by Rosina Pzena, M.S.

Recently a close friend of mine hit a milestone birthday and has since spent a lot of time talking to me about having accomplished nothing in her life, and questioning every decision she has past made. Mid-life and quarter-life crises, as they are called, are very common experiences. People realize they have lived 25% or 50% of their likely total life span and think it’s time to weigh what they have accomplished vs. what they haven’t— to decide whether their life thus far has been worthwhile, or worthless. However, what purpose does a “life crisis” and thinking the total worth of your life is zero actually serve? Thinking her life is worthless caused my friend to feel depressed, which only interfered with her trying to take any action to change her life and only made things worse.

In REBT, we help clients reach unconditional self-acceptance, which means that they accept themselves as fallible human beings who have flaws and make mistakes. There is absolutely nothing wrong with seeing an aspect of your life that you’d like to change, experiencing a healthy negative emotion such as disappointment, and perhaps setting new goals to work towards. However, downing yourself and your life’s value will not help you get there. Accepting that you are human and your life has been made up of good AND bad choices, successes AND mistakes, will help you feel empowered to make change if you think it is necessary.

Rosina Pzena