“We are in the middle of life”… , “I am right in the middle of life…”
Are these the sound of acceptance or a rebellion?
When we look at the developmental stages of Erikson, we see that they are not just for children but cover the whole life, and that development is a process with different steps and stages that starts from birth and continues until death. It's like life is a game and levels continue to be skipped. For each level, a task must be accomplished and certain developments and criteria must be met so that we can move on to the next level.
30 is a level that a person must pass in his life, and Erikson called it "productivity versus stagnation" (30-60). It is a period in family, social and business life where one should be productive and feel necessary for others. If we examine the previous period, "isolation or distance against closeness" (18-30) is a period in which close relationships are established, there is a tendency to start a family, and relationships include duties and responsibilities. The age of 30 is a period when one of these two levels ends and the other begins, in which the person calculates what he did and could not do at the previous level and how many points he passed to the new level.
While it is observed that an individual who has established a family and business life with a high score from the previous level has a healthier transition to this period, people who are disappointed and think that they made the wrong decisions despite having a family and a job may enter this 30-year-old syndrome. “Is the marriage, job, career that I dreamed of, just these experiences? Was all this effort and dream only for these?” There may be confusion and disappointment. In other words, it can be expressed as “an adulthood that does not come”. During this period, disappointment may be followed by divorce or job changes.
On the other hand, when a person who has not yet completed the requirements of the previous semester and has always received negative scores, is startled by the words of those around him, "Come on, you are old enough to get married, have children, don't you have the strength to do anything?", he realizes that he is 30 years old, but he has not done anything before puberty. Seeing that his life goes on, he tries to say "oh, wow" and hangs his head against the wall, so to speak. This is the period when it starts to hit. This lateness experienced by the person is called "arrested adolescence". To cope with this feeling, the person will either rush or collapse completely.
30-year-old syndrome is seen in different degrees of severity in each individual. The factor that affects this is personality structures. Since individuals experiencing this period experience psychiatric problems such as panic attacks and depression, 30-year-old syndrome is treated together with these disorders. The 30-year-old syndrome can be overcome in the mildest way possible with prevention efforts, mostly in the 20s. For this reason, one should be careful when choosing a spouse, job and circle of friends at this age.
Despite all this, the age of 30 is like a second chance that life gives us. It is a mature and strong period that has the characteristics of both periods, where you are still young and strong, but where healthier decisions can be made by providing the opportunity to act with an adult mind, not an adolescent mind.
It is the meeting of adult intelligence and adolescent agility….
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