Navigating Midlife Job Change with the MBTI

Redundancy or job loss can bring about the effects of a mid-life period for many people. 'Midlife Crisis' is a period of change and discomfort that many of us experience at some point during our lives. Midlife is a natural process (first identified by the psychologist Carl Jung) and it is a normal part of 'maturing'. However, Midlife can sometimes feel very uncomfortable, and cause many people to seek psychotherapy or counselling, or to make a radical lifestyle changes that can be very damaging and are regretted later.

Midlife can, on the other hand, be a period of evaluation and refocus of our lives according to a deeper sense of purpose.

This process can be helped by looking through the ‘lens’ of the Myers Briggs model of personality, as this will give you a greater understanding of what is happening.

If you are going through midlife, you might experience a wide range of feelings, such as:
  • Discontent with life and/or the lifestyle that may have provided happiness for many years
  • Boredom with things/people that have hitherto held great interest and dominated your life
  • Feeling adventurous and wanting to do something completely different
  • Questioning the meaning of life, and the validity of decisions clearly and easily made years before
  • Confusion about who you are, or where your life is going.
These feelings at mid-life can occur naturally, or they can be brought on by external factors, especially redundancy or enforced career change.

However, even in the absence of difficult external circumstances, there is still an internal process of change that takes place during midlife. If you don't understand that process it can feel like a 'crisis' and as you attempt to come to terms with it, you may find yourself making poor or irrational decisions that you regret at a later date – for example leaving your job or spouse and throwing away the security that you have built up in the first part of your adult life.

The Natural Process of Midlife Transition

Carl Jung identified 5 main phases of midlife:
Accommodation (meeting others' expectations - actually, this takes place in the first part of life, but is the context in which midlife processes take place)
Separation (rejecting the accommodated self)
Liminality (a period of uncertainty, where life seems directionless and meanders)
Reintegration (working out 'who I am' and becoming comfortable with that identity)
Individuation (facing up to and accepting the undesirable aspects of our own character)

Accommodation

In the popularised version of Carl Jung’s scheme (i.e. the Myers Briggs model of personality) it is assumed that our preferences are innate - they are with us from birth and not influenced by the environment. What is influenced by the environment is our behaviour and our perception of ourselves. These are influenced by many factors, such as parents, siblings, other children at nursery school, television, the surroundings to our early childhood, etc.

As young children, eager to please, we adapt to those around us, in order to be accepted by them. Our behaviour and perception of ourselves is therefore modified in order to 'fit in' with the various social situations in which we find ourselves. This process, which Jung called 'Accommodation', results in us presenting ourselves as different people in different situations, called 'personae'. As in Greek tragedy, we put on a mask to demonstrate to others how we think we are feeling inside.

Sometimes, the way in which we 'accommodate' to others is different to our true preferences. As an example: suppose a child born with introvert preferences finds that she has to be very extrovert in order to get the love and attention that she needs as a young child. As she grows into adulthood, she continues to act like an extrovert, and believes that she is an extrovert. The real preference for introversion is not recognised. There can also be cultural, social or environmental pressure to behave in certain ways, and these create a "tug o' war" with our self-perceptions.

It can sometimes take a lot of energy to maintain these persona if they are in conflict with our true preferences. Jung spent much of his life counselling people who had 'accommodated' to become people different to their inner preferences. For these people, mid-life transition can sometimes be a difficult and painful process.

Sometimes there is little difference between our 'true selves' and the persona we present to others. Such people may find mid life transition a less difficult process than those individuals whose personae and inner self are quite different.

Separation

The first stage of mid-life involves a questioning of the persona presented to others in the first 30/40/50 years of life.

Think of a persona as a mask, and recognise that different masks are worn in different situations. In separation, one takes off the masks and looks at them, asking questions such as:
  • Who is the person underneath the mask?
  • Are these masks appropriate?
  • Do they show others what I am really like, or do they present a false picture?
  • Do they show me what I am really like?
  • What am I like?
In Myers Briggs terms, this might involve questioning one's personality type. For example, an extrovert who is aware of his type might ask:
  • Am I really an extrovert?
  • Is my extrovert behaviour a reflection of my own preferences?
  • Am I acting like an extrovert because that is what my parents or everyone else expect (or have expected) me to do?

Liminality

The questioning of the personae leads to a large degree of uncertainty - a psychological 'no-man's land'. The old personae have been rejected, perhaps only temporarily, but no new personae have been put in their place. One can therefore feel:
  • uncertain about 'who I am'
  • lacking in direction, and unsure how to go forward
  • apprehensive about making rash, life-changing decisions
  • fearful about whether this uncertainty is ever going to end
In Myers Briggs terms, the individual may be unsure about his/her type, and seek views and feedback from sources outside of him/her self.

Reintegration

Eventually, the uncertainty lessens, new personae are adopted (usually, more in harmony with what is happening 'within') and what remains uncertain feels quite comfortable (or even an essential part of living). During reintegration, one:
  • develops a better understanding of 'who I am'
  • adopts appropriate personae and roles, and re-assesses them on an ongoing basis
  • retains some sense of liminality (uncertainty)
  • becomes more comfortable with oneself and others being the way they are
In Myers Briggs terms, the person may finally discover his/her 'true type', and be comfortable that it is a genuine reflection of inner preferences.

Individuation

The final stage in the process is one of recognising and integrating the conflicts that exist within us, and achieving a balance between them. Examples of such conflicts include:
  • accepting the authority of others - vs - taking authority over our own lives
  • presenting persona to the world - vs - acting, thinking and speaking in harmony with the inner self
  • meeting the demands of others - vs - meeting our own inner needs
  • acknowledging our 'shadows'* - vs - living up to our ideals
  • facing up to the repressed, unconscious and disliked parts of who we are

* The shadow consists of those aspects of our personality (usually negative) that we find unacceptable - we push them out of our own consciousness and 'project' them onto others.

Individuation is a process that leads to a more mature, balanced, 'rounded' person. In Myers Briggs terms, this may mean developing the aspects of personality that are opposite to one's preferences. For example, an INTJ, who has pursued an interest in a scientific career, may start to develop interest in ESFP-type activities. This might involve:
  • enjoying relationships for their own sake, rather than in joint pursuit of some scientific objective
  • taking up sporting pursuits simply to enjoy them, without feeling the need to develop ever greater skill and competence
  • spending more time with the family and enjoying life with the children or grandchildren.
  • developing a much greater appreciation for people, despite their lack of competence or intellectual ability.

Individual experience

The process is not a strict 'sequence of events' as described above. The steps (of accommodation, separation, liminality, reintegration and individuation) provide a framework to explain mid-life transition, but not a rule to be followed. Although there may be common themes, not all themes have to be true of all people. Each person's
experience is different. For example:
  • the stages may be entered and re-entered time and time again.
  • some people may take years or even decades to find their 'true selves’; whilst others may find that this part of the process is very short.
  • for some, it may be a very painful process, for others it may seem no different from other normal aspects of life.
  • for some, the process of change and development may be resisted, and some people may not wish to spend time looking inwards at oneself.
It is a fluid process - but recognising the stages can help to make sense of what is otherwise chaos and confusion. Perhaps understanding of mid-life transition might help some people to move from thinking 'there is something wrong with me' to seeing that the feelings and changes associated with mid-life are quite natural. In fact, most other people experience them at a similar stage of life.