Midlife Schizophrenia: Who do I want to be when I grow up?
The Unstoppable Go-Getter and The Rocking Chair Woman
by Ellen Besso of MidLife Maze
© Dana Hoff/Beateworks/Corbis
I have been pushing past my point of comfort for a long time now. It doesn’t come easy to me but somehow I need to keep doing it.
Two parts live in me:
The Unstoppable Go-Getter and The Rocking Chair Woman.
The Unstoppable Go-Getter is the one who dreams the dreams and carries them out. She has the compelling visions of what and where I could be…who I could become. And she knows how to get things done too, big time. When she is in charge my intuition is strong (you may call it ‘your gut feelings’; it’s the same thing). I try to follow the guidance I’m getting from inside myself.
The Rocking Chair Woman just wants peace and quiet. She wants to retreat from the world into a comfortable life of couch potato-ing and nature walks.
Both are, of course, valid parts of me, and of all of us. It’s the old balance idea again. My Go-Getter still predominates, and I imagine she will for a long time. As a friend who is an intuitive said to me about three years
We’re at different stages at different times of our lives. We may go back and forth through being out in the world and being inward. They’re not just age-related. Although my Go-Getter predominates now, she didn’t during perimenopause, during that time of extraordinary changes within. They were in my body, my mind, and I think even more importantly, they were taking place on a spiritual level.
I know this has been said before, but it’s come to me again recently, strongly: I don’t think we listen to our intuition enough. We do a lot of things that aren’t in our best interests, that aren’t for our higher good, if you will.
Often we work too much and do way too much for too many people. Or sometimes we do things because we feel or think they’re best for our businesses or our health.
I invite you to just step back next time you consider doing something – anything small or large. Take a deep breath and ask yourself if this is right for you in this moment of time.
Then follow your intuition.
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Sandy: Thanks a lot for writing. I’m glad you appreciated the spirit of the article.
Interesting comment about your shallower roots now that you’re older, also the roots & wings trade-off. Although I have & need my base here on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia, I want to be in exotic places often – like India, SE Asia.
I appreciate your suggestion & correction on the use of the word “schizophrenia”. You’re right, the word schizophrenia is often used incorrectly to mean Dissociative Identity Disorder (formerly Multiple Personality). And schizophrenia is a devestating,lifechanging disease for those with the diagnosis & those close to them.
Warm regards
Ellen
Thanks, Ellen, for putting into words something that is such a constant in our lives — a dual nature — and the way it changes during the different stages in life. I’ve often thought of this as a trade-off between roots and wings. As I get older, my roots are, surprisingly, shallower! Some people I know are, well, all root.
A gentle suggestion to all, though: I wish so much that writers in a position to influence people (which is all of us who write and comment on blogs and elsewhere) would consider using a word other than schizophrenia to describe the ambivalence that is part and parcel of being alive.
Schizophrenia is a terrible, terrible disease with varied and awful symptoms including a split (or “schism”) from reality — not a “split personality.” To use the word as a synonym for the normal multiple facets of healthy personality is to trivialize this misunderstood brain disease. Thank you for reading!
Hi Gina: Thanks for writing & glad you found the post helpful.
Pacing makes our midlife lives feel so different, so much more flowing and peaceful, and rewarding too, doesn’t it? But it’s a major challenge for most of us I think, in our ‘doing’ world. After all, who wants to feel out-of-step by ‘being’rather than doing?
Take care.
Ellen
Great read, especially from where I am now – propped up in bed. Physical changes have meant that my body demanded a week here. Nothing wrong with my mind except now I am tired from a week of moving between resisting being here and allowing myself to be here – just because I NEEDED to be. I had to go with that need. So after a ‘rocking chair’ week in bed I am hoping to go-and-get next week as I obviously have stuff to do. But there are so many changes to the major systems in the world that I believe my body and psyche are simply catching up and processing STUFF which I don’t even know about, in order to gear me up for the next phase of go-getting and go-giving. Apart from reading yours, I also had time to do some work on my own blog this week so that is good too.
Great stuff. Gina
Hi Elaine: Thanks for taking the time to write a comment. Sounds like you’re ‘in the flow’ now. Many of us blossom later in life. We always kid our daughter that we’re late bloomers, having started businesses in our fifties!
Cheers
Ellen
Hi Jane: Thanks for your comment. I guess we all live in our minds a lot in our society. Just took 2 days of Tibetan budhist teachings this weekend – but even that was all about thinking & analyzing too! (teachings not meditation. But the energy of the Rinpoche was incredible & I was privileged to have a short 1:1 with him before the weekend began.
Cheers
Ellen
Hi Duchess: Thanks for your great comment to the Rocking Chair blog. You sound a bit like me. I agree that we have to be ruthless – it’s time to do for us – whatever that may be or look like. Good on ya for sticking to your truth!!
Cheers
Ellen
Hi Joanna: Yes, our intuition is pretty all-knowing. Perhaps sometimes other things are in the way of us ‘seeing’ clearly & then it doesn’t work as well.
Thanks for writing.
Cheers
Ellen
Ellen-I can totally relate to being a dual-personality woman! That may because I’ve had more of a tendency to be the Rocking Chair Woman than the Go-Getter. I’m a muser and a thinker; someone who would rather spend the day watching grass grow that figuring out how to turn a profit with it. My problem has been rather the opposite: to go after my dreams and make them happen rather than simply dreaming about them.It’s only now that I’m (partially) relieved of my parenting duties and pretty content with my professional life that I feel the confidence and energy to do things I used to only imagine. Not all of us came out of the womb as Type A’s; I feel like I’m just beginning to take off into the wild blue!
I don’t think I have much Rocking Chair Woman in me yet either. I live a lot (probably too much) in my mind, and my mind is still a Go-Getter. I’m certainly not a physical whirlwind, but then I never was. I come from a family of sitters and thinkers and planners. The actual doing of stuff? Not so much.
I don’t think I have much Rocking Chair Woman in me yet. That is, I still feel physically and mentally tremendously active and have no desire to retreat.
I know I look my age. No one is ever surprised that I am about to be a grandmother. I have trouble feeling my age and more trouble acting it.
I do try to remind myself that I no longer have infinite possibilities. Now there are a small number of things I can accomplish. But they still might be big things.
One thing for sure is that I have become more ruthless. I cut things from my life that don’t matter. I’ve mostly given up trying to be good at small talk or networking. I never suffered fools gladly, and now I am worse than ever.
But these small changes sound to me like I need a more dangerous image than the rocking chair. It’s the new slash and burn middle age.
I follow my intuition most of the time– And it works out for the best some of the time. I agree I need to take a moment to THINK, not just react. When I do, my intuition usually takes me in a different direction.