Does:
getting dressed every morning in clothes that you buy for work, to drive through traffic in a car that you’re still paying off, in order to get to the job that you need so you can pay for the clothes/car, and the house you leave empty all day so you can afford to live in it … feel meaningless?
If so, you might be experiencing a Quarter Life Crisis.
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Don’t worry, you’re not alone. This is an increasingly common problem. And it’s due to a mixture of societal pressure, early-onset existential crisis, and the desire to live a truly meaningful life.
There’s nothing wrong with you if you’re experiencing this.
In fact, you are arguable saner than the rest of people.
I mean, what’s more insane than following the “norm” that millions of people conform to and wind up feeling empty and miserable due to at the end of the day?
Thankfully, there is a reason why you’re experiencing a quarter life crisis: it’s an invitation to learn how to find yourself and walk your true path.
Table of contents
What is a Quarter Life Crisis?
A quarter life crisis is a period of confusion, anxiety, demotivation, and depression experienced by people between the ages of 18-30 (and in some cases even younger). In this liminal stage of life, where one is neither fully unattached (as in adolescence) nor fully established (as in later adulthood), there can be tremendous psychological and emotional pressure. Questions such as “What do I want to do with my life?” “What’s the meaning of life?” and “Who am I?” often come to the surface.
What makes the 18-30 age period so stressful is that we are told that our opportunities are endless, that we need to study, to work, to earn the best possible money, to raise the best possible family, and make the right decisions that will affect the rest of our lives.
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For anyone, particularly highly sensitive people, this can be an intensely overwhelming period that can lead to feelings of isolation, shame and self-loathing, chronic anxiety, and low-level persistent depression.
Why Do We Experience the Quarter Life Crisis?
We buy things we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t like.
– Fight Club
My spirit animal was a cat running across 4 lanes of traffic. That’s how I once felt facing the world.
We’ve often heard of people suffering Midlife Crisis‘, but most of us have heard very little about the Quarter Life Crisis. And no wonder – it’s a fairly new affliction affecting our modern generations.
We are the generation of hyper-stimulated, eternally distracted technology addicts after all.
But it’s not only that.
Unlike previous generations, we have an unprecedented amount of choices flooding us left, right, and center. Certainly, this can be immensely valuable, but it’s also a great source of stress. There are so many decisions we have to make that will shape our entire future. We’ve gone from a care-free childhood full of comfort and stimulation to a critical point in our lives where everything is solely our responsibility and fate to decide.
It’s no wonder then that experts describe having a Quarter-Life Crisis as a sense of panic and impending doom that your life (career, relationships, etc.) isn’t where you’d like it to be. And it’s no wonder that this experience is often the precursor to experiences such as the spiritual awakening process where we start searching for something more fulfilling.
19 Quarter Life Crisis Signs
The moment you finish college your diploma feels a little like a trophy and a lot like a receipt. It’s pretty unsurprising, then, that the need to give up every dream to pay off the large sums of debt usually induces a crisis.
Occurring between the ages of 18 to the late 20’s, people experiencing quarter life crisis’ can also find themselves hitting a rut even before college, when they have to pick their future field of employment, amongst a million other weighty life choices.
Perhaps one of the most troubling things about facing a quarter life crisis is that important decisions must be made too quickly, and societal expectations must be met constantly.
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Your life feels like it’s going too fast and is filled with too much pressure. Suddenly you’re thrown out of school and into stress and problems without having received a chance to learn about yourself or discover what you really want from life. In essence, you’re stuck.
Experiencing a quarter life crisis can also make you feel immensely lonely among other people.
Summarized, here are some key signs you’re going through a quarter life crisis:
- You struggle with feeling empty
- The future feels overwhelming and bleak
- You start questioning what your life purpose is
- You struggle with loneliness and disconnection from others (i.e., social interactions usually bore or stress you out)
- You feel chronically bored and demotivated
- You can’t sleep properly (or alternatively over-sleep)
- You sometimes feel an inexplicable sense of impending doom
- When you look at other’s lives, you feel demoralized
- You’ve gone through a spiritual awakening that makes you feel totally lost
- Physical and mental fatigue constantly plagues you
- You’re terrified to make the wrong decisions
- Social media makes you feel anxious and depressed (aka. everyone seems to be doing better than you)
- Low self-worth and constant insecurity haunt you
- You struggle with addictive and escapist tendencies
- You’re worried that you might never have your sh*t together
- You hate your job, but need the money
- You have bouts of existential depression
- You feel trapped and like you struggle to move forward
- Often, you feel like crawling into a small, dark hole and hibernating
How many of the above quarter life crisis signs can you relate to? Don’t be shy to share your insights in the comments. You might help someone else in a similar place feel like they’re not alone!
Is There a Bright Side to the Quarter Life Crisis?
In short, YES. Let me explain.
The first symptoms of the quarter life crisis come in the form of insecurities about your life. You begin to wonder if you’ve done anything substantially important with your life so far and you tend to feel unworthy. While this might feel painful, it’s actually a powerful opportunity to figure out what is truly important to you.
Looking around, you might feel like everyone is moving forward and is making something important out of their lives except you. Suddenly your friends are getting married, finding good jobs, finishing degrees, or moving away. Change becomes your enemy as you try to cling to the past, but you eventually realize your attempts are futile. Life is leaving you behind.
Again, change is an opportunity for you to learn the power of letting go and stepping into your power.
Here are some other benefits of the quarter life crisis that I’ve personally experienced:
- you start to learn what is truly meaningful (and what isn’t worth the time/energy)
- you become a person of deeper substance (aka. you begin to grow and evolve, even if that’s at a painfully slow rate at first)
- you start asking the deep questions that lead to deep realizations (like “why was I born?” “what is my destiny?” “what do I want to contribute to this world?”)
- you embrace becoming a lone wolf and walking your own path (the other options are just too painful)
- your crisis can drive you to go soul searching and figuring out what is emotionally and spiritually important to you
- you realize that undergoing a quarter life crisis is a sign of sanity and intelligence (and you become more self-accepting)
- you start re-evaluating your desires and goals (aligning them with your needs), and therefore you become a more authentic person
So as you can see, it’s not all doom and gloom. Breakdown precedes breakthrough. Your crisis is actually an opportunity and doorway of immense self-discovery and self-growth. It’s a powerful vehicle of self-awareness.
Read: Self-Awareness: 11 Ways to Increase It in an Unconscious World »
3 Ways to Survive the Quarter Life Crisis
Here are some helpful tips:
1. Go soul searching
Begin exploring what brings you a sense of joy, excitement, and/or fulfillment. If you want to live a meaningful life and wake up each day with a sense of gratitude, you need to put in the work. One simple way to begin is with a daily practice of journaling about your thoughts, feelings, and discoveries. What insights have you had today? What feelings are bubbling up to the surface? What are your goals and dreams? Write ’em all down. Learn more about how to journal.
Read: Soul Searching: 7 Ways to Uncover Your True Path »
2. Take a break from social media
Let’s face it, 99% of the time for most of us, social media is a colossal waste of time and energy. It tends to reinforce patterns of low self-esteem, anxiety, and depression by promoting toxic comparison and a culture of fakeness. My advice? Take a break from it. Set a goal (there are many programs out there that can help) to be a technology minimalist for at least 30 days. You can start off small if that feels more comfortable, ditching social media for a couple of days and seeing what happens.
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Most importantly, notice how you feel. Notice the impulse to scroll mindlessly, and notice what happens when you don’t. After a period of time, you will likely feel refreshed, more optimistic, more motivated, and more self-accepting of where you are in life right now.
3. Explore who you are as a person
Self-knowledge is a powerful path that can liberate you from the clutches of the quarter life crisis. Once you know your strengths, weaknesses, desires, and what your personality is like, you’re equipped with insight that can drive you forward on the right path.
There are many ways of gaining more self-knowledge. Probably one of the most fun ways is via personality tests that open a doorway into your mind. We’ve created a bunch of free and illuminating quizzes which you can find on our free tests page.
Quarter Life Crisis Test
Need more help discovering whether you might be going through a quarter life crisis or not? I’ve created a free test you can take below:
What did you get? Feel free to share below in the comments!
Conclusion
Personally, I can tell you from experience that facing a Quarter Life Crisis doesn’t last forever.
With time, patience, and experience it slowly fades away, and depending on what you do with it, it can be a powerful doorway to deeper understanding and purpose. On the other hand, facing a quarter life crisis can also cripple your life if you end up following the crowd, comparing yourself to other people, and living up to your peer’s and parent’s expectations.
In short: be a free spirit. Dare to walk your own path. This is YOUR life after all.
I want to hear from you now. What has your experience been like with the quarter life crisis. What have you learned so far? Feel free to share below!
Finally, please share this article with someone if you think it might benefit them. You never know what kind of positive impact you might have with this simple gesture!
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Everybody’s got it easy compared to me. I can’t even speak to people. I’ve no stability in any aspect of my life, even where I’m going to live.
Easy is a matter of perspective in comparison to what you expect or what you’re accustomed too.
My advice Gemma is to take it one step at a time. Once our basic needs of food, shelter and health are taken care of; we can begin working on deeper aspects of soul fulfillment and finding your path in life.
Hence, the Chakras started to take shape! *Stereotypical Kid’s Movies Narrator
I read this article before I got a job, and I felt fine, I wasn’t going through the crisis. But now, I am reading this again after I’m (kind of) employed, this perfectly describes my situation. Sometimes I feel guilty for not living up to my family’s expectations, but I don’t want to compromise my values for money. Maybe I should find other ways to gain financial security
As long as you’re aware that the job isn’t fulfilling you completely, you’re okay. It’s those people who aren’t aware of this that struggling so much in their daily lives feeling miserable and not knowing what exactly to change.
Whatever decision you make will be right, so as long as you fully accept and are happy with what consequences it brings.
I’m 35 but this exactly describes me & this has been going on for a long time. I’m stuck in a life that doesn’t resonate with me, working in a job in administration, long commute, living at home. All my friends are married, in great jobs with houses & babies. I haven’t achieved anything. I feel like I’m struggling to accept this life. It’s not what my soul wants but I still want to have a house & partner even though I’m having to live inauthentically in order to get money to get a house. Even though I know I want a life that’s more simple & in the country & doing something I’m passionate about, I don’t know how to get there as I have no special skills or money so I beat myself up for not succeeding in a regular life. I think about my youth a lot. Surely I can’t be having a quarter life crisis at this age? Having said that, I’m still living as a younger person (living at home) so maybe I can.
Hola Natalie,
There’s no set ‘age range’ in which we can have one of these crisis, Quarter life only servers as a way to make people aware these ‘spiritual awakenings’ can happen even in your teens which can paralyze you and make you feel lonely.
I can only suggest you pursue to the end your soulful journey, continue down the path of Involution and you will find yourself transcending many of the problems you once thought existed.
Warmly,
Sol
Hi
Hello there. I am not sure I am going through a quarter-life crisis because I am 17. Once I graduated high-school, I became very fearful, depressed and scared of life, like life just became real. I have obsessive thinking which results into self-doubt, insecurity and fear. I am very scared, my thinking is tiring me out, thanks!
I also wanted to add when thinking about what I want in my life I get this weird chest feeling and stomach tied in knots, my body even shakes a little too. I also don’t have confidence. Also again, I have obsessive thinking and can’t get it out of my head and can’t enjoy the basic things anymore because my thinking is in the back of my mind.
This is me right now. In 2 weeks I’m going to be 25 and I am freaking out! I graduated from college 2 yeas ago with a degree in political science. Ever since I was little I thought I wanted to go to law school. Looking back on it, I think I chose this path for the wrong reasons. So while I was in college, my views changed and I realized that law school wasn’t for me. I continued my political science degree in hopes that I will become passionate about law school because that’s what my mom wanted.
So after years of stress and anxiety, I finished my degree with a less than stellar GPA. I then considered grad school but that fell through because of my GPA. So now I’m working on getting my teaching certification, but I’m less than enthused about this, but my mom thinks it’s a good idea and she wants me to get a job with health insurance.
What I really want to do is teach abroad, but I don’t think my mom will go for that. I’m an only child and have been living with my parents all my life so I understand her worry, but it’s like she won’t let me make my own decisions. I just have a lot of insecurity and I think I have an inferiority complex. I’m just so confused and I can’t find the answers.
It’s natural to feel confused in this stage of your life, it’s the moment society as deemed ‘pivotal’ in making decisions that will affect the rest of our life.
It’s unfortunate; we spend most of our childhood studying and are given little time to actually get to know ourselves, who we are, what we want, and yet it is during this period we are demanded to make a decision for the future. A decision based on what our parents want, what our church wants, what our society expects from us, what our friends are doing but nobody allows us to decide what we want to do.
Confusion can be paralyzing, it’s about making a firm decision no matter what the cost. Living ‘safely’ doing something we don’t really enjoy just to keep our parents and peers happy is not truly living, it is merely surviving our of fear of discomfort.
If you want to teach abroad, go ahead; be prepared others will disagree but also be aware that by doing so it will provide you the necessary space from other people to find yourself. It might not work out to be something you enjoy for the rest of your life, but during the process you’ll develop the confidence in yourself and space necessary to decide what truly fulfills you.
Hi Mateo
My boyfriend is experiencing some of these symptoms. He´s unsure of everything and we’ve already broken up twice. The main issue is that I’m always keeping tabs on him. He´s been like these for over two weeks.
And im worried about being too late to try to help with the crisis. Give him time and cut him some slack. Im very scared and i dont know how to help him.
Hola Insecure,
It’s wonderful that you’re so involved and concerned with your beloved, but often these crisis require time, space and plenty of it.
It depends on the level of crisis he is in, an identity crisis, an existential one or the beginning of a spiritual awakening all have different degree’s of intensity and different needs.
Sometimes on top of all that they are experiencing, being in a relationship can make it even more difficult as you feel ‘guilty’ that you can’t be fully there 100% for the other person yet at the same time not wanting to be completely alone and forgotten.
Lending a helping hand and a shoulder to rest on is all you can do without demanding or expecting much to happen till things take their natural coarse.
I meet myself several times in this text. I am 24 and never had a girlfriend. I still live in my room in my parents house. I always had the plan to expand the house with a second living area. And now as I want to start with this plan next year, I struggle. Hardcore. One of the biggest problems I have is, that I think that I will never ever get a girlfriend when I fulfil this plan. I always think, that no girl will ever take a guy who is “living with his parents” at this age. This wouldn’t be a problem. But I am very lonely and I long for a girlfriend quite a while. And so I really struggle with my life at the moment and I have very depressive feelings and thoughts. I really like the sentence
“On the other hand, facing a quarter life crisis can also cripple your life if you end up following the crowd, comparing yourself to other people”
But thats always easier said than done.
Hola Florian,
I can understand the frustration you must feel, I’ve met many people in the same situation.
My experience is that it is all matter of the attitude you have toward your circumstances; some people will feel miserable about it and others will look at it as a challenge to grow and improve.
I remember one of our students was in exactly the same situation, but when he realized that living with his parents not only saved him a lot of money to use to dress elegantly, afford a nice car and attend events like dancing classes, zumba, church private functions where he met his wife who actually admired and appreciated he was such a family oriented person so as to stay at home living with his parents till marriage (many Asian, Latin, Greek and Italian cultures value that a lot).
It’s all in the way we frame things in life. Stick in there and find a new way of perceiving your current situation and I guarantee it will make the world of difference. :)
Warmly,
Sol
Hello Mateo,
Thanks for your reply and the kind words.
Nontheless I am very frustated and even suffering depression because of that.
I sincerely hope to come out of this struggle. But at the moment it isn’t looking that good.
Flo
You will come out of that depression, every does eventually.
The interesting thing about many of these mental sufferings is that the more attention we give it, the more it perpetuates itself.
If you are worried about getting anxious in social setting, you develop social anxiety. You become afraid of being afraid, or become more depressed because you feel you’re depressed.
Reality is a play of attention, wherever you direct that attention will attract whatever has captured it.
Thank you Mateo for your kind and helpful words. I hope you are right.
Just 2 questions:
1.) How old was the student when he got married?
2.) Could Involution help me get better again? Become happy again?
The student that got married was 30 when I met him and he got married at 32.
The Buddhist have an interesting way of interpreting “happiness” and that is, a lack of suffering. They don’t believe we can become happy, we are all naturally happy. But they believe that we can get rid of what they call ‘dukkha’ or suffering.
Involution is a system of work we’ve developed to get rid of all these perceptions of life that make us suffer and allow you to be your authentic ‘happy’ self. Even happiness is something illusionary as it comes in contrast to moments of suffering. What we aim for with Involution is to go beyond happiness, to experience “joy” which is moments of inner peace that aren’t part of the happy/sad emotional roller coaster.
I’ve had such interest in Involution from our readers online that I’m considering implementing some of my real life Involution work into an online “Course” of sorts for our website in the near future :)
but yea great article though :)
I feel like i’m a complete useless, i am 24 and i’m still at Uni doing my Bachelor :(
Hola Doraemon,
If you finish your Bachelor and decide to change your path in life at least you’ll know that you tried this path of careers and studying and it didn’t fulfill you. It will save you the doubts that some people have of “what if’s” later in life.
There’s a different kind of value when a spiritual beggar chooses to live like a beggar or when a prince chooses to live like one. One doesn’t have any other option while the other has given up significantly in order to live that lifestyle.
Don’t give up hope, I finished my bachelors at 25 after transfers from 2 2 schools in two states( Ohio and NYS)