Even with a good career and all the “adult milestones” I don’t feel like an actual adult. I feel like I’m pretending to know what I’m doing. Anyone else experience this?
Only when I go to stand up after squatting for a time.
I’m in this comment and I don’t like it…
Wait, y’all can still squat?!
Well, going down isn’t the problem here …
I weirdly like this experience. All the squeaks and cracks and static legs.
Yep. I sneezed and now my back hurts.
i feel like an adult when people any younger than me speak
folks be making up words nowadays im like a month behind every trend but i keep it hip and classy by using the words ironically until its in my lexicon unbeknownst to me
im only 21 tho
No one has any idea what they’re doing.
I’m 35. I’ve got two kids. I make it up as I go along. There’s no plan, no blueprint. There’s just the day to day crap that life has for us all. I wake up, I go to work and my only real aim is to get home to my kids and partner.
41 and a total of 5 children (some step) here. Still not sure what I want to be when I grow up.
Hey, I felt like this when I had a job that I hated. I was constantly trying to figure out what I was going to do next, as if I hadn’t actually started life yet.
I was 36 when I just up and quit my job and went to trade school.
Best thing I’ve ever done. In the last 5 years I met, and married my wife, bought a big new house with her, and have actually felt like the adult I am. None of that would have happened if I never took a plunge.
r u a plumber?
Agreed. I’m 40 and I’ve reached a point where I feel like an adult. The biggest piece of that is that I understand that we’re all just making it up and figuring things out.
Imposter syndrome is also an intrinsic part of feeling like you aren’t an adult. Most of us experience this frequently - we have that feeling that everyone knows more than us and it makes us feel like we are fakes. But in reality, we just know more about ourselves and the gaps in our knowledge. We assume that they they know more than they do because we aren’t in their head and they aren’t expressing all the uncertainty and doubt hiding in there.
I think there is a pretty big difference between hearing people like you and me say “everyone is just making it up” and really internalizing that. I think internalization comes with time - you can believe something conceptually but often need to see it in practice over and over to really believe it in your bones.
There are other factors, too, which come with age and experience. Adults on the younger side are constantly running into new adult things and not knowing how to do those things is going to created this self doubt. “If I were an adult, I’d know how to do an insurance claim” or whatever. With further age, you will learn these things and have fewer of these doubts.
Copium
There is a paradox of confidence.
The people most confident in their competence tend to be the least competent in practice.
The Dunning–Kruger effect.
Self-cheerleaders tend to be morons, the most intelligent people by their nature tend to second guess their own abilities. Idiots just stroll through life taking whatever credit they can grab.
“The only thing I know is that I know nothing, and i am no quite sure that i know that.”
-Socrates
"Throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart.’
-Donald Trump
See the difference? By genuinely doubting, aka examining your abilities, you are in more competent company.
more people oughta read about and pay attention to philosophy shit is actually pretty interesting. if nothing else just to see how predictable the uneducated monkey brain is.
I’ve always considered the “why” to be the most important question for me.
In our society, the answer is almost always money, which is a means and not an end, and so western culture seems to be miserably grinding itself into the dirt, usually without ever looking up and asking what the deeper point is.
It’s really very tragic to me.
Putting the ‘capital’ in Capitalism.
The problem is the way we are told to treat adults as kids.
We go all the way through school repeatedly being told that the adults have the answers, they understand everything that we don’t, they know how to tackle the things that seem to big for us, and, most importantly, they don’t make mistakes.
So now that we’re adults, even though we cognitively know by now that it was all bullshit, it’s hard to turn that training around. We make mistakes, don’t have the answers, and sometimes struggle with parts of the world that we’d expected would make sense by now. We know that the adults before us were no different, but it’s been so long that it’s hard to internalize that we, now, are just like them.
Your imposter syndrome is programmed. It’s not your fault.
I knew it was all bullshit when I learned about Santa. Been down hill ever since.
It’s not quite the same but this line of thinking reminds me of a couple of scenes from How I Met Your Mother. Marshall tells the story of when they were travelling as a family when he was a child and his dad was this beacon of heroics who could magically see through the heavy fog. Later we get the story from his dad’s perspective who tells that he couldn’t see a thing, was terrified out of his wits but just kept on going and hoped for the best while keeping a brave face for his family. I know it’s fiction but it’s such a good little story that pulls back that curtain.
This is put very eloquently, thanks
Early 50s here and no, absolutely not. I still feel like I’m an immature teen inside my head, wondering what the hell happened.
looks in the mirror
…fuck
Im 30, have a full-time salaried job, two kids, own a house… I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing I just want to play games and touch myself.
You are not alone at all.
Same at 40
I feel like we are what we are, and that will probably never change lol
It comes in bursts. Like after doing your taxes or buying a car, you think “That was totally adult of me. Now it’s time for video games!”
This sums it up nicely for me.
Not once in my 45 years.
Just turned 30. I have a house, a kid and a wife. I still don’t feel like an “Adult”
show-off
As far as I can tell:
-
age <16: “Oh boy, I can’t wait to be an adult and do whatever I want!”
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age 16-19: “Look at me! I’m an adult! I’m the adultiest adult that ever adulted!! I reject all that is childish and embrace all that is totally-grown-up! Middle ground is for losers! I need everyone to know how ADULT I am and approve of it!!”
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around 20-ish: “…fuck. I’m an adult. I have responsibilities. I have to do taxes. Why does everything cost money?”
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25+: “I have legit no idea what being an adult is supposed to be like, but I’ll figure it out one day … I hope. Also my back hurts and I have a favorite spoon and lost the lid of 2/3 of my tupperware.”
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45+: “I’m an adult. I can do whatever TF I want. Ohh you want to convince me that videogames and cartoons are “too childish” for someone my age? Go ahead and sue me, lol.”
I’m nearing that last stage and I honestly care less and less about what being an adult is supposed to be like. The world is already a shitty enough place without ruining your own fun on arbitrary grounds like stuff being “too childish for your age” or the pressure to have found your purpose in life by a random age. I stopped trying to find “my calling” or a bigger meaning in life and just enjoy the ride instead. Not everyone is predestined to achieve some groundbreaking milestone in history. Maybe my purpose in life has always been to be that weird funny uncle that cracks insufferable puns at the worst times but actually listens to problems of loved ones, no matter how trivial they may seem. Maybe just winging it without actually knowing what the end result will be … is perfectly fine. It is okay to not know everything. It is okay to have silly little hobbies. It is okay to be a bit awkward. And it is okay to feel a bit lost sometimes. Adults are just old children with a driving permit.
Growing old is mandatory. Growing up is optional.
Growing old is mandatory. Growing up is optional.
So much this!
I see myself a bit in all those stages, but i don’t think i ever really ever (temporarily) outgrew “childish” things. Always liked cartoons, always read comics, always played games, and always told those that chided me for not growing up to fuck off. Now entering my 50s, the biggest difference is that people don’t have the courage to bother me about it anymore (and in the rare occasions when they do they don’t argue back after being told off :P )
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Learning to fake it is part of growing up. Eventually you forget you’re faking.
You become an adult the day you realise that what everyone else was doing all along.
Special milestone the day somebody refers to you within earshot as “that mister”, the fabled stranger-based punishment of exasperated mothers everywhere.
Teenagers have started refer to me as sir and that was it for me 😂
I make steady but friendly eye contact with anyone asking for ID from my younger dining companions. The challenge is there, are you telling me I look old enough to drink! (Im balding and completely grey on the remainder, there’s no pretending any more)
52 here, and I’m like you…
I was really hoping once I hit 50 the feeling would go away
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Heey 1971 ?!
late 1970 :)
Damit 😁 !
Me (41yo) asked my dad (74yo) Me: Dad, when does that adult thing of knowing what you are doing kicks in? Dad: When I find out, I will let you know.
Really all you have to do is hang out with some co-workers in their early 20s. Nothing makes you feel like an adult like sitting at the kids table, listening to their problems. Realizing you can’t relate.
Hard agree. Im 52 and most of my friends average about 30ish. Thing is I can relate, but due to extra time in the game of life, I have made a peace with the challenges younger people still fight with. Still the proximity of youth is a valuable perspective. I treasure my younger friends for this and many other reasons.
Still the proximity of youth is a valuable perspective. I treasure my younger friends for this
“Out of the mouth of babes” is a phrase that is usually associated with very young children speaking to adults, but really it means a younger generation talking to an older generation, and makes a lot of sense to listen to.
New perspectives and new ideas influence and help growth for all.
I think it’s relative.
But yes it’s valuable. Even at only 30 years old, I often learn from the 8th graders I teach.
Adults overcomplicate things and rationalize bad decisions. All it takes sometimes is one kid with a “naive” outlook to ask, “Why would you be friends with someone you don’t like?”
Then you think, yeah… Why would I?
None of us know what’s going on. It’s ok.
Life is like quantum mechanics. Anyone who says they understand it is lying and shouldn’t be trusted.
