Mid-thirties crisis? You’re having a thrisis

Let’s while life away lurching from crisis to crisis. The quarter-life crisis kicks in at 25. Mid-life crisis kicks in at 45. What to do in the intervening years? Have a thrisis… a life-crisis especially for people in their mid-thirties.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised, given our accelerated pace of life - kids drinking alcopops at 13 and reporting signs of burnout before they turn 18. Little wonder that, by 35, many of us feel exhausted, not to mention a little nonplussed about what’s next. Gladeana McMahon, co-director of the Centre for Stress Management, knows the phenomenon only too well. “I work with a lot of highly successful, driven people,” she says. “By their mid-thirties, a lot of them are tired. They’re sick of life and they wonder what it’s all about. They start questioning their values and what they’re doing.”

Combine that with anxiety as a teenager, the depression people in old-age experience, and you’d really begin to think life is spent lurching from crisis to crisis.

Why don’t we call the whole thing a lifisis, a whole-life crisis, and be done with it.