Depth-oriented psychotherapy for adults in midlife. In San Antonio and online statewide in Texas.

Therapy for Midlife

Midlife is rarely a crisis in the dramatic sense the term suggests. It is more often a quiet, sustained re-questioning of the structures that organized the first half of life — the career, the marriage, the identity, the faith, the assumptions about what time was for. The questions tend to arrive on their own schedule, sometimes after a precipitating event (a parent’s death, a health scare, a job loss, the launching of a child), sometimes without an obvious trigger. They ask for more than coping skills. They ask for the kind of work that can hold what midlife is actually doing — a reorganization that is often slow, sometimes disorienting, and one of the most meaningful pieces of work a life can undertake.

Norman Klaunig, MA, LPC, NCC | Texas LPC #89856 | English and German

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At a glance

  • Who this page is for: Adults in midlife — roughly the late thirties through the early sixties — navigating the questions, transitions, and reorganizations that this stage of life tends to bring

  • What this work addresses: The meaning crisis, often called midlife crisis; career questioning and reinvention; marriage and partnership reorganization; identity revision; the death of parents; sandwich-generation strain; perimenopause and men’s body changes; long-buried trauma surfacing; faith deconstruction or reconstruction; the shift from achievement to meaning

  • Theoretical orientation: Depth-oriented, existential-relational, trauma-informed, transpersonal — see Depth-Oriented Therapy for the full theoretical detail

  • Therapist: Norman Klaunig, MA, LPC, NCC

  • License: Texas LPC #89856

  • Office: 1528 W Contour Dr, Suite 102, San Antonio, TX 78212

  • Service area: Online statewide in Texas; in person in San Antonio

  • Languages: English, German

  • Insurance accepted: BCBS, Curative, United Healthcare, and Medicare (traditional Medicare and Medicare Advantage plans from BCBS and United Healthcare)

What midlife therapy is for

Midlife is the stage where the structures that organized the first half of life begin, in many people, to be revisited. A career that was built on a particular set of assumptions. A long marriage or partnership. An identity shaped by what one was doing. The faith one inherited, rejected, or held loosely. A body that no longer behaves the same way. Parents whose mortality has become real, or children whose departure is changing the family system. And the slow recognition that there is more behind you than ahead, and that the time remaining is asking for different choices than the time spent.

Not everyone calls this a crisis, and the term itself is often misleading. What is usually happening is closer to what Jung described as the developmental task of midlife: the work of moving from the building of an identity to the discovery of a self. This is not a problem to fix. It is a passage, and depth-oriented therapy is one of the places it can be made conscious rather than acted out.

What midlife crisis often actually is

The phrase midlife crisis gets used for many things. Some of them are clinical concerns that benefit from therapy; some are passing storms that resolve on their own; some are genuine developmental work that has been waiting for years to be done. The clinical phenomena that often live underneath the label include:

  • A meaning crisis — the sudden or slow recognition that the goals that organized the first half of life no longer feel sufficient, and the unsettled question of what comes next

  • An identity revision — the loosening of who you took yourself to be, often accompanied by the surfacing of parts of yourself that were set aside earlier

  • Mortality breaking through — a first health scare, a parent’s diagnosis, the death of a contemporary, all of which can transform the felt sense of time

  • Long-buried trauma surfacing — material that was carried through the years of building a life often begins to ask for attention once the building has slowed

  • The shift from achievement to meaning — what Wilber and others have described as a movement from earlier developmental tasks (mastery, accomplishment, productivity) to later ones (integration, contribution, depth)

  • A spiritual or religious reorganization — faith returning, faith leaving, faith changing, or the surfacing of questions that had been deferred

What is not a crisis is the developmental task itself. The crisis is what happens when the task is not given room to be worked. Therapy is one of the rooms where it can be.

Who I work with in midlife

I work with:

  • Adults reconsidering a career they have built, including those facing a forced change (layoff, industry collapse, burnout) and those facing a chosen one (early retirement, calling toward different work, the question of whether to start over)

  • Adults in long-term marriages and partnerships facing the work of reorganization — what the relationship was for at twenty-five may not be what it is for at fifty, and the work of finding what it can be now is real

  • Parents in transition — those facing an empty nest, those facing adolescents and young adults whose challenges have intensified, those becoming first-time parents in midlife

  • Adults in the sandwich generation caring for aging parents while raising children, and carrying the practical, emotional, and existential weight of both directions of care

  • Adults navigating perimenopause and other midlife body changes, including the identity and mood shifts that often accompany them

  • Men in midlife facing the particular work that this stage often brings up (more on this in Therapy for Men)

  • Adults whose parents have recently died — the death of a parent is often the event that opens the work of midlife, even decades after that parent had ceased to be central in daily life

  • Adults working with long-buried trauma that is surfacing in midlife, often without an obvious recent trigger

  • Adults questioning, deconstructing, or reconstructing a faith they were raised in or once held

  • Adults in or approaching divorce, separation, or major partnership change at midlife

  • High-functioning adults whose outward success has begun to feel hollow and who want to understand why, and what the deeper question is

I welcome clients of all sexual orientations and gender identities, of all races, heritages, abilities, and belief systems. The work follows you, not a category.

How this work proceeds

The work begins where you are. We make room for what you bring without me explaining it away or recruiting it for a particular framework. The pace is yours to set.

Specific methods used when they fit the work include existential and meaning-centered work for the larger questions about purpose, identity, and meaning; EMDR for trauma surfacing in midlife; IADC® Therapy for grief, including the grief of a parent’s death; parts work (IFS-informed) and narrative approaches for the parts of you at odds with one another and for the stories through which identity is being revised; mindfulness-based approaches and somatic awareness for the body’s role in what midlife is bringing; and spiritually integrated work when faith, spirituality, or religious reorganization is part of the territory.

For the full description of how I think about and work with depth-oriented therapy, see Depth-Oriented Therapy.

What this work can address

Midlife therapy can address:

  • The meaning crisis, often called midlife crisis

  • Midlife depression and anxiety, including depression that has worsened in midlife and anxiety that has only recently surfaced

  • Career questioning, reinvention, burnout, and the existential weight of work that no longer fits

  • Marriage and long-term partnership reorganization, including the question of whether to stay or go

  • Identity work — the loosening of who you took yourself to be and the work of finding what is becoming

  • The death of parents and the grief, role-shift, and existential reckoning that often follows

  • Sandwich-generation strain — caring for aging parents while raising children

  • Perimenopause and other midlife body changes, including the emotional and identity dimensions

  • Empty nest, the launching of adult children, and the question of what comes next

  • Long-buried trauma surfacing in midlife

  • Faith deconstruction, reconstruction, or the surfacing of spiritual questions that have been deferred

  • The work of moving from achievement to meaning, from building to integration, from outward to inward focus

What this work does not replace

This page is about depth-oriented psychotherapy. It is not a substitute for:

  • Medical care. Midlife body changes, including perimenopause, andropause-related changes, and other physiological shifts, should be evaluated by your primary care provider or appropriate specialist.

  • Crisis services. If you are in crisis, call or text 988 (the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline). If you are in immediate danger, call 911 or go to your nearest emergency room.

  • Substance use treatment when that level of care is needed.

Get in touch

Ready when you are.

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Click this link to choose a day and time for a free, confidential consultation or schedule a session.

Schedule a free 15-minute consultation for life transitions therapy online across Texas or in person in San Antonio.

FAQs

Frequently asked questions about midlife therapy

  • The phrase is overused and often misleading. What is real is a developmental passage that most adults navigate somewhere between the late thirties and the early sixties — a passage where the structures that organized the first half of life are revisited and often reorganized. Whether that passage becomes a crisis depends in part on whether the underlying work is given room. Therapy is one of the places it can be.

  • Yes, if something is asking for attention. Much of the most substantive midlife work is done by people who are functioning well on the surface and who notice, internally, that something is shifting that they would like to understand rather than act out.

  • There is no fixed length. Some clients work with me for several months on a specific midlife concern. Others stay longer for the deeper reorganization work. The pace is yours to set.

  • Yes. See also Therapy for Men. The midlife work for men often includes specific cultural and developmental layers, and I have a dedicated page for that.

  • That is common, and it belongs in midlife therapy. The death of a parent often opens the developmental work of midlife in a way that nothing else does. The grief and the developmental work tend to be intertwined and can be worked together. See also Grief Counseling and Caregiver Therapy.

  • Spiritual and religious reorganization is one of the most common pieces of midlife work, and it is one that not every therapist is equipped to hold. I have specific training in spiritually integrated and transpersonal work; see Spiritually Integrated Therapy.

  • Trauma that has been carried for years sometimes begins to surface in midlife, often because the structures that contained it (work, parenting, building) are loosening. I am EMDR-trained and certified in Traumatic Stress Studies through Bessel van der Kolk’s Trauma Research Foundation; see Trauma Therapy.

For fees, insurance, telehealth setup, and in-person availability, see the FAQs.

Further reading

The following are credible sources for reading about midlife development, meaning, and the reorganization work this page covers. The list leans toward books written for the people who would actually read them.

Books

  • James Hollis, The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife. For general readers: the classic Jungian account of midlife as a developmental passage, written with clarity and depth. Probably the single most useful book on this territory from a depth-psychological perspective.

  • Bill Plotkin, Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche. For readers drawn to a depth-and-nature framing: a depth-psychological and ecological account of the soul-work of midlife passage, drawing on Jungian psychology, indigenous traditions, and time in wilderness. Substantial, sometimes demanding, and unlike most other books on this stage of life.

  • Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning. For general readers: the foundational text on meaning-making under difficult circumstances, particularly relevant to the meaning crisis often surfacing in midlife.

  • Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life. For readers open to a spiritual framing: a widely read account of the shift in spiritual life that often accompanies midlife, written from a Christian contemplative perspective but useful across traditions.

  • Brené Brown, Daring Greatly. For general readers: on vulnerability, authenticity, and the work of dropping the armor that the first half of life often required — directly relevant to the midlife reorganization of identity.

  • David Whyte, The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self, and Relationship. For general readers: a poet’s account of the three central relationships of an adult life — to work, to self, to other — and the reorganization of all three that midlife often demands.

Authoritative resources

move from pain to purpose

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move from pain to purpose —