Why your 30s feel like waking up inside a life you built while you were still asleep - Silicon Canals

"Your 20s are a strange decade because they demand enormous decisions from people who are spectacularly unequipped to make them. You pick a career direction at 22, often based on what your university offered or what seemed viable during a particular economic window. You drift into relationships that become serious partly through inertia. You sign leases and then mortgages, accept promotions, move cities - and each decision narrows the corridor a little more."

"Psychologists have a term for this: identity foreclosure. It describes what happens when someone commits to a life path without genuinely exploring alternatives - often because the alternatives felt too risky, too vague, or simply because the current path had momentum. People who grew up in environments where stability was scarce are especially prone to this. When your childhood taught you that security is the highest good, you tend to grab the first solid thing you find and hold on."

"By the time you're 31 or 32, the structure is built. The question that surfaces, usually uninvited, is: who built this? Here's what makes the 30s disorientation so specific. It's not that you hate your life. Most people experie"

People in their early 30s often experience a peculiar moment of disconnection where they recognize their life—their career, relationships, home, and location—accumulated through incremental decisions made during their 20s rather than through deliberate choice. This phenomenon, termed identity foreclosure by psychologists, occurs when individuals commit to life paths without exploring alternatives, often due to perceived risks or momentum. Those who grew up prioritizing security are particularly susceptible, as they tend to grasp the first stable opportunity available. By the early 30s, the life structure is established, prompting an unsettling question: who actually built this life? This disorientation is distinct from depression or crisis; it represents a gap between the person who made decisions and the person now inhabiting those consequences.

Read at Silicon Canals