Mid-life Composer
summary
Career change plus quitting and divorce over about 18 months erodes identity after a 25-year run in emergency services with roles managing 200–300 staff and a $1 billion agency; intervention is a GP-issued mental healthcare plan and regular sessions with a psychologist, using Maslow, schema theory and self-assessments to find three over-vigilant sub-schemas (suppression, emotional inhibition, perfectionism). Reframing identity into a new developer community at Laracon restores belonging and proves effective — contentment returns.
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chapters (14)
- 0:00Start
- 1:20Identity beyond job titles
- 3:10Career beginnings as a paramedic and rapid progression
- 5:00Leadership roles, parenthood, and shifting priorities
- 6:40Reaching the peak and realising something is wrong
- 8:10Quitting, divorce, and losing personal identity
- 10:10Normalising struggle and shared experiences
- 11:10Seeking help and mental healthcare plans
- 13:40Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and understanding change
- 15:50Psychological models of responding to change
- 18:00Why struggle during change is not a disorder
- 18:40Schema theory and understanding personal patterns
- 21:30Identifying over-control, perfectionism, and inhibition
- 22:45Living without control and learning to rebuild
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