Somewhere in the late twenties, a certain kind of dread sets in. No one is leaving their jobs to relocate to Tuscany, so it’s not the dramatic crisis of romantic comedies. It is more reticent than that. It’s the sensation of lying awake on a Tuesday night, practicing the same anxiety about the same unresolved relationship dynamic, or sitting in a therapist’s waiting room at twenty-seven and thinking, “I should be past this by now.” There’s a problem with me. I ought to be taken care of. One of the most distinctive psychological experiences of young adulthood in the 2020s…
Author: Jack Ward
On a Tuesday afternoon, you can find peer support groups meeting in classroom buildings, therapy appointment reminders on student mental health apps, and friends discussing their therapists over lunch with the same ease that people used to discuss weekend plans on any urban university campus in the United States or the United Kingdom. Something has changed. Not slowly, but swiftly and in a way that fifteen years ago would have seemed nearly unthinkable to the same demographic. It’s difficult to dispute the numbers. In 2021, nearly 42 percent of high school students reported feeling depressed or hopeless, a significant increase…
The Royal College of Psychiatrists polled over 1,300 mental health professionals nationwide in May 2020, just weeks into the nation’s first lockdown. The results were striking. The number of urgent and emergency cases had increased by almost half. Routine appointments had drastically decreased, according to nearly as many. The concern expressed candidly in that survey was that the pandemic was causing a delayed wave of mental illness that would eventually overwhelm already overburdened services, and that the NHS was storing up a problem it wasn’t prepared to handle. After five years, that wave showed up. And a large portion of…
Many adults experience a particular kind of ache that goes unnamed: a low-grade fatigue unrelated to the workday, a slight unease with relaxation, and an odd sense of guilt that arises whenever things get too easy. For many people, the source of that ache is obvious. It originates in childhood. Not necessarily from a single dramatic incident, but rather from years of being expected to perform as an adult—something they were never meant to be. It’s common to frame growing up too early as a compliment. “She was always so mature,” people remark, sounding almost admiring. “He handled everything so…
There is a specific type of discomfort that appears in the absence of difficulty rather than during it. The disagreement with a spouse eventually ends. The strain on finances lessens. Something truly quieter replaces the challenging years of a complex relationship or a chaotic home. And somewhere in the middle of that silence, rather than a sense of relief, something more complex emerges: a low level of awareness, a sense of waiting, and the perception that the good thing is either fleeting or, more unsettlingly, undeserved. Happiness is present. Nevertheless, the tendency is to keep it at a distance. This…
Imagine someone who has spent years managing a challenging household, complete with loud voices in the adjacent room, erratic mood swings, and meals that were contingent on who returned home in what condition. They depart. Years later, they are living in a peaceful apartment with a reliable partner, a steady job, and no impending emergencies. However, something unexpected occurs in the midst of that silence. It makes them feel worse. Not appreciative, not relieved. uneasy. suspicious. The silence itself has begun to feel dangerous, so I’m waiting for something to break it. This is not an uncommon occurrence. In actuality,…
The invisible load-bearing wall of any organization is a specific type of employee, and most workplaces have at least one of them. They respond promptly. They complete tasks correctly. They are the first person whose name comes up when something goes wrong on a Friday at 4:45. They don’t care about it. They have never done so. And that turns out to be the exact issue. This person is most likely to be experiencing what workplace researchers and clinicians have begun to refer to as “silent burnout,” a type of fatigue that builds up covertly behind a façade of continuous…
Some people react to nearly every challenging conversation by explaining. When a relationship ends, people create a neat theory about what went wrong, such as incompatibility, bad timing, or mismatched values, rather than grieving. When a friend says something hurtful, they start constructing a psychological case—complete with backstory and mitigating circumstances—for why that person acted in that way before the pain has fully subsided. Often, the analysis is impressive. Somewhere beneath the surface, the emotion never quite comes to the surface. In actuality, intellectualization looks like this. Part of the reason it’s so difficult to catch is that it’s one…