How HSPs Can Overcome a Quarter-Life Crisis: 5 Tips for Discovering a Life You Love
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I’m 26 and I’ve been working a real salaried job for a few years now.
I’m reading a book called The Cinderella Complex: Women’s Hidden Fear of Independence
I hate it because it’s calling me out on a fantasy I have. It goes like this: I get married so I don’t have to work an office job and can stay home and raise babies.
This would horrify my college gender studies professor.
The irony is that I don’t even know if I want to have babies.
Do I want to have babies because I think I’m supposed to? Or do I really want to have babies?
My escape fantasy means one thing. Adulting is hard.
For the first time, I’m living alone. My sister was my roommate until she abandoned me to get married.
I’m not even joking about feeling abandoned by her saying “I do”. I want to be happy for her, but her nuptials mean I’m more likely to be the last single woman standing. And I’ll soon be navigating the churning waters of dating life alone, with no wing woman.
Her marriage means she’s figured something out about life that I haven’t. Do I even want to get married, or do I just think I do because that’s what women are supposed to do?
I don’t know what I want for my life. And I am more and more aware that I’m completely on my own now.
Yes, it’s exhilarating to have the freedom to come home at 3 a.m. To change into my pajamas and cook bacon and cheesy eggs, leaving the kitchen a disaster before falling into bed.
But the responsibility and stress of work wears heavy. Why did I spend my life going to school to do this stressful job? Is this what fulfillment feels like? I don’t buy it.
I’m no longer exempt and protected from the emotional weight of real-life issues.
My newly retired dad is in the middle of a nameless life changing illness. One day he’s lifting weights and the next day he’s being lifted into a wheelchair. I’ve never seen him this way before. He’s been stripped of autonomy and needs help to go to the bathroom.
Meanwhile, I’ve stepped into a twilight zone of new adult responsibilities and I’m unprepared. I’m like a baby elephant alone on the Serengeti. I don’t know what I don’t know and I’ve got no idea what to do with my life.
One night in a bar, a guy asks me what I would do if I could do anything. He’d go to Costa Rica and start an ecotourism business renting surf boards.
I have no answer. I just got through grad school. That’s been my plan and I’ve never looked further than getting a proper job using my degree. Except, there is my fleeting fantasy about getting married to escape adulting but I have a feeling that won’t go over well as bar conversation.
I don’t know what I want for my life, let alone what I want to do on a Friday night.
I try to draft off my friends who are ahead of me in this race.
Melissa sings in her church choir so I go with her and give that a try. But that’s not me.
Another friend invited me to a Mary Kay party where we sample makeup. I come out looking nothing like myself.
I drink beer on weekends. Do I love it? I love feeling included and like I’m doing what’s “normal” for people my age. But I don’t love my time in bars.
Just like I don’t enjoy dating. But I do it because of my previously stated fear of being the last single woman standing. And it’s what’s “normal”.
Dating is the place where my undefined sense of self (I hate that term) is most painfully obvious. Can I date without disappearing into him and adopting all his likes and dislikes? How do I stay true to myself? Do I like him or do I like the idea of him?
Amid all my confusion, I talk to my mom. Her response is, “ultimately, the relationship you build with yourself is the most important.”
In other words, roll up your sleeves and get to work. It’s time to get to know who you are.
Making Sense of Quarter-Life
Leaving home and building your own life is a normal rite of passage.
But that doesn’t make it any less confusing.
To find happiness and fulfillment, you have to know your own mind, which for an highly sensitive person like me, was tricky. I was a jumble of unnamed feelings. And I avoided the emotions that made me cry. Anxiety, anger, shame and sadness. Crying got me labeled as too sensitive, and I wanted none of that.
How could I build a life I loved if I numbed my feelings with sugar and hid on the couch in a marathon of television?
How could I learn to be happy as an adult?
Here are 5 things that helped me get through my twenties and thirties to find the life I wanted.
Practice radical self-acceptance and embrace all your emotions. Including the ones that make you cry. Your sadness, anger and fears hold a clue about what’s not working. They show you an unmet need that needs addressing. I learned this the hard way. After my father’s death, I shut down my heart even more and at 34 ended up marrying the wrong person. I ignored my doubts. The emotions you block don’t go away. Repetitive thoughts and rumination is a sign you’re distancing from your feelings. Read my tips for soothing rumination here.
Make “go to the edge of the light that you see” your motto for exploring new interests. If you’re walking with a flashlight, you have to walk to the edge of the light beam for the next few steps to become illuminated. It’s by making the first move that you uncover what feels right for the next step. Follow your hunches and intuition and stay present to how you feel as you move forward. Go toward what feels right and back away from what doesn’t.
Learn to hear your internal guidance system. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up is onto something when Marie Kondo asks you to listen to how your possessions spark joy. It’s a good way to learn to hear your internal “yes” and “no” in a low-stakes situation. Your inner guidance system will become more finely tuned the more you embrace the full range of emotions. And later on, it will chime in if you’re about to accept a job you’ll hate or get engaged to the wrong person.
Use your voice. Let people in on how you feel, your likes and dislikes and your needs. HSPs learn to hold our opinions back if we feel judged or have heard we’re too sensitive. Start finding your voice in small situations like in the grocery store with the checkout guy. If your normal M.O. is to hold back, practice blurting out your opinions about minor things. If later on, you beat yourself up for what you said, see my tips on dealing with rumination.
Have a growth mindset. Remember, you’re new at this and that’s okay. Your goal is to take a messy first step. Everything that happens along the way is learning and all learning is good. Have faith that self-trust and owning your voice will come. You are exactly where you need to be.
A Turning Point
In my late twenties, I loved visiting our little spirituality book store to find books about the meaning of life. I started going deeper with exploring intuition, spirituality and meditation.
This opened me up to a moment of insight that would forever shape how I felt in my adult aloneness.
I was sitting in the waiting room of the surgical O.R. while my father had a brain biopsy. I heard a still quiet internal voice of intuition say to me, “no matter what happens, even if he dies, everything will always be okay”.
I felt an unexpected sense of peace. I knew then that I was never really alone. I would get through this.
That moment was a gift that shaped my life. It will forever serve as a reminder of my own emotional resilience and my connection to the compassionate universe.
And guess what, the same is true for you. No matter what happens, everything will always be okay.
Breathe in that message and work on owning it in your cells. You’ve got this.
Your Turn
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