Try On a New Self

No, you are not too old to have an identity crisis.

Photo by Spencer Davis on Unsplash

These days you don’t hear older adults talk about having an “identity crisis,” which is unfortunate. That term, coined by psychoanalyst Erik Erikson to refer to a stage of adolescent development, aptly describes a real problem that many older adults confront.

Some adults move easily from working to not working. But many of us admit to feeling lost when we leave the world of work. One key reason is that leaving work means leaving our identity behind.

“I’m not sure who I am right now,” writes Andrew Middleton, a British business consultant and “life reinvention explorer,” who pinpoints how the loss of a work identity affected him emotionally. As he revisited organizations he had worked with, places where he felt he had made a lasting impact, he found “new staff, new priorities, new culture. The old stories fade quickly. The people who knew you move on, just like you did.” Although initially he experienced it as a loss, eventually he realized that he is not the person he was then, and that’s okay. “Something new is forming,” he writes. “A new version of me. Less defined by my past, more curious about my future.”

The Work Self

Those who have the most difficulty transitioning from working to The AfterWork are those who, like Middleton, have closely tied their identity to their careers. As one example, a former financial advisor I interviewed for my book The AfterWork: Finding Fulfilling Alternatives to Retirement (available here), fell into a mild depression soon after he retired. Volunteering for different activities helped, but on “empty days,” when the calendar was clear, he lay in bed watching television, feeling unmotivated to do anything.

Like many others (especially men), the loss of his work identity was as significant as the loss of work friends, of purpose, and of structure.

You can call that an identity crisis. Or you can call it a transition.

William Bridges, whose book Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes appeared in 1980, was one of the first social scientists to study transitions in depth. Bridges found that all transitions had three parts: an ending of something familiar, a neutral space (sometimes called “the messy middle), and finally a new beginning.

The Messy Middle

The messy middle is where many new retirees find themselves – a state of chaos, confusion, emptiness. The possibilities are endless, but retirees find they lack the capacity to focus or find a direction. They realize what they have lost by letting go (or being let go) of the life they knew, but they haven’t yet figured out what comes next. Their task in the messy middle is to find a path towards a new life and, with it, a new identity.

How they find that path in most cases is through a thorough self-examination. For those who avoid introspection and self-analysis at all costs, this could be a team activity, in partnership with a mentor, a close friend, or a retirement coach.

One retirement coach with valuable advice on the topic is Antoinette Petrillo, who writes the “Ask A Retirement Coach” column for boomingencore.com. She notes that the person you are in retirement is different from who you were at work. “Retirement isn’t just about ending work – it’s about evolving,” she writes. It offers a chance to move beyond a life based on fulfilling other people’s expectations, to a life based on what matters most to you.

Petrillo suggests asking questions such as:

• When in the recent past have I felt most alive?

• What activities or people give me energy rather than drain it?

• If I could design one perfect day, what would it look like?

For people who prefer action over analysis, it’s smart to start small. Take a short course, volunteer for a short-term project, spend a weekend testing out a new hobby (i.e., before you buy a lot of expensive equipment).

Free to be Wrong

One great feature of The AfterWork is having the flexibility to change your mind without huge consequences. Your household’s financial stability is not resting on every decision, so you have the freedom to make mistakes – or better, to “experiment” – as you find what lights you up inside.

Whether through self-examination and/or experimentation, you have a chance to discover a new identity, one that aligns with your sense of purpose and reflects the values that are most meaningful to you. When you discover it, congratulations! You’ve waded through the messy middle and made it onto the shore of a new beginning.

You can learn more about transitions and other aspects of The AfterWork in my book, available on Amazon.