Help, I’m going through my quarter-life crisis and I’m not coping

Where does everybody go in the coming-of-age movie when the cameras cut?

I dreaded turning 25. It was difficult to come to terms with because it didn’t make any sense to me – I’d just completed a Bachelor’s degree and become one of the first in my family to graduate from university. That had been a dream of mine since I was a little girl and yet, at 25, I realised I was no longer certain of the field I’d studied in.

Six years working (three of those I spent studying full-time as well as working full-time) meant shedding blood, sweat and tears. I completely lost myself in the process. By my graduation day, which coincided perfectly with the lead-up to my 25th birthday, I was burnt out. My health was in shambles, I didn’t have any hobbies, I felt dissatisfied with my career and was completely directionless.

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What was I supposed to be doing? I’d watched all the movies about graduating high school and going to university, I’d ticked off first kisses and first loves and first holidays overseas. I’d even tried skating (albeit failing miserably). But when the firsts became seconds I realised nobody had ever shown me what comes after the big graduation ceremony. Where does everybody go in the coming-of-age movie when the cameras cut?

I’d seen the quarter-life crisis TikToks trending on my For You Page and I found myself wondering if that was what I was going through. Therapist Satya Doyle Byock writes in her book Quarterlife: The Search for Self in Early Adulthood that “crippling anxiety, depression, anguish and disorientation are effectively the norm” in a quarter-life crisis.

With the challenges faced by young people today, such as food and housing affordability, Satya noticed her clients seemed to be lost in a state of extended adolescence. Angela Neal-Barnett, a psychology professor, noticed that often these anxieties descended around graduation time. She wrote, “We’ve been constrained by this myth that you graduate from college and you start your life.”

Feeling alone, I did what most of us do when in crisis: I reached out to someone to validate my feelings (after I cried to an existential crisis playlist I created on Spotify, of course). What I found helped me feel less alone was reaching out to my friends about their own experiences dealing with quarter-life crises.

25-year-old graphic designer Kane also found that after his 25th birthday, life wasn’t looking like it did in the movies. “[On screen] you see people… getting their big moment once they become adults. I hadn’t had my big moment like the movies told me I should have.”

26-year-old communications coordinator Cassie also found this to be a cause for anxiety in the lead-up to her 25th birthday. “I had anxiety about not having my career life sorted, especially when I realised I had to go back to uni to study something else,” she shares with me. “I actively tr[ied] to let go of that mindset.”

24-year-old model and process operator Alyssa shares her tips for facing societal pressures head-on in the lead-up to her 25th birthday. “I refuse to adopt that mentality [that it’s all downhill from here]. 40 is the new 30 and 30 is the new 20. Keep your mentality young and the rest will follow,” she says.

Kane adds, “I find that when I’ve got my head right, life seems a lot simpler.” It’s true that mindset is everything and by feeding into my fears of 25, I’d drowned out my own inner voice with my inner critic. In an attempt to combat the negative self-talk, I decided to go back to basics. As each day came around, my goals were simple: drink water, eat right and exercise when you can.

With this in mind, I took up Pilates and adopted the ‘hot girl walk’ TikTok trend. I would go walking with friends to flesh out the reasons behind why I was grappling with these existential thoughts. Surprisingly, just talking about these big feelings made them feel more manageable. As Kane says, “Talking to my girlfriend about our [feelings was] a great way to vent and get some clarity.”

In these moments of reflection, I realised I’d spent so much time comparing myself to others. I was constantly looking around to see where everybody else was on the journey. To my left I could see friends getting engaged and having children, to my right I could see friends taking off for round-the-world trips or spending their summers in Europe. Straight ahead of me, I could see so many people so much further along in the career journey than I was.

Comparing myself was overwhelming and confusing, so I decided to stop looking at everybody else. Instead, I closed my eyes, took a breath and stood still. I let myself feel the tears and the fear of not being good enough, I unravelled the layers of self-doubt and somewhere underneath all of that, I found myself again. I realised, in the midst of my quarter-life crisis, I’d never stopped to ask myself the question, what was it that I wanted?

What had I wanted before society told me what I needed? I didn’t have an answer to that question, so I decided to go back to my first loves. It seemed so simple, but as a child, I had been a lover of books. It wasn’t much, but it was somewhere to start. I reached out to my friends and together, we started a book club; reconnecting with my friends and childhood passions helped me to laugh it off.

By grounding myself in my passions and the people I loved, life stopped feeling so scary. Through reading, I was reunited with my childhood love of writing – one that was long forgotten. That newfound direction inspired me to take the leap and now, here I am writing for Fashion Journal, turning 26 years old – because life keeps going after a quarter-life crisis.

To find out more about the quarter-life crisis, head here.