Mid Career Blues and Other Hues? | Deepa Unnikrishnan
Deepa Unnikrishnan is a Career Design Counsellor and researcher who specializes in helping early and mid-career professionals navigate dissatisfaction, stagnation, and transition using a structured intervention called Life Design Counselling (LDC).
Her work sits at the intersection of psychology, counselling, and lived corporate experience, with a strong focus on mid-career dilemmas and career redirection in the Indian context.
She combines over six years of counselling practice with a decade in corporate IT, giving her a dual lens on both organisational realities and individual emotional worlds.
Key Takeaway:
Mid-career crisis is not failure - it’s a meaning shift
What many professionals experience in their 30s and 40s isn’t failure or lack of ambition, but a deeper search for meaning. Physical, emotional, and psychological changes at midlife often trigger questions about values, purpose, and alignment. When work no longer reflects who a person has become, dissatisfaction surfaces—even if everything looks “successful” on paper.
Careers are no longer ladders; they are living systems
The idea of a predictable, linear career path is outdated. Today’s careers are composite — involving full-time roles, freelancing, breaks, experimentation, and reinvention. Instead of climbing one ladder, professionals are continuously redesigning their paths based on changing life roles, priorities, and opportunities.
Dissatisfaction isn’t solved by change alone — clarity matters more
A career switch doesn’t automatically lead to fulfilment. Without understanding why change is needed and how it will be approached, people risk carrying the same dissatisfaction into a new role. Thoughtful reflection, due diligence, and intentional planning matter far more than impulsive decisions driven by frustration.
Passion can become work, but only through balance and realism
Turning passion into a livelihood requires honest trade-offs. Financial stability, health, family responsibilities, and long-term sustainability all matter. For many, the healthiest path is gradual — exploring interests alongside existing work, testing viability, and transitioning only when readiness aligns with reality.
Your identity should come from skills, not titles or companies
Many mid-career professionals struggle because their sense of self is tightly tied to job titles or organizations. When roles change or end, identity feels shaken. Reframing identity around transferable skills, competencies, and experience — rather than positions held — helps people move forward with confidence and adaptability.
Designing a career is different from choosing one
Choosing a career is often about fit and interest at the beginning of professional life. Designing a career, especially at midlife, is about reflection, meaning-making, and integration. It involves understanding past experiences, recognizing emotional patterns, and consciously shaping how work fits into life—not the other way around.
Adaptability and continuous learning are today’s real security
In a world where job-for-life no longer exists, true security comes from adaptability. Confidence in one’s skills, willingness to learn continuously, and the ability to evolve across roles and industries provide far greater stability than any single designation or organization ever could.
Transcript:
Chethan K (Host): Hi Ma’am. Welcome to Edexlive.
Deepa Unnikrishnan (Guest): Thank you, and thanks for inviting me.
Chethan K (Host): Many professionals in their thirties and forties appear successful on paper but feel deeply stuck. From your work, what actually triggers a mid-career crisis in India? Is it success stagnation or something deeper?
Deepa Unnikrishnan (Guest): That’s a nice question. In fact, mid-career crisis is largely talked about these days. This problem is not prevalent only in India.
It’s there everywhere, but a lot of research is also done on this. It’s basically a combination of a lot of factors. One is the midlife stage. Midlife career, they say.
You reach your thirties and forties. I mean, as such, physical and psychological changes happen to individuals. Energy level goes down, and all this reflects in career also.
Like your motivation. You start searching for meaning in your work or the vision and mission of the organization—you might not find it aligned with your values at times. Basically when you get into that, frustration sets in. The work fulfilment may not be what you would have expected when you started your career.
Many of these factors due to stagnation and people face career derailing incidents like job loss. The type of careers we are in now, it’s not a ladder, it’s not a predictable scenario.
Chethan K (Host): You approach careers through a life design lens rather than linear ladders. How do you personally define a career today?
Deepa Unnikrishnan (Guest): Career for me is more composite in nature. I see it that way in the present scenario. It’s not a job-for-lifetime scenario.
For example, you can have a full-time job, then you can do freelancing. In fact, even career breaks are also normalized in today’s context.
It’s no more a linear trajectory, what we had seen earlier, when we had the hierarchical nature of careers.
For example, if you see public sectors and during the industrial revolution, it was more hierarchical — after this role, you get into another role and all that. Now it is no more that scenario.
That’s where life designing as a concept and as a career counselling intervention plays a major role, because it’s more about meaning-making — understanding people’s experiences and helping them chart their unique career path.
It’s more of a subjective intervention because if you see the earlier career interventions, they were more objective-based, which is okay for somebody who wants to start a career and choose a particular profession which aligns with their interest.
But in the scenario we see now, like mid-career people reaching a certain stage, it is more about understanding their career experiences and finding out their unique script basically.
Chethan K (Host): In your counselling sessions, how often do you see people caught between what they want to do and what they feel compelled to do because of money, family, social expectations? And how do you help them navigate that conflict?
Deepa Unnikrishnan (Guest): Most of my consultation, I have never felt anybody was so compelled to do what they were doing. Having said that, people have interests, passions.
For example, there was somebody who liked theatre and his family also is into theatre. But all of us understand, when the IT revolution came and the industry was booming, there were a lot of job prospects and people got into those professions.
Nevertheless, they carried on in that flow. But somewhere down the line there’s a calling that they want to get into their passion. That’s where they come and ask, how do I blend my interest?
In the long run, I want to do this. May be I want to get full-time into theatre. Is there something I can do now where I can take the skills I gained working in organizations and may be also use them in an area where I can channelize my interest also? That’s what they seek now.
Because there is nothing like, “I could have…” — everybody goes with the flow once they get into a job.
Chethan K (Host): Many people believe a career change will magically solve dissatisfaction. What are the biggest misconceptions professionals have about switching careers at midlife?
Deepa Unnikrishnan (Guest): I think first and foremost, people have to be clear why they want to change. It’s not that the grass is greener on the other side.
The change should be justified — you have to ask yourself what you want to do and how you want to do it. That’s where a counsellor will see — you have something in your mind, but you need to figure out and chart how you want to approach this.
For example, somebody comes to me and says, this is my interest area, this is what I want to follow. But I have to give them concrete direction in terms of — this is your interest, did you do any due diligence in terms of how you want to take it forward?
Whether you want to do an abrupt shift or whether you want to do it gradually — these are the areas they have to objectively think about.
Otherwise, it’s just that “I’m not happy with this scenario.”
That depends on what the person wants to do. Like if somebody wants to take a break for some time and then figure out, that’s one thing. Somebody wants to do it in a gradual process, that’s another, but the clarity and control on what you want to do becomes very important.
Chethan K (Host): On the same lens, can passion become a proper money-earning job?
Deepa Unnikrishnan (Guest): Again, that would be a trade-off. You are pursuing your passion with interest. We are all looking at a stage where there’s a sustainable career model.
So sustainable again means it’s not only about your work, but also your health, your life, and the satisfaction you get from your work. All this plays a very important role. That’s where we need to balance it. You want to take your passion forward?
Again, people look into various angles — in terms of financial viability, whether it is okay for you to take that leap for a couple of years to follow your passion. These are the judgment calls people make based on their context and how much intention they have to put their passion into full-time action.
Risks will be involved, but that’s part of the game. It has its own rewards, depending on how disciplined one is in their journey. There are some people who would like to follow their passion gradually and put it into a proper full-time occupation or job later on.
For example, art, theatre, music—people would want to do something during weekends and then gradually take it forward.
Chethan K (Host): A lot of mid-career distress seems to come from identity being tied to the roles and titles. How do you help clients separate who they are from what they do without losing direction?
Deepa Unnikrishnan (Guest): I think this is more like — we all play a lot of roles in life. Lifespan, life space — when you see from a career development angle, in fact, this was in the 1950s when a counsellor named Donald Super came up with the lifespan-life space theory.
So you play different roles in life. People’s identity again should be balanced in all these roles. It so happens that they invest in one role so much that they get carried away and forget to balance it. For example, getting too invested in a career role — yes, it’s good to be committed, but what are the competencies and skills?
That’s where people should separate their identity. You should be known for your competencies and skills rather than “I am so-and-so in this company.” Many people who have been in one company for a very long time, like 17–18 years, and then shift, find their identity so tied to the previous company that they carry that mindset.
So that’s where you need to do a bit of disconnection. Develop clarity that these are the skills you’re carrying from here, irrespective of where you worked. Your identity should be based on your skills and experience rather than the position you held.
A counsellor will help in these scenarios—developing this reframing of identity. Otherwise, you are sitting in your past actually.
Chethan K (Host): Life designing counselling emphasizes reflection and experimentation rather than one-time decision. How does designing a career differ from choosing a career, especially for mid-career professionals?
Deepa Unnikrishnan (Guest): Designing a career and choosing a career. So when does choosing a career come into picture?
For example, it is more to do with when you're starting your career. For example, college graduates and pass-outs, they are in a stage where they need to choose a career.
There are a lot of objective assessments, career assessments, which come into picture, which they take. That helps them identify their interests and the occupations that would align with them.
But when it comes to the mid-career stage, more or less people are aware of their strengths.
There are some experience backing them. It is more about designing their career and seeing what is the role of the workplace in their life in designing that career — and how they want to go about it.
That’s where life designing is more about understanding — again, when I say understanding, it’s about the past experience and developing meaning through reflection.
Unless you understand that, it’s not only about an objective career, which is more to do with your resume — where you have worked and the roles you have held. There is also a subjective career that goes along with that, which becomes prominent in midlife. It often gets bottled up, so that has to be opened up for you to redirect your career.
Chethan K (Host): Many professionals struggle to balance meaning with financial and social stability. Is it realistic to expect fulfilment from work, or should career primarily be about security?
Deepa Unnikrishnan (Guest): Okay, so you are asking whether it’s security for a lifetime — a job for life.
I think the job-for-life concept is almost gone. Financial stability is very important, but how careers play a role there is again to do with how we build our skills and competencies.
Financially, the problem now — and I think in the Indian social context too — is that we have a generation that has come from the industrial era, who had been in jobs for a lifetime, like banking professionals or public sector employees.
For them, it’s like you get into a job and you know where you will reach by the time you retire. But then, they’re seeing another generation who is shifting jobs often, so there is that confusion. That’s where social expectations have come.
The generation that is into shifting jobs should also be clear that basically, the control and adaptability of their career, the resilience it requires — all that matters.
Even if you don’t have a job now, confidence in your skills and competencies will help you find another opportunity.
Continuous learning is the game now. Career adaptability and continuous learning are the two things that help professionals, no matter what risks they take, to chart their path.
Chethan K (Host): If you're speaking to someone who feels stuck, exhausted, and unsure about the next step but also afraid to make a wrong move, what is the first inner shift or question you would ask them to reflect on?
Deepa Unnikrishnan (Guest): As a counsellor, there are two things I would look at. First of all, understand the reason why the person is getting stuck. What’s their journey so far?
Where is the fear coming from? What were their experiences?
Is it something from the past that has moulded their thinking or beliefs — may be a toxic work relationship earlier, or may be the culture they were not happy with in the previous environment?
So that’s where, as a counsellor, I would figure out and try to understand any of the mental blocks, and then, along with the client, help guide them to the next process — how they want to take it forward. Help them understand their strengths as well. What happens in most cases is that people are stuck within their own mental blocks and career beliefs. When that happens — for example, thinking “these companies are like this” or “it’s very difficult to get in” — it becomes hard to have an open mindset and move forward.
So that’s where a counsellor helps the client to actually clear all these obstacles and chart out a path going forward — how they want to do it. It’s the client who decides what they want to do and how they want to do it, while I help them with guidance.
They have to come up with an objective plan for how to go about it, and I provide inputs in terms of what areas they could explore from a guidance perspective, along with helping them unblock their mental barriers.
Thank you very much. It was a pleasure talking to you.
