Research suggests that people who constantly feel behind in life are usually holding themselves to a timeline they inherited rather than one they chose - Silicon Canals

"Developmental psychologists have long studied something called "social clocks" - the internalized schedules we carry for when major life events are supposed to happen. Bernice Neugarten coined the term in the 1960s, and her foundational research showed that people experience significant distress not necessarily when life goes badly, but when it goes off-schedule."

"Here's the uncomfortable part: most people never consciously chose their social clock. They absorbed it. From parents. From peers. From the ambient cultural signals that say you should have things figured out by 25, be established by 30, and be coasting by 40. These aren't deadlines you agreed to. They're deadlines you inherited."

"When someone says "I feel behind," what they're really reporting is a gap - the distance between where they are and where their internalized timeline says they should be. But that timeline was never calibrated to their actual life. It was calibrated to a generalized, often outdated script about how adult life is supposed to unfold."

Anxiety about being behind in life differs from anxiety about failure. It emerges when life progresses smoothly but doesn't match an internalized timeline for major milestones. Developmental psychologists call these internalized schedules "social clocks" - expectations about when life events should occur. Most people absorb these timelines unconsciously from parents, peers, and cultural signals rather than consciously choosing them. The discomfort of being "behind" reflects a gap between actual circumstances and an inherited, often outdated script about adult life progression. This timeline was never calibrated to individual circumstances but rather to generalized cultural expectations about achievement by specific ages.

Read at Silicon Canals