ICAN'T SEE ME, mid life crisis and it's effects

There comes this terrible point in our lives when we realize that we are invisible. This is mainly an age thing, but I guess it can be applied for anytime for any reason. It’s almost like joining a secret club.

Now in our life times we join lots of these. We usually don’t know about them till we are in the middle of some experience and realize that we are not alone, when prior to that whatever the experience has been, has been endured alone and we can feel isolated and lonely as we are surely the only person ever to be feeling as we do right now.

The times that are the most common for this feeling are this are when we first have a baby. When we start to become menopausal. When we loose people around us, whether to ending relationships or death. The latter has been dealt with in a more detailed chapter of it’s own. So I want to focus on the experience of menopause.

But before doing so, just a few words on what having a baby feels like. I am not looking at this experience from an angle of post natal depression, more from a place of normality.
That is not saying that post natal depression is abnormal, more that when a woman has her first child the experience is so extreme emotionally and however well prepared she is in terms of having all the necessary equipment, crib, clothes, whatever that she can feel very alone, even when surrounded by family and friends.

The deep emotion of bringing a life into the world, even though she has had 9 months to prepare does nothing to prepare for the feelings at all. In exactly the same way that when told to rest up during pregnancy, because she will need her energy for coping with a baby, makes no difference to actually dealing with the tiredness of the sleep deprivation that dealing with that baby will actually feel like.

So as this new mother struggles to deal with the day to day tasks involved in caring for her new baby, she will be aware that however many books she had read, how many other woman she had talked to prior to birth, she had not been ready to assimilate this information now flooding through her self. This information can be better described as love!

We all generally make assumptions that we will love our children, but until we have that child present in our arms no amount of preparation will be the same as the actual feeling that takes over us. That is, this new capacity to love in a way that is beyond our comprehension prior to the baby’s arrival. And it is only when that baby is there that this emotion occurs. Of course many women have a sense of love during their pregnancy, but this is on the whole very different because of the intensity of this totally wondrous experience.

One of the most precious memories I have is having my mother around long enough in my life to be able to share this knowledge of being in this secret society with her. In that prior to my having my eldest son, I had always sighed in slight exasperation when my mothers love leaked out over me, in that “Oh Mum’ sort of way when I thought she was being soppy. Having my son, made me profoundly aware that I knew exactly why now she was that way. It was unconditional pure love. The love for me that allows me to say that the only people I would willingly lay my life down for are my to sons.

Now if that is the wonder of a secret society then the menopause at the start is most definitely not.

There we all are woman, who have been through all the angst of teenage relationships, more mature ones in our twenties, and at some point may have settled down with a partner. We may have had children, we may have had a career, or nowadays most likely both. As it is rare for there be enough money in any home for woman not to have worked to contribute to the household coffers in this day and age.

We go through are thirties not thinking about the future other than most often in terms of bringing the children up. We enter our forties, quite often with a feeling of dread. As if getting to the Big 40 will suddenly mean a massive change the day we turn it! Which as we find isn’t strictly true.

But what does happen as we go through our forties is we start to become more invisible to people around us. Our families take us for granted. When was the last time your partner looked at you with the same degree of lust that when you first met? Now if that still happens then you have a rare relationship indeed and should cherish it. But for the majority of people we have settled into a routine of behaviour when we react to our partner, maybe built on affection, maybe on contempt.

If we have made this far in a relationship, we now enter the most dangerous time for it’s survival. We get to a point at which both men and women ask themselves is this it? Is this what I’ve got to look forward to for the rest of my life? And people start to question whether or not it is worth staying in the relationship as it is. The easiest option at this point is to have an affair. That will certainly stop being invisible in it’s tracks. You’ll feel sexy, vital, attractive and lustful. Whatever state your long term sexual relationship had been, having an affair and you can rediscover your sex drive big time.

Or another route is, and this is particularly true of women, who have gone from being their parents child ,to the husband’s wife ,to their children’s mother, only to decide that suddenly it is time they did something for them. University’s and colleges are full of women of a certain age retraining. Finding out that they do have a brain, it having rotted over soggy cereals for the last few years. This is another way to beat the invisibility as women learn to value their brains and the skills they are learning.

Go to any Graduation ceremony and watch the pride on the faces of all those women , who three years previously ‘knew’ they couldn’t ever get a degree!
But if you don’t do either of these things, and neither is compulsory! Then the invisibility blanket starts to surround you. Walking down the street, it’s no longer the majority of the 40 something women who get a second glance. Certainly youth don’t see us, they push past us as if we don’t count. You can start to get discounted in queues in shops, you don’t matter cause you cannot be seen.

It is a shocking revelation to women, and so what do we all do, we start chasing youth, we buy into products that will get rid of our wrinkles, give us fresh skin, make us look young again. And at it’s most extreme we have plastic surgery.

Now I’m not knocking any of this, I put expensive face cream on, I lather the body lotion on to give me soft skin. And I can’t say if I had the money that I wouldn’t have a face lift. I’m just pointing out that, this is why we buy into it.

We also go the gym, take up sports, start walking. Now obviously we are also doing this to keep fit, to stave off out bodies crumbling totally, but you can’t tell me that if you make differences in your body through exercise that you don’t walk taller down the street, have more confidence, feel better about yourself. And in so doing suddenly start getting noticed again. This then increases your feelings of self worth, and you find heads turning to check you out. And I won’t believe any woman who says that she doesn’t care about being noticed.

Being noticed , not being ignored is the fundamental drive of our lives. If we were ignored as a baby we would not have survived. Our crying to let someone know we were hungry or uncomfortable was got us here in the first place. So being part of the society you live in is vital. Being ignored is a living death.

This being invisible, has to be challenged, not by us donning miniskirts and bright red lippy, well unless we want to do that. More we have to look to our own resources.
Obviously if we are using outside agencies, an affair, a college course then we are half way there. But if we are not, we have to find a way to make sense of these feelings.
We do matter and the person we need to matter to most, is ourselves.

We have to be kind to ourselves, we have to learn that by looking after ourselves other people will not take us so much for granted. Being taken for granted starts in us, not other people. We start when we begin a relationship and set up our behaviour as the carer of our partner. How many women take on the roll of buying, sending his family Birthday cards? How many women, remind their partners to phone their mothers. How many women, hold down a full time job and still manage to know whether his favourite shirt is clean? How many women, act as a taxi to their children’s social life. How many women cook as many different meals as there are people in the house as no-one will eat the same thing….. The list is endless and the answer is WE DO!!

What happens when we do this to ourselves, when we treat ourselves as lower in importance than the mouse in the skirting board, is that oddly enough we get treated with the same amount of respect as that mouse would get, that is, none.

So a vicious circle starts, of neglect of ourselves by us, then by others then we follow that up with feeling more and more that we don’t matter. This effects self esteem, confidence, dignity, and ultimately happiness. If we feel like a drudge, then we behave like one and get treated like one big time.

To change this really horrible cycle we have to start with us. It doesn’t work wanting someone else to look after us, if we don’t do it first. Why should anyone else bother, if we continue to be full of self hate, whatever they tell us about being loved, important and all other such like stuff.

As an example lets just look at getting a complement. Someone says something nice to you, say about your hair, or outfit. When you are full of self hate you dismiss the complement as your hair needs cutting, or this old outfit.

Lets just stop and look outside you for a moment here, why has that other person said something nice to you…. Have they got nothing better to do, are they trying to get in your knickers, is it just sport to wind you up? Or, is it that when someone gives us a complement they are reaching out a hand to us and saying I like you, and I can’t say that. But if I say something good to you, you may notice that actually I’m ok too and think I’m good enough to be your friend.

That is what people are doing when you get a complement nothing more or less. They are NOT trying to increase your self hate, they may not even know you have it. So next time someone says something nice to you, how about saying Thank You. Not only have you then received a stroke to your battered ego but you make the giver of the complement feel good. Cause they feel validated in their opinion of you. Which lets face it here, is never going to be the same opinion you have of yourself.

Going back to starting to learn to be kind to yourself as a way to feel better and increase your self worth, esteem and confidence.

One of the things that really works is a hit list of treats that you have just for you that are not of any use to other people. It could be treating yourself to a half hour with a magazine and a large cup of your favourite coffee. It could be buying some fresh flowers. It could be booking a manicure /facial/ massage. It could, if you felt you really deserved a real big treat could be a new handbag.

The list is endless of lovely things you could do for yourself, if only you would let you! Maybe it is time to stop caring for everyone and sacrificing yourself. No-one needs a martyr who doesn’t matter. Start mattering… to you, and then miraculously others will start to treat you better too. After all, if you start to feel that you matter, what do you want to hang around people who treat you like dirt for?

So as you slowly start to change it has a knock on effect with the rest of those around you.
Just try saying the word NO now and again. Your teenager wants another lift and wants it now…. Say NO, but because you don’t want to go into aggressive mode as already discussed, then you opt for an assertive touch, you explain why it can’t happen that exact minute and that you will do it in 10 minutes or whenever suits you.

Doing this has a miraculous effect on your self esteem, suddenly you are no longer the dogsbody, you matter. You of course always have. The family couldn’t do without you, or wouldn’t want to be without you. They have just taken you for granted because you have let it happen.

Now you have started this change in the home, your confidence is given a shot in the arm and you can start to look at other areas of your life and start the same process there. After all why shouldn’t you think you are OK, or even gorgeous, or wonderful. Who except you says you can’t?

Confidence or rather lack of it can be turned round, Just think about the word itself, CONfidence, all you have to do is con yourself that you can do something difficult and allow yourself to know that it will be scary, you might make an idiot of yourself… but so what, so does everyone else.

We all, everyone of us do or say stupid things and wish the earth would swallow us up. We can hold on to our mortification for a very long time if we let ourselves. It’s part of being a martyr again, “Oh look I’m so stupid and did such a stupid thing, how can anyone think I’m worth anything?” Except that if we dared to ask the people around us that we thought we had been a pratt in front of they wouldn’t know what we were talking about. That I can personally guarantee!

When we do this to ourselves the words that need to spring to our lips are, get over it, it’s human nature to say the wrong thing some of the time, and even the Queen/ Prime minister/ or put in any name of a person who you’d think would never do something as silly as you! And know that they have all done just that more than once in their lives.

The other things you can do to help boost your self esteem, are if it’s not shifting is to go to your doctor and ask to be referred for counselling, to join a group to learn assertion, to start learning something like a computer course, massage, sign language. Anything really that pushes you a bit, but not so much that your fear takes over and you sabotage going as your sure to be the only stupid one there.

Right! If it’s a beginners course in anything at all, it’s just that, a beginners course and everyone going is doing so cause they don’t know something and want to learn about it. The course will not be full of people who are just waiting for you to join so they can make fun of you, it really isn’t.

All of the people on the course will be using the same three letters as you need to, they are CONing themselves that they can do something scary, just like you.

The first time, you do anything new and unfamiliar it will be frightening. But once done for the first time it will never be as scary again. The number of people who come into my counselling room scared of how I’m going to be or what I’m going to say is huge. By the end of the hour when I check how they are feeling, without fail they will all say, that they are not as frightened as before they came. Now that of course is nothing to do with my abilities and everything to do with confidence growing in my clients as they relax into the session.

To sum up, the more you care about yourself, the better you feel. The better you feel, the more confidence, self esteem and assertion you have. The more other people will notice you, and in a good way. So what have you got to loose? Nothing, except being Mrs Invisible. No competition then is there?