The Gay Midlife Crisis: When You Did Everything Right and Still Feel Blah
Have you ever had this feeling that you’re just feeling “blah“ or you just don’t know what’s next?
Or maybe you built an entire career and life, and you did everything right, and now you don’t feel happy even though you have the money, the career a lot of people might be jealous of, and yet something is missing.
You might have thought of starting your own thing, or maybe you started your own business, or maybe you’re thinking if you should go back to school or change career all together.
First of all, it’s normal, and in developmental psychology there is such a phase when you reevaluate your life and the choices that you made.
Should you seek therapy or clinical hypnotherapy and coaching?
As someone who worked for a decade as a psychotherapist and now focuses on hypnotherapy and coaching, either or BOTH can work well.
If you’re not in a mental health crisis such as suicidal ideation, manic phase where you make big decisions quickly without thinking (you quit your job, broke up with your partner, and moved in with your Grindr hookup, or spent all of your savings on something you will regret later), I think working with a hypnotherapist with personalized coaching with motivational interviewing might be a good option for you.
Clinical hypnosis part: it helps you to relax your mind and take a deep journey within.
What if you can’t be hypnotized? It’s simply a myth. The goal of clinical hypnosis is not for you to lose control or become unconscious; the goal is to go within and quiet your mind.
Personalized life coaching is where we actually focus on the solution, getting information from within through clinical hypnosis. With the help of motivational interviewing, we can focus on building the life that you desire.
What is Motivational Interviewing?
“MI is a collaborative, goal-oriented style of communication with particular attention to the language of change. It is designed to strengthen personal motivation for and commitment to a specific goal by eliciting and exploring the person’s own reasons for change within an atmosphere of acceptance and compassion.” (Miller & Rollnick, 2013, p. 29)
The most current version of MI is described in detail in Miller and Rollnick (2013) Motivational Interviewing: Helping people to change (3rd edition). Key qualities include:
MI is a guiding style of communication, that sits between following (good listening) and directing (giving information and advice).
MI is designed to empower people to change by drawing out their own meaning, importance and capacity for change.
MI is based on a respectful and curious way of being with people that facilitates the natural process of change and honors client autonomy.
It is important to note that MI requires the clinician to engage with the client as an equal partner and refrain from unsolicited advice, confronting, instructing, directing, or warning. It is not a way to “get people to change” or a set of techniques to impose on the conversation. MI takes time, practice and requires self-awareness and discipline from the clinician. (Miller & Rollnick, 2009)
While the principles and skills of MI are useful in a wide range of conversations, MI is particularly useful to help people examine their situation and options when any of the following are present:
Ambivalence is high and people are stuck in mixed feelings about change
Confidence is low and people doubt their abilities to change
Desire is low and people are uncertain about whether they want to make a change
Importance is low and the benefits of change and disadvantages of the current situation are unclear.
It can grow into more personalized career counseling and coaching or business consulting later on if this is your next step, and we always start from within.
When clinical hypnotherapy and coaching are not a good option: active mental health crisis, active suicidal ideation, active clinical depression, BPD, acute PTSD in a very active and acute phase, active heavy substance use disorders.
