Speaker 1: Today, we've been looking at middle adulthood. So in middle
adulthood where we're looking at it isn't about decline. It's
about pivoting. It's a time when strength and strain walk together,
when a person's career settles, and the bodies will shift,
and children launch away and aging parents need help.
Speaker 2: So let's see.
Speaker 1: Typically defined as ages forty to sixty five, this stage
includes gradual, variable physical changes with wide individual differences. Sensory
changes like vision most experienced presbo pres biopia, difficulty focusing
on near objects, night vision, and peripheral vision decline as well.
Speaker 2: Hearing.
Speaker 1: Presbocusis age related. Hearing loss, particularly for high frequencies, begins
around fifty. Taste and smell mild decline, often unnoticed unless
linked to illness or medication. Reaction times slows slightly, but
may not impact daily functional as.
Speaker 2: Speed is essential.
Speaker 1: This is one of the reasons I've decided to continue
practicing baseball now for me personally. When I used to
be younger I'm fifty three, I practiced baseball and played
a lot. Now I do a little bit of it,
maybe once a week, catching fly balls, running in the outfield,
doing something that involves my eye, hand coordination, works, my core,
my cardio, different directions from my balance back to this.
Hormonal changes is another thing you can focus on Women.
Menopause typically occurs between forty five and fifty five, marked
by a drop in estrogen. Symptoms include hot flashes, mood changes,
sleep disturbances, and vaginal dryness. Men experience a more gradual
what they call andropause, with slow testossom decline, sometimes link
to reduced libido, fatigue and muscle loss. Hormonal changes don't
affect everyone equally. Cultural perception supports systems in general health
shape how disruptive or empowering the transitions feel. Chronic conditions
like hypertension, diabetes, arthritis begin to emerge. Lifestyle factors like exercise, diet,
sleep play a.
Speaker 2: Strong role in midlife health outcomes.
Speaker 1: Stress Late of conditions such as cardiovascar disease are more
common among adults with high high role overload and low
social support. Preventative health behaviors decline in some and increase
in others, triggered by what they call wake up call events,
a friend's heart attack, cognitive development fluid versus crystallized intelligence.
If you remember that from Cattel and Horn fluid intelligence,
capacity to solve new problems, reason abstractly and process information quickly.
It peaks in the twenties and thirties and gradually declines
after pretty quickly, actually crystallize intelligence, that is, accumulative knowledge
of vocabulary and experience, increases through middle adulthood and often
peaks later in life. Midlife adults may be slower in
reaction tasks, but better reasoned decision making, pattern recognition, and
synthesizing knowledge expertise development adults become domain specific experts three
years of practice, especially in professions or roles they've maintained.
Expert thinkers often rely on intuitive judgment, a timeaticy, atomaticity,
automatic behavior, and holistic processing. Expertise can compensate for slower
processing speed making midlife and a peak performance period. In
many fields, cognitive pragmatics refers to wisdom related abilities, insight,
emotional regulation, life experience, and social understanding supported by crystallized
knowledge and refined over time, particularly in complex interpersonal roles, leadership, caregiving,
and therapy. The psychosocial development we see Ericson's generativity versus stagnation.
This is the key psychosocial te task of middle adulthood
is to contribute beyond the self through parenting, mentoring, community, worker, career.
Speaker 2: Generativity.
Speaker 1: Producing something meaningful to what it means that allowed last
to self leads as life satisfaction or resilience. Leaving a
legacy behind. Stagnation is feeling unproductive disconnected. A direction lists
may lead to boredom, irritability, or existential despair. Generativity doesn't
have to be parental. It could be artistic, professional, or civic.
Around ages forty to sixty, people have a midlife review.
Speaker 2: Many experience and.
Speaker 1: Prompt questions like have I become who I want it
to be? What's left unfinished? This review may involve career shifts,
relationship reevaluation, or spiritual exploration. While popular culture promotes the
mid life crisis rearch, research actually shows most adults experience gradual,
constructive transitions, not abrupt breakdowns, changing social roles, emptiness to
children leave home, shifting parental identity. Parenting may begin sometimes prematurely.
Marital satisfaction often rebounds after the child bearing years, and
divorce in midlife may reflect long standing dissatisfaction work, caregiving,
and relational strains.
Speaker 2: Career plateaus.
Speaker 1: Some adults reach a career plateau, feeling stuck or undervalued
in their life. Others embrace reinvention, switching industries, pursuing purpose.
Speaker 2: Driven to work.
Speaker 1: Layoffs or agism may force involuntary change as well, triggering grief,
self doubt, or renewal sandwich generation. Many in midlife provide
dual care giving to aging parents and dependent children. Emotional, financial,
and physical stress are common, especially for women. Caregivers often
experienced role overload, burnout and reduce self care. Supportive individuals
include psychoeducation, caregivers, support groups, and family systems. Marital satisfaction
patterns often follows a U shaped curve, highest before children
during adolescence and rising post launch. Midlife couples face challenges
from life stage mismatch, sexual changes and emptiness syndrome. Those
with strong communication and shared meaning experience growth and intimacy
even as bodies age and roles shift.
Speaker 2: So what do we do with this clinically?
Speaker 1: Well, first, it's differentiating developmental stress from psychopathology. Sadness around
a career loss are questioning identity is normal, not necessarily depression.
Sleep changes during menopause may look like insomnia, but actually
stem from hormonal causes.
Speaker 2: I don't know who I am.
Speaker 1: Anymore, maybe developmental exploration and that identity disorder or anything
related to things like borderline personality disorder. You also must
contextualize distress within life stages. For instance, common themes are
meaning and purpose, clients re examining life direction, So you
don't want to overpathologize these themes. Grief has over lost time, fading, youth,
relationship reevalueua, marriage, friendship, caregiver burnout, physical depletion, resentment and guilt,
body image and health anxiety, coping with visible and invisible aging.
Speaker 2: Some of the techniques you can.
Speaker 1: Use as act or existential therapy works really well here, CBT,
narrative therapy and couple's work. Midlife isn't a crisis. It's
a convergence. The past and future meet and groups and
people look inward to assess what's next in their lives
and what matters.
Speaker 2: That's it for now.
Speaker 1: Next time we'll go into late adulthood development and aging process.