Upside Stories Library
Stay curious
Explore our evidence-based insights on life’s big questions, transitions, and challenges for people across midlife and beyond, and those facing these themes ahead of schedule.
Retirement and the Loss of Professional Identity
Nobody tells you that the hardest part of retirement might not be the finances, the routine, or the free time. It might be the moment you realise you don't quite know who you are without your work. For people whose professional life was central to their sense of self, such as their competence, their status, their daily purpose and social world, leaving retirement feeling less like freedom and more like loss. This article explores that experience honestly, and what the research says helps.
Perfectionism and Burnout in High-Functioning Midlife Adults
High-functioning people are often the last to seek help, and the last anyone thinks needs it. But behind the productivity, the competence, and the decades of delivering, something else is frequently present: a relentless internal pressure that never quite quiets, a self-criticism that achievement never satisfies, and a tiredness that goes deeper than sleep will fix. This article is for the people who are doing well by every external measure, and who are quietly exhausted by the cost of it.
AI and Your Career: What Australian Midlife Workers Are Experiencing, and What Helps
Most Australian workers are already using AI at work. Many are finding it helpful. And some — particularly those in midlife, with deep expertise in roles that are changing rapidly — are also navigating something more personal: questions about identity, purpose, and what their professional future looks like. This article explores both sides of that picture, and what psychology can offer.
Anxiety in the Second Half of Life: Health Anxiety and Existential Worry
Anxiety in midlife and later life often looks quite different. It might show up in the doctor’s waiting room and the 3am mind. It might show up as a persistent undercurrent beneath ordinary days; the sense that something is wrong, or will be, and that the window for doing something about it is narrowing. Anxiety in the second half of life is a significant clinical and wellbeing concern that responds well to evidence-based treatment; and one that too many people carry alone, for too long, without support.
Who Am I Now? Identity Reconstruction in Midlife
Something shifts in midlife. Not a crisis, often just an unsettling sense that the person you've been no longer quite fits. This article explores what the research tells us about why identity changes in midlife, what makes it harder, and what helps you build a new sense of self.
Will AI Reshape Your Job, or Rewrite Your Story?
AI is changing who gets to work, and how. For midlife adults, job displacement isn't just a financial shock, it's an identity crisis. Here's what psychology offers for navigating this change.
Life Review: Why Looking Back Strengthens the Present and the Future
Looking back isn't the same as being stuck in the past. Life review is an individualised yet structured, evidence-based approach that explores how you make sense of your experiences, resolve what's unfinished, and move into the next chapter with greater clarity and purpose.
When Caring Becomes a Calling: Psychological Growth in Dementia Healthcare Professionals
For the nurses, doctors, chaplains, and allied health professionals who dedicate their careers to supporting people living with dementia, the rewards are genuine. So too are the challenges. This article explores psychological growth in senior health professionals working in dementia care — and what their experiences can tell us about meaning and purpose, adaptability, and what it means to truly give to another person.
When the World Stops Seeing You: Ageism, Depression, and the Hidden Toll of Being Overlooked in Midlife and Beyond
There is a particular kind of pain that comes not from being attacked, but from being overlooked. For many Australians over 50, the experience of being rendered invisible — in workplaces, healthcare settings, media, and everyday social life — is not an abstract concern. It is a daily reality.
Concerns About Dementia in Midlife: What’s Normal, What’s Not, and What You Can Do
You walk into a room and forget why you're there. A name won't come. And somewhere in the back of your mind: "is this how it starts?" Fear of dementia is one of the most common health concerns in midlife — and one of the least clearly addressed. This article explains what normal memory change actually looks like, when it's worth speaking to your GP, and what the research tells us you can do to protect your brain across the decades ahead.