Quarterlife Crisis
The so-called Quarter Life Crisis ( QLC ) is a term used in popular psychology, which refers to a state of uncertainty in the stage of life according to the " growing up ". It comprises approximately age 21 to 29, which is the final stage of the first living area, wherein one starts from a reach age 80 to 100 years. The term is now used by some therapists and psychologists has been formed in the U.S. in 1997 in analogy to the Midlife Crisis. Popularized the concept of the American authors Abby Wilner and Alexandra Robbins. Both were in the middle of her twenties in a life crisis. Then they wrote in their 2001 bestselling Quarter Life Crisis: The identity crisis of the mid-twenties.
Features of the crisis
Signs or characteristics of the crisis, inter alia, be:
- To feel " not good enough" if you can not find the corresponding own academic or intellectual abilities Job
- Frustration and conflict in relationships and in the world of work
- Crisis of identity and personality uncertainty
- Fear of the future, discomfort because of the near future
- Uncertainty about the quality of past achievements and success in life
- Revaluation of close friendships based on other criteria
- Dissatisfaction with the professional status
- Back nostalgia and wishes in the time as a student, pupil or apprentice
- Tendency to have well-established opinions about a topic
- Social interaction with other bored
- Financial stress
- Loneliness
- The unmet and emerging now desire to have children
- Feel that - somehow - all around you are better and more successful than you
These phenomena can occur at any age, however, an accumulation of these symptoms seem to arise when young - especially academically educated - people with the "real world " come into contact and have to prove themselves after their training period. There come new responsibilities and possibly as a new experience job insecurity, stagnation of the dreamed-of career etc. as tasks of the previous thereto. In the training period, there was a fixed hierarchy (eg, teacher-student, Instructor Training, Instructor - student) and a fixed daily routine, which greatly changed in this period of life. Often the learning path is not adequate prior to the reality in professional life. Moreover, the continuous assessment and grading that can give an assurance about the performance, an important factor for the self-confidence, but no longer occurs in this form in the working life.
After time as a teenager, which is characterized by many emotions, emotional ups and downs, there follows a period in which decrease the emotions, the " colorful life of feeling " partial " gray " and play the experience and responsibility play a greater role.
In addition, one must under certain circumstances in professional life to new rules of the game pecking orders, get used social rules and power games.
Supported doubt by low physical change, like the first hair loss, formation of a receding hairline, wrinkles and gray hair first, and weakening of the brain power and at a lower exercise general physical overall performance.
A large part of the stress of the Quarter Life Crisis can trigger in humans, is financial. Professions with long-term contracts are something of a rarity these days. People often change jobs and not stay for the rest of their lives in the same company or in the same field of activity. Moreover, competition among employees today is much greater than about 50 years ago. The job security is - in short - simply no longer guaranteed. Often also study loans or benefits under the federal financial aid must be repaid. All this can lead to feelings of not coping with life as a whole and the inability of one's own person.