The Disquiet Stage
What it actually feels like from the inside
I hope the Writing to Heal prompt from the last post offered some useful reflection. The questions about inherited roles versus chosen ones — what we set aside to fit in, to make ends meet, to belong — are among the most complex and fascinating I know. And if we have the option now, knowing and accepting ourselves more fully than ever before, what is it we most want to embrace?
My desire is to jump ahead and dive straight into values, vision, and forward motion. But the middle of the story matters. And it’s the hardest part to write. So, before we move forward, let’s sit for a moment in the discomfort of the in-between.
You’re Good at This. And Yet.
You show up. You deliver. You keep it together. By most measures, yours and everyone else’s, you are competent, capable, and fine.
And yet something feels off. You can’t quite name it, but it’s there: a low-frequency hum you can’t turn down. This is the disquiet of midlife. It doesn’t always announce itself dramatically.
More often, it shows up in one of three recognizable forms.
The Erosion. The things that used to bring satisfaction: the promotion, the completed project, the long-awaited vacation, no longer land the way they used to. You go through the motions and notice that what once felt meaningful now feels draining. It’s quiet, functional, and easy to overlook. A flatness where the aliveness used to be.
The Eruption. This one is harder to hide. It’s a low-grade irritability that occasionally surprises even you: impatience with the people you love, a flash of anger at something small, followed by the uncomfortable awareness that your reaction was out of proportion to what was in front of you. What lives beneath the eruption is rarely anger. It is more often grief, or longing, or the accumulated pressure of a life lived largely for others, finally finding the only exit available.
The Paralysis. You know something needs to change. You feel it clearly. And yet you don’t make a move. The timing isn’t right. You’ll address it when things settle down, when the kids are older, when work lets up, when you feel more ready. The right moment never quite arrives. And somewhere beneath the waiting, you know it never will.
The Cost of High Functioning
Here is the quiet irony of the Disquiet Stage: the very skills that make you effective in the world can become the primary obstacle to your own inner life.
You are good at problem-solving, so you treat the discomfort as a problem to be solved rather than a signal to be heard. You are good at compartmentalizing, so you file the disquiet away and return to the tasks at hand. You are good at deferring, so you tell yourself this is not the right moment.
But the disquiet doesn’t disappear because you are managing it. It goes underground, and finds expression in unexpected places: your closest relationships, your body, the 3am wakefulness that no amount of productivity the next day can fully resolve.
What the Disquiet Is Actually Saying
The disquiet is not a malfunction. It is a message.
It is the parts of you that have been patient, that have waited through decades of building and achieving and adapting, finally insisting on being heard. The erosion, the eruption, and the paralysis are not signs that something has gone wrong with you. They are signs that something important is trying to get your attention.
The question is not how to make the disquiet stop. The question is what it is trying to tell you. And hearing it requires something many high-functioning people find genuinely difficult: slowing down, turning inward, and sitting with uncertainty long enough to actually listen.
The Threshold
In depth psychology, and in many wisdom traditions, there is a concept called the threshold: the liminal space between who you have been and who you are becoming. It is, by definition, uncomfortable. You are no longer fully in the old life. You are not yet in the new one. You are standing in the in-between.
Most people try to exit the threshold as quickly as possible: retreating to the familiar or forcing a premature resolution. Both are understandable. Neither tends to work.
What waits on the other side of the disquiet is not a tidy resolution or a new five-year plan. What waits is something more valuable: a clearer, more honest relationship with yourself, and with the life you actually want to be living.
But to get there, most of us must first pass through something we have been quietly avoiding.
Before we can build something more honest, we must grieve what we are leaving behind. We’ll go there together in the next post.
Writing to Heal: Name the Disquiet
Find a quiet place and a few uninterrupted minutes. Let yourself settle. Then consider the disquiet in your own life, however it has been showing up, and ask yourself honestly:
What have I been too busy, too tired, or too afraid to pay attention to?
Write freely, without editing, in response to these three prompts:
Which face does my disquiet wear most often: erosion, eruption, or paralysis? Describe what it actually looks like in your daily life. Be specific. The more concrete, the more useful.
What do you do when the disquiet surfaces? How do you manage it, quiet it, push it aside? Write about your most practiced strategy for not feeling it, without judgment. Just notice it.
If the disquiet could speak, if it had something it has been trying to tell you, what might it say? You don’t need to know the answer. Just write toward it. Let yourself be surprised by what comes.
There are no wrong answers here. Only the beginning of a more honest conversation — with yourself.
A Note on this Work
The Disquiet Stage is often the moment people first consider therapy, not because they are in crisis, but because they are tired of managing alone. Tired of looking fine. Tired of knowing something needs to change without knowing how to begin.
If that is where you are, that tiredness is not weakness. It is wisdom. It means some part of you has recognized that the tools that got you here may not be the tools that will take you where you need to go.
Next in the series: The Grief Beneath the Surface — Why midlife asks us to mourn, what we are actually grieving, and why that grief, fully felt, may be the most liberating thing you do in the second half of your life.
I offer individual therapy, couples therapy, and Writing to Heal workshops in California. Schedule a complimentary 15-minute consultation at kristinemoetherapy.com.
— Kristine Moe,Therapist and Writer, Fellow Traveler