Even with a good career and all the “adult milestones” I don’t feel like an actual adult. I feel like I’m pretending to know what I’m doing. Anyone else experience this?
Even with a good career and all the “adult milestones” I don’t feel like an actual adult. I feel like I’m pretending to know what I’m doing. Anyone else experience this?
No one has any idea what they’re doing.
I’m 35. I’ve got two kids. I make it up as I go along. There’s no plan, no blueprint. There’s just the day to day crap that life has for us all. I wake up, I go to work and my only real aim is to get home to my kids and partner.
41 and a total of 5 children (some step) here. Still not sure what I want to be when I grow up.
Hey, I felt like this when I had a job that I hated. I was constantly trying to figure out what I was going to do next, as if I hadn’t actually started life yet.
I was 36 when I just up and quit my job and went to trade school.
Best thing I’ve ever done. In the last 5 years I met, and married my wife, bought a big new house with her, and have actually felt like the adult I am. None of that would have happened if I never took a plunge.
r u a plumber?
Agreed. I’m 40 and I’ve reached a point where I feel like an adult. The biggest piece of that is that I understand that we’re all just making it up and figuring things out.
Imposter syndrome is also an intrinsic part of feeling like you aren’t an adult. Most of us experience this frequently - we have that feeling that everyone knows more than us and it makes us feel like we are fakes. But in reality, we just know more about ourselves and the gaps in our knowledge. We assume that they they know more than they do because we aren’t in their head and they aren’t expressing all the uncertainty and doubt hiding in there.
I think there is a pretty big difference between hearing people like you and me say “everyone is just making it up” and really internalizing that. I think internalization comes with time - you can believe something conceptually but often need to see it in practice over and over to really believe it in your bones.
There are other factors, too, which come with age and experience. Adults on the younger side are constantly running into new adult things and not knowing how to do those things is going to created this self doubt. “If I were an adult, I’d know how to do an insurance claim” or whatever. With further age, you will learn these things and have fewer of these doubts.
Copium