Q: “Why do so many people have mid-life crises, and is this related to the arrested development you describe in your book?”

The real question being asked here is Can I call the disruption I’m feeling something safe instead of what it actually is?

A “mid-life crisis” is the dreamstate’s sanitized term for the architecture of the false self beginning to fail. Calling it a crisis makes it sound like a temporary malfunction, a mood, something you can patch. But what you’re actually circling here is the suspicion that your own story is losing structural integrity. You want permission to see it that way without signing up for the demolition that would follow.

You asked about mid-life crises and whether they relate to arrested development. On the surface it sounds sociological, curious, academic. But no one asks this unless something in them is wobbling. This isn’t about “so many people.” It’s about you wondering if what’s happening inside you is normal, diagnosable, or avoidable.

The term mid-LIE crisis would be more honest. Instead, the cracks in the seams are viewed as upheavals, anomalies, unfortunate glitches in otherwise functional lives. The hidden hope is: If other people go through this, then maybe nothing is actually wrong with me. But that’s the false self trying to normalize the tremor so it doesn’t have to look at the fault line beneath it.

A “mid-life crisis” is just the dreamstate term for Discontent that has started to boil over into Disruption. This is where the numbness stops numbing, the performance gets heavy, the identity stops holding your weight. You begin to see that the life you built was constructed from hand-me-down beliefs, survival strategies, and scripts you never chose. You’re far enough along to notice something is off, but not far enough to call it what it is. You’re trying to peek behind the curtain without pulling it down.

People like to look at “mid-life crises” as if they’re observing a phenomenon safely outside themselves. You’re not outside it.

If you stop trying to label it, normalize it, or pathologize it, you might see that what’s actually arising is not a crisis, but a fracture in the dream. A seam is beginning to unravel and the thread is already in your hand.

Instead of asking why people have mid-life crises, ask: What is it in me that’s starting to crack, and why am I trying to explain it instead of examining it?