Rappler’s Life and Style section runs an advice column by couple Jeremy Baer and clinical psychologist Dr. Margarita Holmes.

Jeremy has a master’s degree in law from Oxford University. A banker of 37 years who worked in three continents, he has been training with Dr. Holmes for the last 10 years as co-lecturer and, occasionally, as co-therapist, especially with clients whose financial concerns intrude into their daily lives.

Together, they have written two books: Love Triangles: Understanding the Macho-Mistress Mentality and Imported Love: Filipino-Foreign Liaisons.

Dear Dr. Holmes and Mr. Baer:

This is regarding a problem I have at my age. This actually started when I was 24 years old (I’m 27 years old at the moment), when I felt that I was going nowhere. I was so full of passion when I was in college until reality hit me when I graduated college.

It was really different after graduating college. At 24, I started getting worried as I felt like my reality was so far from the life I imagined when I was still studying. I felt like I was having an existential crisis. I also noticed that this is not an isolated concern for me, since even my friends, who are in the same age range, are going through the same crisis. While I usually hear older people saying that we are too young to experience this kind of crisis, it is, of course, a different perspective at our age.  

This hit even harder when the pandemic began. It was a different kind of feeling, since we were trying to build ourselves, and then suddenly the world froze. On top of that, my father, who was the very reason why I was striving to do well in life, was called Home.

I realized, even up until now, that the age range of 20 to 30 years old really hits differently. It is a time filled with confusion, curiosity, loneliness, the feeling of being alone and left out, anxiety about the future, and pressure.

– Dani

Dear Dani,

As generation succeeds generation, the pace of life changes. Some things speed up — children tend to mature faster, encouraged inter alia by modern communications — while other things slow down such as people delaying having children till later, and living longer.

There is no appropriate time to have existential angst, dependent as it is on individual circumstances, and no one anyway can delay such angst just because they haven’t reached such putative “correct” age.

As for the reasons people suffer from angst, you seem to have a good grasp of some of the problems which confront today’s young adults. These include:

Economic uncertainty: student debt burdens, housing affordability crisis, job market instability and automation/AI concerns

Social media impact: constant comparison to curated lives, information overload, FOMO (fear of missing out), reduced genuine connections despite increased connectivity

Changing life milestones: traditional markers of adulthood (marriage, homeownership, stable career) becoming harder to achieve, questioning whether these traditional goals are even desirable

Identity and purpose: more choice but also more pressure to “find yourself,” less rigid social structures providing meaning, questioning traditional value systems, difficulty finding meaningful work in an often unfulfilling job market.

One way to face these challenges is to analyze the extent to which these problems actually impinge on your life and to concentrate simply on what you yourself can do in that respect. For example, a cause of angst might be the increasing prevalence of mental illnesses in the young due to the pressures of social media etc.

A possible affirming response might be to support mental health services, either as a career or by devoting some of your spare time or even financially. Dr Holmes will address this further.

Best of luck,

-JAFBaer

Expert Speaks

[Two-Pronged] Is teaching for me?

Dear Dani:

Thank you very much for your letter.  I feel there are three concerns that are affecting you at the moment.

1. What is the world coming to? While some feel a “quarter-life crisis” is too young for you to experience, what do they know?  How the world was when your parents and even your older siblings were in their mid-twenties is so different from how the world is now.  As you yourself expressed so succinctly: “It’s a different perspective at our age; …it really hits differently.”

And you are absolutely right about this, Dani.  Alvin Toffler’s 1980 book, The Third Wave, explains the ways emerging technologies will change all our relationships.  The futurist Toffler went so far as to say that those who survive are not the brightest or the richest but those who can adapt.  And those who can adapt are usually the ones with the most knowledge since this — not money, not connections — is what matters most to succeed.

The public intellectual Yuval Noah Harrari upped the ante when he said “The only thing we know about the future is that it will be very different from the present and it will change at a very rapid pace. So people will need very strong psychological resilience to keep changing and keep learning throughout their lives.”

This is not what our parents had to do: True, they may have learned throughout their lives, but it was not a necessity the way it is now.

No wonder being in one’s 20s can be frightening, you have no models to learn from!
 

2. Why do most adolescents like me have such a tough time? The United Nations (UN) defines “youth” as people between the ages of 15 and 24, because it is only by 24/25 that the brain finishes developing and maturing. The difference, however, between our parents and us is that when they reached 25, the economy was a lot better than it is now.

It was much easier to get a job, much easier to reach the then-accepted biomarkers of adulthood: finding gainful employment, leaving home, even getting married and having babies! With the economy the way it is now, exacerbated by politicians who steal with impunity, the chance for people your age to reach financial stability is getting less and less, which brings on more fear, anxiety and insecurity, also exacerbated by parents, etc who do not understand that it is not because the young are lazy that they haven’t achieved what their parents have, it is because the economy won’t let them.

Alas, even if you now know one of the reasons for your existential crisis, that is not enough to make it go away.  ☹ 
  
3. Finally, there are the specific circumstances in your own life, dearest Dani.  As if the pandemic were not enough to frighten us with the threat of one’s own or a loved one’s death, the death of the world as we knew it, and not knowing when all this would all end, you had to deal with a death of your own: that of your beloved father’s.

Oh, Dani, I am so sorry about this.  Not only did you love him so much, but it seems like he was your greatest support, perhaps even the source of your greatest joy.  You have not had the time and energy to grieve him properly — some say the grief never ends — and right here and right now, I imagine that this, too, is adding to your loneliness and angst.

In case you need more perspective and/or a helping hand regarding how to deal with this, please please write us again.

My very best wishes,

MG Holmes

– Rappler.com