Big life changes in your 20s induce stress but also bring personal growth and resilience.
Transitioning in your 20s can trigger an identity crisis and emotional discomfort, requiring reframing anxiety as excitement.
Deep dives
The Impact of Big Life Changes in Your 20s
Big life changes during your 20s, such as moving cities, changing jobs, forming new relationships, and losing old friends, are quintessential aspects of this period. These transitions involve finding our best-fit lifestyles and lead to significant events like union jobs, travel, and relationship shifts, often bringing about new friends and hobbies but also inducing stress.
Liminality and its Psychological Effects
Liminality, the state of being in transition between social roles and identities, can trigger an identity crisis, raising fundamental questions about who we are and who we want to become. This transitional phase is emotionally destabilizing, provoking stress and discomfort while prompting brain chaos and cognitive dissonance. Personality traits, openness to experience, upbringing, and adjustment disorders influence how individuals cope with change.
Embracing Change and Finding Meaning
Navigating big life changes like moving cities or experiencing career shifts stimulates uncertainty, activating negative biases in our brain. To manage this, reframing anxiety as excitement can help alleviate fears about the unknown future. Despite initial distress, transitions often yield positive outcomes, promoting personal growth, resilience, creativity, and enhanced relationships. Embracing change can lead to new priorities, values, and a sense of meaning in life, fostering long-term well-being and happiness.
The psychology of the big life changes that we all experience in our 20’s: moving cities, graduations and job changes, it’s that time of the year. But where does the anxiety of big life changes come from? How do we deal with the fear of loneliness and adjustment disorder? Listen to find out.