A late bloomer

Erikson’s Life Stages and the Late Bloomer’s Path

Most of us grow up with an unspoken assumption: development is linear. Childhood is when trust and confidence are formed, adolescence is when identity takes shape, and adulthood is when careers, relationships, and contributions unfold.

But real life is rarely linear. Some of us enter university late, find careers in midlife, or discover our creative voice after 50. Psychology has a useful lens for understanding this: Erik Erikson’s psychosocial stages of development.

Erikson argued that life unfolds across eight stages, each defined by a central conflict. A positive resolution gives us a strength to carry forward; a negative outcome leaves a wound that lingers. Crucially, these stages are lifelong: if something isn’t resolved in childhood, it isn’t lost — it can be revisited, reworked, and healed later.

The Eight Stages at a Glance

1. Infancy (0–1) – Trust vs. Mistrust

2. Early Childhood (1–3) – Autonomy vs. Shame/Doubt

3. Preschool (3–6) – Initiative vs. Guilt

4. School Age (6–12) – Industry vs. Inferiority

5. Adolescence (12–20) – Identity vs. Role Confusion

6. Young Adulthood (20–40) – Intimacy vs. Isolation

7. Middle Adulthood (40–65) – Generativity vs. Stagnation

8. Late Adulthood (65+) – Integrity vs. Despair

Each stage asks a fundamental question: Can I trust? Can I act? Can I belong? Can I love? Can I contribute? Can I make peace?

A Late Bloomer’s Story Through Erikson’s Lens

I didn’t enter university until 26. By then, I had already lived through childhood with a family that didn´t provide the necessary scaffolding to enter each stage with the framework that enables one to enter the next stage with adequate development. Summers away from home, and teenage years that left me feeling invisible. In Eriksonian terms, my early stages tilted toward mistrust, shame, and inferiority.

And yet, the story didn’t end there.

• School Age & Adolescence (Industry, Identity): I wasn’t celebrated in my family, but in my teens I was invited to perform — on school stages, even on TV. I couldn’t quite internalise it, but seeds of industry and identity were there.

• Young Adulthood (Intimacy): I left home, built relationships, started a family. But intimacy was always colored by the early belief that I was “not enough.”

• Middle Adulthood (Generativity): Here is where the arc shifted. I built a career as a lecturer in economics, bought and sold a home, moved across countries, and — unexpectedly — found myself playing guitar in a jazz swing band in Denmark. At 48, I learned standards and solos. At 58, I moved to Stockholm and now play alongside seasoned musicians. Generativity is alive and well.

• Late Adulthood (Integrity): I’m not there yet, but I feel the stage opening. Integrity isn’t about having had a flawless path — it’s about weaving together the fragments, even the late starts, into a coherent story.

For late bloomers, Erikson’s model is liberating. It tells us:

• Development is not a race.

• Wounds from early stages don’t vanish, but they can be revisited with new strength.

• Growth doesn’t stop at 20 or 30. In fact, the 40s, 50s, and beyond may be when the most authentic integration happens.

My own journey — from an invisible child to an economist and musician — is proof of this. I didn’t follow a straight line, but I kept building scaffolding where it was missing.

When I analyze economies, I look for bottlenecks and bridges. The same applies to personal life. Bottlenecks in childhood — mistrust, shame, invisibility — slow development. But bridges can be built later: education, creativity, love, generativity.

Erikson’s model reminds us that even if the early scaffolding wasn’t there, it’s never too late to build. The late bloomer’s path isn’t lesser. It’s simply another rhythm — slower in places, deeper in others, but no less valid.

The scaffolding

What “Scaffolding” Means Here

In childhood, scaffolding is what parents, teachers, and communities provide so the child can resolve each Eriksonian stage in the positive direction.

It’s not luxury — it’s the supportive structure that helps a child practice trust, autonomy, initiative, competence, and identity before they can hold it on their own.

Without scaffolding, the child has to improvise survival strategies. Those strategies keep them alive, but they don’t resolve the stage.

Stage by Stage Scaffolding

1. Infancy – Trust vs. Mistrust

• Scaffolding: consistent care, soothing when distressed.

• Without it: mistrust → later difficulty believing compliments or safe connection.

2. Early Childhood – Autonomy vs. Shame/Doubt

• Scaffolding: encouragement when trying to do things alone.

• Without it: shame, over-self-reliance, fear of needing.

3. Preschool – Initiative vs. Guilt

• Scaffolding: freedom to explore, gentle correction, celebration of initiative.

• Without it: guilt, inhibition, trouble starting projects.

4. School Age – Industry vs. Inferiority

• Scaffolding: recognition of effort, affirmation of competence.

• Without it: sense of inferiority, feeling “never good enough.”

5. Adolescence – Identity vs. Role Confusion

• Scaffolding: space to experiment with roles, mirrors that say “you matter.”

• Without it: confusion, fragility in self-definition.

6. Young Adulthood – Intimacy vs. Isolation

• Scaffolding: models of healthy vulnerability and closeness.

• Without it: guardedness, difficulty trusting intimacy.

7. Middle Adulthood – Generativity vs. Stagnation

• Scaffolding: encouragement to contribute, mentor others, create.

• Without it: stagnation, sense of futility.

8. Late Adulthood – Integrity vs. Despair

• Scaffolding: social recognition, stories that honor one’s life arc.

• Without it: despair, regret, bitterness.

Scaffolding as a Late Bloomer

In Eriksonian terms, when scaffolding was missing early, I built it later myself:

• University at 26 - scaffolding for industry and identity.

• MPhil scholarship, law degree while working - scaffolding for competence and will.

• Jazz band in my late 40s - scaffolding for initiative and generativity.

• Building a website merging economist and musician - scaffolding for identity integration.

I became my own builder — not because I was flawed, but because the early scaffolding wasn’t provided.

The Big Picture

In Erikson’s model, unresolved stages don’t vanish — they wait. And scaffolding can be provided later: by mentors, partners, communities, or myself.

So when we talk about “late blooming,” in Eriksonian terms it means: the flower was always there; the scaffolding just had to be rebuilt later so it could grow.

How I found and built my own scaffolding

How I Found My Own Treatment at a Children’s Psychiatric Ward

When people ask me how I managed to turn my life around in my late twenties, I often surprise them with my answer: I found my own treatment at a children’s psychiatric ward.

Not as a patient, but as an orderly.

Before the Ward: Chaos and False Starts

By the time I was 26, my life was a mess. I had dropped out of gymnasium at 18, re-entered a year later but with very sporadic results, I was in and out for the next 3 years, and at 20 became a father before finishing (teenagers enter gymnasium at 16 and finished at 20 in those days). To earn a living I went to sea, working as a fisherman on Icelandic boats and in between took any job I could, typically for short periods at a time. Couldn´t show up on time, did poor work, chaotic and impulsive. At 22, I managed to finish gymnasium almost by accident — coming into port, leaping ashore, and sitting my last exams while still smelling of fish and salt.

The following years were a flurry of failures. I tried university but gave up. I separated from my child’s mother, drifted in unemployment, and struggled to finish anything I started. My sense of self was scattered, untethered, I was a failure to myself and family. My self esteem was at rock bottom. Nothing worked and I was about to give up all hope for myself. I was not using drugs or alcohol, I had a girlfriend that I couldn´t really connect with and kept at an distance. If I could describe my inner self it would be shame with a wall around it, to protect myself. It was an adaptation to an inner chaotic world.

At 24, I took a job as an orderly at a children’s psychiatric ward. The unit was small — eight boys from the ages of 6-12, each carrying severe mental illness and trauma from deeply dysfunctional families. They had been rejected from everything in their lives. My job was to keep their lives on track. What I didn’t realise then was that in caring for them, I would also begin to care for myself.

The Epiphany: Structure as Medicine

When the boys first arrived at the ward, their lives were chaos: unruly, erratic, untethered. But the ward gave them something they had never known: structure.

Breakfast was always 07:30 — not 07:26 or 07:34, but exactly 07:30.

Lunch was always 12:00 sharp.

Bedtime was always 20:15 — not 20:00, not 20:30.

School, leisure, homework — every activity was timed, supported, predictable.

And slowly, almost miraculously, the boys began to settle. With structure, they could think. With predictability, they could learn. Their illnesses were not “cured,” but their potential unfolded in ways no one had expected.

Watching this transformation was my epiphany: stability heals.

And then came the second realisation: I, too, was being healed.

My Own Treatment

As staff, we lived by the same clock. I showed up for shifts at 08:00 or 16:00 sharp. It was the first time in my life that I managed to show up every day for work at the right time, never late (once or twice maybe during the two years). I ate meals at the same times as the boys. I went through the same rhythms of work, rest, and responsibility. Without noticing it, I began to internalise the very scaffolding we offered them.

For two years, I lived in step with their treatment — and it became my treatment too. My life, once chaotic and fragmented, began to align. I had proof in front of me every day: order creates room for growth.

By the time I was 26, I had the confidence to try university again. This time I did not drift. I copied the structure of the ward into my own student life — set hours, regular meals, strict rhythms. What worked for them worked for me.

The Result: A Late Bloomer’s Launch

At 29, I finished my B.Sc. with first-class honours. By then I had also worked part-time at a gym, building discipline into my daily routine. Within days of receiving my diploma, I was on a plane to Glasgow, having been awarded a scholarship for an MPhil degree.

What had once seemed impossible — finishing anything — became my reality. And it started at that ward.

Erikson’s Lens: Scaffolding and the Stages of Life

Psychologist Erik Erikson wrote about eight stages of human development, each defined by a central conflict: trust vs. mistrust, autonomy vs. shame, industry vs. inferiority, and so on. Ideally, parents and communities provide scaffolding to help a child resolve these conflicts positively.

But what happens when scaffolding is missing?

Children, like the boys at the ward, can fall into chaos. Adults, like me at 22, can drift through mistrust, shame, and inferiority. The lesson of Erikson’s model — and my life — is that scaffolding can be built later. Growth is lifelong.

Those two years at the psychiatric ward were my delayed scaffolding. What those boys needed at eight years old, I needed at 24. By giving it to them, I gave it to myself.

The Late Bloomer’s Gift

People often think of late bloomers as “delayed” or “behind.” I don’t see it that way anymore. I see it as rebuilding what was missing, even if decades late.

The children at the ward taught me that structure, care, and predictability can heal. They showed me that even lives marked by chaos can settle into rhythm. And they reminded me — by their small miracles — that it’s never too late to begin again.

My university degree, my later career as a lecturer, my music, even the life I’m building now at 58 — all of it traces back to that first scaffolding. To the boys who, unknowingly, gave me my own treatment.

Connections and isolation

Learning Connection After Isolation

From as early as I can remember, I have carried a quiet sense of being apart. At six, I was moved a year ahead in school, into a class of older children. I was smaller than my peers, less developed, and quickly marked out as “different.” My intelligence set me apart further — I could read well, learn quickly, often better than classmates who were taller, louder, and more socially integrated. What I did not have was scaffolding for daily life: no one checked if I did my homework, and so I often didn’t. At home, the assumption was simple:

You are smart, you will manage. You are low maintenance.

The truth was, I didn’t manage. I drifted, often lonely, sometimes miserable. I escaped into a fantasy world because I could not find anchoring in the real one.

Summers deepened the isolation. From the age of six, I was sent away — sometimes to camps where I knew no one, often to my uncle’s farm. Other children missed their parents, but I did not feel homesick. There was nothing to miss. I simply managed, again, by myself.

Birthdays, too, went unmarked. Mine falls in July, when I was always away. At best, I might receive a phone call, perhaps a day late. There were no candles, no rituals of celebration. By eleven, I tried to stage my own parties in September, inviting classmates in an effort to claim recognition. I only managed this twice. Looking back, it was a child’s attempt to build scaffolding for belonging that should have been offered freely.

The Echo in Adulthood

It is not difficult to see how these early experiences shaped my adult life.

• Connection as a skill never modeled: I learned to manage alone, but not to receive or initiate closeness easily. Friendships were often shallow. Intimacy carried a current of self-doubt.

• Compliments and recognition sliding off: Having grown up invisible, affirmation felt alien. If someone praised my music or my voice, the reflex was to dismiss it as invalid.

• Self-sufficiency over connection: My resilience became my identity. I could move countries, build careers, and reinvent myself. But underneath, the question lingered: can I truly connect? Can I be seen without condition?

These echoes have been both obstacle and fuel. Obstacle, because they have limited how deeply I could trust connection. Fuel, because they have driven me to seek visibility through achievement, teaching, and music.

Rewriting the Pattern

And yet, the story is not static. Just as I once learned discipline and structure at a children’s psychiatric ward — adopting the very routines we offered the boys there as my own scaffolding — I have been learning connection in later life.

• Relationships: In my late forties and fifties, I entered partnerships not defined by proving worth, but by equality and mutual respect. A woman I love praised my music, and though I half-dismissed it, part of me let it in. That is progress.

• Music-making: Playing in jazz bands has taught me that connection is not abstract. It is literal — listening, responding, being part of a whole. The act of improvising with others is practice in trust.

• Visibility: Releasing songs on Spotify, even with ambivalence, is another form of rewriting. Each release is a quiet act of saying: I am here. I can be seen.

The late bloomer’s task is often to build, in adulthood, what should have been given in childhood. Structure was my first reconstruction. Connection is the one I am still building.

Systems and Soul

Erik Erikson’s theory of development describes each life stage as a conflict: trust vs. mistrust, industry vs. inferiority, intimacy vs. isolation. In my early years, scaffolding was absent, and the balance tipped toward mistrust, inferiority, isolation.

But Erikson also insisted: development is lifelong. The stages are not fixed. What is unresolved waits to be revisited. And that is what I find myself doing now: laying scaffolding for connection.

Music helps. Relationships help. Reflection helps. Each is a way of saying to the boy who once stood small and apart in a class of older children: you do not have to manage entirely alone anymore.

The toughest lessons

or

the hardest class I ever taught.

When I first moved to Denmark and began teaching at a small academy in Jutland, one of my earliest assignments nearly broke me.

It was a class of eleven women, aged 25 to 40. All had been “sent” to the academy because they had outrun their welfare benefits. Showing up was not a choice; it was an ultimatum. If they didn’t, their checks would be cut.

They carried their stories on their skin — tattoos across arms and necks, hard eyes, slouched bodies, foul language, and an attitude that filled the room before I even said a word. Most had lived through abuse, drugs, violent relationships. Many had children by different fathers. All had a history of failure.

And I had been appointed course coordinator, not because I was ready, but because my two colleagues were on sick leave. For three months, five days a week, from 8:15 to 14:00, I had to teach every subject alone. Afterwards, when my colleagues returned, I still taught them weekly until they graduated.

I had to find a way to reach them. I will admit that part of my reasons were that as a class coordinator I was measured among other things on the dropout rate. There was a set goal to less than 20% dropout rate. And wanting to prove my worth, I was determined to deliver a 0% dropout in the first class I was trusted with as a coordinator. I had the best boss ever, a supporting person that I created a great rapport with. She was blunt, upfront, humorous and honest. We got along perfectly. She understood exactly what I was doing and I explained that to her.

Finding a Way In

Oddly, it wasn’t difficult for me to empathise with them. Their scars, though different in form, were recognisable to me. I knew something of being written off, of being invisible, of stumbling through life without scaffolding.

So I made a decision.

• I would not answer back when they swore at me.

• I would begin each class with a positive attitude, and I would hold it until the end.

• I would show them trust, even when trust was risky.

• When they came late, I would welcome them with a smile, not a scolding.

• When they turned in assignments late, I gave them a chance — but also a reminder that next time it might be out of my hands.

My goal was simple: to create in them the experience of finishing something they started. To replace mistrust with trust, failure with completion.

The Hardest Class

It was, without exaggeration, the toughest teaching experience of my career. My colleagues sometimes left their sessions tearing their hair out. I, too, needed their empathy at times, and they gave it. What emerged was the best professional team I have ever been part of. To put things in perspective, the trauma these women carried into the classroom was immense. During those two years, one lost a family member to suicide. Another ran out of food for her children in the middle of winter, and her classmates emptied their own freezers to keep her family fed. One student had lived through abuse. There were regular tears, both in and outside class. At times, some used flirtation to try to win concessions from the system — a survival strategy they had learned elsewhere. I never once met with them one-on-one without the classroom door open. And there are other stories I cannot share.

The hill they had to climb was the steepest.

And slowly, the class shifted. There was still swearing, still lateness, still resistance. But beneath it grew an atmosphere of trust. They began to show up. They began to hand things in. And in the end, they all graduated. Some of the final assignments were remarkable. In Denmark, exams are overseen by external censors — national examiners who ensure fairness and consistency across programs. That meant the grading was out of my hands. And yet, to my pride and joy, several of these women — who had arrived carrying failure and mistrust on their shoulders — delivered final theses that received the highest possible marks. To witness them claim that achievement, knowing the distance they had travelled, remains the greatest reward of my professional life.

Watching those women complete their studies — some of them for the first time completing anything — remains the most powerful professional experience of my life. Nothing else compares.

It mattered because it was more than academics. It was about scaffolding. About showing them that consistency, patience, and belief could turn chaos into completion. It was about giving them what I had once had to build for myself. My motivation was personal, I needed this to succeed. I needed this class to finish without a single dropout. I needed to prove my worth and I put every ounce of effort I had into this class.

And it mattered because of the timing. While my professional life was engaged in this demanding, life-giving work, my personal life was unravelling in painful ways. But that’s another story.

The Bridge: Systems and Soul

What that class taught me is that connection is not built through authority, fear, or cleverness. It is built through presence, trust, and the refusal to withdraw even when met with hostility.

As an economist, I study systems — rules, incentives, bottlenecks, and outcomes. As a musician, I pursue soul — atmosphere, expression, resonance. That class required both: the system of structure, fairness, and discipline, and the soul of empathy, patience, and genuine belief in human potential.

In Erikson’s terms, I was scaffolding industry versus inferiority, trust versus mistrust, and even identity versus role confusion. And perhaps, in doing so for them, I was still doing it for myself.

The hardest class I ever taught reminded me of the very thing I now try to embody: the bridge between systems and soul.

Claiming My Own Reflection

When I look back on my life, four stories stand out like signposts: a horse named Pinto, five years in an Icelandic bank, my older brother, and a single sentence from my mother. They seem scattered — a childhood memory, a career chapter, a family bond gone toxic, a passing remark. But together, they form a single thread: my lifelong struggle to claim my own reflection, to say with confidence this is who I am without waiting for someone to correct me.

Pinto: The Horse Who Waited

At ten years old, spending summers at my uncle’s farm, I rode a horse named Pinto every day (I call him Pinto here because his color pattern was what is called in English "Pinto", he was just named after his colour, black and white pinto). He wasn’t elegant or easy to ride, but he was strong, fast, and reliable. If I fell off, he stopped and waited until I climbed back on. In the evenings, I’d walk to the pasture and stroke his head, talking to him as he stood quietly, listening in his stillness.

With Pinto, I felt something I rarely felt with people: safety. Reliability. Acceptance without conditions. He was my first true friend. To this day, I miss him.

Looking back through Gabor Maté’s lens, Pinto was my relational refuge. In a world of volatility, he gave me the felt sense that connection could be steady. Tim Fletcher would say he met a need no one else met: unconditional presence. Erikson would frame it as scaffolding for trust vs. mistrust — trust carried not in a parent, but in a horse.

The lesson of Pinto was this: I could connect deeply. The problem was not me. The problem was the human environment around me.

The Bank That Owned Me

Years later, after completing my MPhil in Glasgow, I returned to Iceland and was offered two positions: a tenured post at the University of Iceland, or a management role at a bank. I chose the bank.

For five years, I was rewarded as I had never been before. Pay raises, stock options, free tickets, promotions. For someone whose childhood birthdays had gone uncelebrated, whose achievements had been sneered at, this recognition was intoxicating. I was finally seen.

But there was a price. At the bank, everything had to align with company culture. Authenticity was stifled. The money was good, the praise steady, but I felt suffocated. The more they rewarded me, the more they owned me.

After five years, I resigned.

Erikson might say the conflict here was identity vs. role confusion. The bank gave me a role identity — a banker — but it wasn’t mine. Maté would call it chasing secondary hunger: external validation to fill an internal void. Fletcher would name it compensation: success as a substitute for the birthday that never came.

The lesson of the bank was this: external praise cannot replace inner freedom. Recognition without authenticity is another form of suffocation.

“You Are Not a Banker”

One evening, during those years at the bank, I visited my parents. A guest asked me what I did for a living. I answered simply: “I’m a banker.”

My mother cut in immediately: “You are not a banker.”

It was a small sentence, but it landed hard. I tried to explain — that I worked in management at a bank, that by any ordinary definition, I was indeed a banker. But the moment had already shifted.

It wasn’t about semantics. It was about identity. Just as I named myself, she denied it. It was the old family script replayed: you don’t get to define yourself; we’ll decide who you are.

That memory still lingers because it confirms the pattern I have wrestled with all my life: the sense that self-definition is always provisional, always subject to someone else’s correction. I have many more such memories of her cutting me off with sneers, and giving me her own version of who I am, and even more memories of her, when she sighed, all the things I could have become and how I had wasted my talent and gifts. Cognitively it is something I brush off. But how this hurt. How this fucking hurt everytime.

The Brother Who Owned My Mirror

But the deepest imprint came from my older brother. Ten years my senior, he began drinking at sixteen. I was six. His binges transformed him — raging, cruel, unpredictable. I admired him, feared him, and tried constantly to please him.

One memory still shakes me: my father trying to stop him from going out drunk, and my brother beating him down. I was six or seven, watching the hierarchy collapse. My protector on the floor, my role model raging. I was so incredibly frightened, it just sits there lodged in my system. In that moment, my nervous system learned: no one is in charge, you are on your own. But I didn´t know that at the time that, that was what happened.

I emulated him anyway — his bravado, his sharp tongue, his disdain for others. It looked like strength. But it was corrosive. Later in life, breaking off all contact with him was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Not because he was safe, but because he had owned my mirror. To separate from him was to separate from a part of my identity.

Maté would say my appeasement wasn’t weakness; it was survival. Fletcher would say my self-blame wasn’t truth; it was the only story available in a house where needs weren’t met. Erikson would say my adolescence had been defined by role confusion — strength equated with aggression, manhood with cruelty.

The lesson of my brother was this: the mirror is mine. I cannot keep living in the reflection of his rage.

Claiming My Reflection

A horse who waited. A bank that owned me. A mother who corrected me. A brother who overshadowed me. These stories converge on the same question: who gets to define me?

For much of my life, the answer was: others. My brother’s scorn. My mother’s corrections. My family’s dismissals. My employer’s rewards. Even when I succeeded, the old echo remained: you are not enough, you are a fraud, you are a loser. Compliments bounced off, because I was waiting for the correction that always seemed to follow: “No, you are not.”

But Pinto reminds me: I can connect. The bank taught me: external praise is no substitute for authenticity. My mother’s quip revealed the script: they want to decide for me. Cutting off my brother taught me: the mirror belongs to me.

To say, without apology: This is who I am.

A Gift, Not a Plea

When I sit with a song — a lyric, a melody, a passage of music — I am not alone. Inside me are the voices of my family, old and insistent, whispering: “This isn’t art. Who do you think you are?” They rise like Medusa’s heads, hissing from every side.

For years I believed them. I thought if I dismissed myself first, it would hurt less when others did it. The habit stayed. Even now, when I write, the voices come back.

But music has taught me something they never could: creation is not a negotiation. It is a gift.

When I release a song, it is not a plea for validation. I am not asking anyone to decide if I am worthy, or if my work counts as art. I am offering something that comes through me, and I give it away freely. A listener may accept the gift or set it aside. They may like it or not. That is beyond my control.

What matters is that I gave it.

Every song is a trace of my life — fragments of joy, sorrow, longing, hope. Some came from wounds, some from dreams, some from places I only understood years later. But all of them are mine. And because they are mine, they carry weight.

Yes, the old voices still try to tell me otherwise. But I am learning to hear another voice, quieter and steadier: “This is my music. It matters because it is mine. And it is enough.”

So if you listen, know this: my music is not a question. It is a gift. If it meets you where you are, take it with you. If not, let it pass. Either way, the gift remains real.