Feeling Stuck in Your Career in Mid-Life: Why It Happens and What It’s Really Telling You
In this article you will learn:
Why feeling stuck in your career is common for women in mid-life
How identity, values, and capacity shifts contribute to career confusion
The difference between being capable and being able to sustain work
Why clarity often feels elusive at this stage of life
When career counselling can help - and when it won’t
Introduction
Many women reach mid-life with a deep and unsettling sense that something about their work no longer fits.
Outwardly, life may appear stable: a solid career history, financial responsibility, and competence hard-won over decades. Yet inwardly, there is often fatigue, restlessness, or a growing sense of disconnection - not just from paid work, but from the broader way life is being lived.
In my experience, this ‘itch’ often extends beyond the job itself. Questions arise about unpaid roles, relationships, and the invisible labour of holding everything together.
Feeling stuck in your career in mid-life is not indecision or failure. It is often a loss of alignment between your internal world and your external work.
This article is for Australian women over 35 who feel stuck but cannot yet name what needs to change. It is not a push toward urgency or reinvention, but an invitation to understand what this feeling may actually be asking of you.
What Does ‘Feeling Stuck’ in Your Career Really Mean?
Career stuckness in mid-life often occurs when identity, values, or capacity have changed, but work still reflects an earlier version of the self.
This is not a lack of motivation or ambition. I rarely meet women who have built successful early careers only to suddenly become lazy or disengaged for no reason. More often, it is the result of psychological, emotional, and life-stage growth that has outpaced the structure of work.
Feeling stuck in your career is extremely common for women over 35 and is best understood as a developmental stage rather than a personal shortcoming.
At first, the signs can be subtle: a wondering if there is more to life than this, questions about purpose, or a growing interest in spirituality or meaning. There is often a weariness that does not lift with rest alone.
When left unexamined, these feelings tend to grow louder. The questions broaden, overwhelm builds, and many women experience what my research suggests is a mid-life existential reckoning.
Why Mid-Life Is a Pressure Point for Career Dissatisfaction
For many women, career confusion in mid-life emerges from overlapping changes in identity, caregiving responsibilities, health, energy, and values. These changes rarely occur in isolation - they compound.
Identity shifts
The woman you are now is not the woman who chose her career years earlier. Roles once worn with ease - professional, relational, familial - may no longer feel authentic.
Many women realise they have become defined by what they do for others and begin searching for the self beneath those roles.
Caring responsibilities
Children, ageing parents, and emotional labour draw heavily on time and energy. Research consistently shows women carry a disproportionate share of unpaid work, and Australian data suggests women with children can perform the equivalent of a part-time job in unpaid labour before paid work even begins.
This load is neither sustainable nor fair.
Health and energy changes
Hormonal shifts, perimenopause, burnout, and chronic stress all affect how work is experienced - not just mentally, but physically.
With perimenopause potentially beginning as early as the mid-30s and lasting many years, a significant portion of women’s lives and careers are spent navigating profound biological changes. These shifts are real, organic, and often underestimated.
Values realignment
Mid-life often brings a reordering of values. Status and achievement may give way to sustainability, meaning, and wellbeing. The corner office may give way to a nook in the study. None of this is wrong, and to be honest I can understand why you might think it is, because the world is still coming to grips with the idea of workplace flexibility being deeply embedded in our culture rather than a knee jerk reaction to the pandemic.
Many Gen X women made early career decisions based on survival, opportunity, or expectation - not conscious values. Over time, operating on autopilot using outdated priorities becomes untenable.
One of the most important conversations I have with women is simply: What matters to you now?
It is a deceptively difficult question, but answering it is foundational for sustainable decision-making.
The Good News…
By embracing the messy middle and doing the reflective and sometimes deeply personal soul searching, women in midlife can strategically set themselves up for success moving forward.
Capability vs Capacity: A Crucial Distinction
Many women in mid-life remain highly capable but experience reduced capacity - meaning they can perform their work, but can no longer sustain it without cost.
Capability refers to skills, competence, and experience.
Capacity refers to what you can hold emotionally, physically, and relationally over time.
When capacity changes are ignored, women often internalise frustration as personal failure rather than recognising a mismatch between life stage and work demands.
The most impactful capacity shifts are often invisible: hormonal change, health decline, ageing parents, or unsupportive partnerships. Many women who once carried enormous loads suddenly find they cannot ‘just keep going’ - and blame themselves for it.
If there is one message to take from this article, it is this:
Your capacity matters. It deserves to be honoured.
Why Career Clarity Feels So Hard Right Now
Career clarity in mid-life is often delayed because old answers no longer apply and new ones have not yet formed.
This in-between space can feel deeply uncomfortable. Many women attempt to escape it by staying busy, pushing harder, or making reactive changes. In my experience, this strategy rarely works.
Clarity does not arrive first. It emerges after reflection.
Trying to force answers too early often recreates the same patterns in a new role. Feeling unsure does not mean you are behind - it often means something important is reorganising internally.
Reframing ‘Stuck’ as Information, Not Inertia
Feeling stuck in your career is not stagnation. It is often a sign that internal change is underway and a new orientation is needed.
Instead of asking, ‘What job should I do?’, consider:
What no longer fits?
What feels unsustainable?
What am I no longer willing to trade myself for?
These questions require reflection, not urgency. For many women, re-engineering boundaries is the first step toward reclaiming agency and energy - and building a future that is sustainable, by first removing that which no longer serves you.
When Career Counselling Can Help
Career counselling is particularly helpful when identity, emotion, and work are intertwined and clarity feels out of reach.
A holistic approach does not rush decisions. It creates space to:
Understand what has shifted
Name grief, ambivalence, or fatigue
Clarify values and capacity
Re-define success in ways that fit your current life
It is not about finding the ‘right’ job immediately. It is about orienting toward a life and career that can actually be lived in, rather than endured.
Working With a Career Counsellor Online in Australia
Online career counselling allows women anywhere in Australia to access reflective, personalised support without geographic barriers.
Many women find online sessions offer:
Privacy and flexibility
Space for emotional processing
Continuity through life transitions
Access to specialist support beyond major cities
A Final Thought
Feeling stuck in your career does not mean you are broken or behind. It may mean something in you is asking for attention, not action.
Listening to that signal - rather than silencing it - is often the beginning of meaningful change.
If that signal is telling you now might be the time, I’d invite you to book a complimentary Soul Strategy Call to explore whether career counselling could support you through this transition.