquor, aging/midlife crisis, epidemic/trump fatigue or a combination of all.

Goddamn it sucks, though.
posted by symbioid at 2:12 PM on September 30, 2021 [3 favorites]

And yeah - my crisis is buying too many synth/grooveboxes and other needless DAWless acquisitions.
posted by symbioid at 2:13 PM on September 30, 2021 [2 favorites]

Midlife crisis seems to revolve around dissatisfaction with what you have and or who you are. As I entered the years of potential midlife crisis, I pretty much lost whatever I had through circumstance and choice. And then I got hit by a car. But choices I made in the two years after the loss, and before the accident, gave me a good foundation, and essentially a new life that got me through all the trauma. The loss was a benefit and what I really needed to get me out of what was a bad situation and into a much better life. I guess I didn’t have a midlife crisis. I had a crisis at midlife.
posted by njohnson23 at 2:22 PM on September 30, 2021 [5 favorites]

actually I'm just trans.
posted by an octopus IRL

That must have been a heck of a transition...
😀
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:50 PM on September 30, 2021 [12 favorites]

This is timely, I am at this very moment making arrangements to impulse buy an ex-racehorse that's 400 miles away - both a ridiculous recreational purchase and potentially physically dangerous! A while ago I noticed I window shop for horses when I'm particularly dissatisfied with work only this time I might actually go for it. I'm not sure I want to know what's happening to my brain.
posted by sepviva at 3:33 PM on September 30, 2021 [8 favorites]

I get you, sepviva. I so get you.
I bought a mule. A mule with... issues.
posted by BlueHorse at 5:20 PM on September 30, 2021 [9 favorites]

Everything turns to shit at 40 (and the president really was a shit-spraying duck)

But I think it's just that the brain juice squeezer can't squeeze the fun juice as well as it once could, Jameson or no. Maybe evolution wants to discourage exploration in favor of stability, maybe evolution doesn't care anymore at that age.

Having partied a lot with retired people, I think around 60 your brain is so far gone that you don't care anymore that everything sucks and you get happy again.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 5:23 PM on September 30, 2021

I'm 61, and await that blessed moment with bated... nahh, that's a total lie; I frankly don't expect to be happy ever again.
posted by Greg_Ace at 5:49 PM on September 30, 2021 [2 favorites]

A mule with... issues

Got a youtube channel?
posted by tigrrrlily at 5:54 PM on September 30, 2021 [4 favorites]

I'm really good at quitting things and have had to change careers a few times, so if I did have a crisis I'm not sure how you'd tell.
posted by emjaybee at 6:45 PM on September 30, 2021 [5 favorites]

It's no accident that The Inferno opens with Dante having a literal mid-life crisis (nell mezzo del cammin di nostra vita). When we read it in high school, we were all like whatever, but now that I'm there, the idea of writing a epic tale of brimstone, ft. all the people I'm mad/annoyed at, seems like a fantastic idea. NaNoWriMo?
posted by basalganglia at 8:16 PM on September 30, 2021 [5 favorites]

eviemath, It's my (guesswork) that this is them like at a writer's table work-shopping the points for a to-come-later ASAP Science video which is the 6 or so minute whiteboard direct path. Like now there's a Gingers Cant Feel Pain Properly: THIS IS WHY! - YouTube and a couple of weeks ago there was a Mitch and Greg on the couch babbling away. There's often (not always) a second video that's just straight (lol) information.

I had my midlife crisis all planned out but then got elected and then "waves hands wildly" happened and my plans went a bit poof.

Anyways, Greg reminds me totally (sans the red hair) of my housemate that I'd wake up in the morning after my night shift to smoke a bowl and watch Sailor Moon and Gargoyles and listen to tales of his new Lawnmower Man boyfriend. And I'm happy that Mitch is checking out Buddhism and those four noble truths and eight fold path to ease suffering.
posted by zengargoyle at 9:30 PM on September 30, 2021 [2 favorites]

Life is one long crisis.

Isn't it?
posted by Pouteria at 6:23 AM on October 1, 2021 [3 favorites]

Like I keep hearing, it's either one thing after another or it's everything all at once.
posted by Flexagon at 8:37 AM on October 1, 2021 [1 favorite]

As affirmed by Roseanne Rosaeannadanna.
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:29 AM on October 1, 2021 [1 favorite]

>.. But supposedly the thing that will actually make me more crisis-resistant is a life where I'm constantly sharing my space with a bunch of people...a thing which demonstrably makes me unhappier?

It may be at simple as .. close ties to people are the concrete, practical instrument we cultivate in a strategic way to help us share our burden during crises? Pack animals have a better survival rate than love wolves, or whatever. A transactional view of human relations to be sure.

But this was a great point too:
>.. But... when I can pull my head out of my ass and care about other people, I honestly do feel happier with this family

Interacting with other people pulls us out of our own heads and leaves us with less capacity to stew in our own internal dysfunction.

Tangentially, I have a theory that the most reliable way for human beings to feel like we are living meaningful, purpose-driven lives is to dedicate ourselves to something (that we fervently believe is) larger than ourselves, outside of ourselves.

"Great" people take it to an extreme. Where I come from, there's a tradition of people giving up worldly living to become ascetics immersed in spiritual practice, that's where we get our prophets and saints. There's great people who dedicate themselves like a maniac to art or to a physical practice in a manner analogous to spiritual faith, like mastering a martial art or yoga - they might not be famous but being in these people's presence is an experience all in itself. There are community organizers and activists whose dedication to their cause becomes their holy thing, they're our leaders. You get the idea. Nobody becomes great without dedicating themselves to something larger than just themselves.

For the rest of us, my theory is we can have it good enough if we do the same thing to a less extreme extent, allowing ourselves to be moved and motivated by a spiritual or artistic or familial or scientific or community-focused mission even if we don't upend our whole lives to focus *only* on the mission. I think we all need that external anchor for like ~handwavey reasons~ and this remains true even if that outside anchor is going to stress us out a lot. Like a lot of people dedicate themselves to taking care of their children, they find meaning and purpose and something akin to spirituality in that task, but they also fantasize about running away to an adults-only island forever every time the toddler wakes them up at 3 am. My theory is that this frustrated person yanked awake at 3 am is genuinely doing better than someone who is happily asleep at that hour, unbothered, because they didn't let anything matter to them enough and consume them enough to bother them.
posted by MiraK at 8:20 PM on October 1, 2021 [3 favorites]