I’ve been feeling antsy lately: about where I live, what I do for work, my relationships. At times, it’s like I’m floating through jelly, aimless and adrift. When I recently relayed all this to my therapist, she told me it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. “While you might feel unstable and restless, maybe even depressed, it is also a period of growth.” But, I asked her, why am I feeling this way in the first place? What’s the root of it all? She replied in plain terms: “You might be experiencing a quarter-life crisis.”

Lots of people around my age are grappling with a similar sense of disquiet. Reddit is full of young people asking how to navigate a mid-20s crisis: “The pandemic really messed with my sense of time,” one writes. “I genuinely feel like I’m two years younger than I actually am, like those years were taken from me. Because of that, 25 feels way heavier than it should.” I feel similarly about turning 27 next March: where has the time gone? What have I achieved? Why does everything feel the same, but so different at the same time?

If you’re feeling this way too, know that you are not alone. To help you navigate this unsettling phase of life, the Dazed team have come together to compile a survival guide to support you during your mid-20s crash-out. As Dazed editor-in-chief Ted Stansfield writes, “it gets better, I promise.” 

DON’T BELIEVE THIS IS THE BEST TIME OF YOUR LIFE

Your mid-20s can be miserable. What can make it worse is the feeling that it shouldn’t be miserable; that it should be the best time of your life, when you’re young, free, physically in your prime and unencumbered by adult responsibilities like kids and a mortgage. But this simply isn’t true. In your mid-20s, you are still figuring out some huge, fundamental things: who you are, who you want to be, who you want to be with, what you want to do with your life, what you believe, what you’re good at (and if what you’re good at will give you the lifestyle you want), all while working harder and earning less than you will at other points in your life. It’s an uphill struggle. So my advice is to accept that it can be a hard time, that you’ll get through it and that many of those fundamental things will have sorted themselves out by the time you flop over into your thirties. It gets better, I promise, lol. (TS)

ACCEPT THAT SO MUCH IS OUT OF YOUR CONTROL

Most of us have a vision of how our lives will pan out. Maybe you have aspirations to reach certain career goals, buy a house, find a long-term romantic partner, have children… the list goes on. I’m not going to tell you that if you do enough self-interrogation, you will realise that you don’t want any of these things after all. It’s OK to want them! But what I will say is that the anxiety that often accompanies chasing these so-called ‘milestones’ becomes a whole lot easier to manage once you accept that life is seldom linear for anyone.

Sometimes things happen (job loss, break-ups, illness, death) which are totally out of your control and yank you off the path you thought you were on. But really, there is no path. There is no script. You can arrive at what you think is an ‘end point’ only to have shit hit the fan again. Life is just... one thing after another. To quote Joan Didion (sorry), often, we live “by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images”. Things feel less all-consuming, I think, once you start to see your life more as a collection of “disparate images”, rather than a coherent story where you have total control over the outcome. No arc, no trajectory, no tidy resolution – just ups and downs, forever. Try to enjoy the ride! (SS)

BE BRAVE 

Most people’s lives are guided by the desire to avoid embarrassment. Don’t avoid embarrassment; get comfortable with it. Be courageous. Look after your dearest friends; your friends may be the loves of your life. Put down your phone and read books. Keep a diary and, alongside the big things you’ll naturally be drawn to write about, fill it with all the everyday details – the small things will be more fascinating in hindsight. Set yourself arbitrary creative tasks and make a game of anything boring or repetitive. Be kind. Make a habit of art. Wear sunscreen. Remember, we feel grief in proportion to our capacity for love – one is the natural consequence of the other, so don’t be afraid. Above all else, this is an adventure. (ED)

SEE A THERAPIST 

My teens, early and mid-20s were wracked by self-doubt. I was awkward, anxious, and uncomfortable in all social situations, and even more uncomfortable with myself. I didn’t like myself all that much, to be really honest. I hope that sharing this will reassure a reader out there who feels the same, because I (mostly) don’t feel that way anymore, and I put it down to therapy. I started seeing my therapist when I was 26, and it changed my life. I was so unhappy, and this marked the moment when I decided to take steps to try to make things better. And ever since then, I have been rigid and unfaltering in dedicating the time (and money) towards looking after and maintaining my mental health. Therapy isn’t easy. It’s work. But I’ve been doing the work for years now, and all I can say is that it makes such a difference. 

In a perfect world, everyone would have access to affordable mental healthcare. That’s not the case. I’m lucky that I can afford to pay for my therapy myself, but I know that’s not an option for many people, and NHS waiting lists are long. But if you can find a way – or take your mental health seriously through other methods – it’s the best thing I could have ever done for myself. (AP)

FIND SOME MEANING IN LIFE (BEYOND YOURSELF)

Everyone’s mid-20s are different, and existential angst takes many forms, which makes it hard to offer boilerplate advice. Maybe doing mephedrone at warehouse raves every weekend is beginning to lose its allure, or maybe you’re doing everything “right” – making regular deposits into a stocks-and-shares ISA and religiously adhering to a Pilates regime – and still feel something is missing. My own mid-20s were quite chaotic and precarious, so whatever stability I have now is something I’m grateful for, rather than a source of ennui. If you’re bored with adulthood, though, I would advise keeping in mind that your present circumstances aren’t fixed and that life will keep happening to you – sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. There’s a balance to be struck between appreciating what you have now and not feeling like you’re trapped by it forever.  

Based on my own experience, you stop feeling quite so anguished by all the big existential “what am I doing with my life?” questions. For me, taking better care of myself daily was key to that: all the boring stuff like drinking less, exercising more, and being more responsible with money. While happiness may be elusive, it’s quite straightforward to maximise the amount of time you spend feeling cheerful. But you can’t entirely self-care your way out of a crisis of meaning. The sad truth is that much of modern life really does feel meaningless and empty, and that the world is often a cruel and ugly place. The best solution to that, I have found, is to work alongside other people for a cause larger than yourself, whatever that may be. There is no shortage of purpose in the world if you’re willing to look for it. When you really care about something, the disappointments and indignities of your own life begin to lose their overwhelming significance. (JG)

FREE YOURSELF FROM THE TICKING CLOCK

I spent my early 20s thinking about the end of my 20s as a deadline for several arbitrary things that I never ended up worrying about as I got closer to it. Between the “30 under 30” lists and all the talk of “biological clocks” for women, there’s a looming pressure that can come from treating your last day of being 29 as some finish line. The idea that you have to become a prodigy in your career, all while finding the right partner, deciding whether you want kids, and starting retinol at the exact right age is all too much for one decade. In reality, the best parts of my twenties centred around exploration – all of my goals changed once I had the time to figure out what I wanted, and any of the milestones I did accomplish “on time” didn’t feel like I thought they would, anyway. Don’t spend your 20s feeling like you need to “figure everything out” so you can “arrive” somewhere; you’ll still be arriving (and figuring things out) every day for the rest of your life. The moment I decided to extend all the deadlines I’d made for myself until infinity, my life became more expansive. (LP)