The Psychology of your 20s - 18. The Psychology of Big Life Changes

Episode Date: December 14, 2021

The psychology of the big life changes that we all experience in our 20’s: moving cities, graduations and job changes, it’s that time of the year. But where does the anxiety of big life changes come from? How do we deal with the fear of loneliness and adjustment disorder? Listen to find out.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. 2%. That's the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter. And on my podcast, 2%. I break down the science of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world.

Put yourself through some hardships, and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person. Listen to 2%. That's TWO. percent on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the Look Back at it podcast. From 1979, that was a big moment for me. 84 was big to me.

I'm Sam J. And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick a year, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. With our friends, fellow comedians, and favorite authors. Like Mark Lamont Hill on the 80s. 84 was a wild year. It was a wild year. I don't think there's a more important year for black people.

Listen to look back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, what's good, y'all? You're listening to Learn the Hard Way with your favorite therapist and host Keer Games. This space is about black men's experiences, having honest conversations that it's really not safe to have anywhere, but you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing. How many men carry a suit or armor. It signals to the world that you not to be played with. And just because you have the capability that does not mean that you need to. Listen and learn the hard way on the AHA radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

And welcome back to the psychology of your 20s, the podcast where we talk through some of the big changes and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology. Welcome back to the podcast for another episode, another week. This week we're talking about big life changes. big life transitions and all of those kind of things that that involves just quickly my little puppy is next to me at the moment because I'm back at home with my family in Melbourne. Kind of why I wanted to do this episode, I guess, is because I'm going through a big life change right now. I'm about to move cities, move jobs, move lives, basically.

I've just graduated. Yeah, so I really wanted to kind of think about this topic just for my own sake, but also because it's kind of in the intro of the podcast, it's kind of in the name. It's something that, yeah, I wanted to discuss for a while. I think one of the quintessential aspects of our 20s is the big life changes and moves and decisions that we all kind of have to make or the world's going to make them for us. Our 20s is when we decide what we want our life to be, often at time when we move away from home to new cities.

Like I said, we change jobs, lose friends and make new ones. we might end and start relationships as well. And in our 20s, I think we tend to transition through many. Can you hear the talk? Yeah, we tend to transition through many different lives and lifestyles, choosing ones which kind of fit us best. And the things that are kind of typical in our 20s, like union jobs and travel and starting relationships,

ending relationship, gap years, are all massive events in our lives. And what accompanies it is also indicative of big life changes. Like those moves. like new friends and new hobbies and surroundings and that can kind of take a toll i think also as covid has taught us sometimes big life changes and transitions aren't always in our control it's not something that we choose to do willingly and have some optimism about so how do we stay resilient when things can shift so quickly in life especially when we're young and we don't really have the

same security that our older years perhaps might bring if we're lucky I think also it's okay to be scared. It's okay to be kind of terrified that you don't always know where you'll land. And whether what you had before may be better, I think it's worth remembering it always kind of works out in the end, really. But let's discuss the psychology behind these big life changes and shifts in our lives, the emotions that accompany that, and why we have this drive for change and novelty in our younger years.

So this is what we're going to talk about, discovering in our own values and lives, beyond what our parents have kind of decided for us, pushing back, but also wanting to pursue massive changes. I want to talk about loneliness and temporariness, temporariness, people who are temporary, things that are temporary in our 20s, and that constant shedding of old skin, old habits and old versions of yourself and the kind of trial and error that we go through in our 20s to find out who we are, but probably more importantly who we want to be. And that means making mistakes. It means huge changes to our internal conceptions of ourselves and also our external worlds as well. And obviously I'm in my early 20s, so I haven't really experienced the full kind of effect

of those life transitions. This is kind of my first big one as a young adult or by myself. So yeah, kind of looking forward to diving into it and learning some more about how we can kind of coast through these big life changes and what it means for our psychology, how we can do our best to adjust to the cards that life kind of deals us in our young years. So psychologists call the state of being in transition liminality. Liminality.

So it basically means being between social roles and identities. So in other words, it means that you're kind of neither in the state or the life that you've left and nor are you completely in your new life or your new state, at least not mentally. And this can provoke something of an identity crisis that raises the question of who am I, who do I want to be, what am I going to be, what's my life going to be like, which can be quite emotionally destabilizing. And there's heaps of literature on this, obviously, because big life changes are a huge, huge source of stress.

And stress is obviously something that psychologists are quite concerned about. I want to look into. So like I mentioned, I'm in a state of liminality at the moment. I'm just about to move cities. I've kind of like packed up my old life in Canberra where I was living. I graduated. I've kind of, you know, I'm preparing to move jobs and move to Sydney. But I'm not quite there yet.

So I'm in this like weird halfway point, staying with my family over Christmas and over the holidays with like one foot in my old life. and one foot like tentatively in my new one as well, which is like quite exciting, but also that luminality stay is very emotionally stabilising. And there's a reason that major life shifts like moving cities or living relationships or jobs can impact our mental health and why it is such a big area of research and interest and it comes down to how the brain functions. So when you change, when you force your life to change,

when you disrupt your daily or patterned routines, it actually activates the conflict senses in the brain, and this causes brain chaos, and that's what we call cognitive dissonance. And all this kind of research was done by this doctor called Dr. Pallay, who was an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, the dog, again, in the background. But it's this activation of the conflict sensor,

or the conflict area of the brain that creates that stress in people, that creates that dissonance or that chaos that we might often associate with the stress of changing our lives. And with most things in the world of like psychology or just like life in general, not everyone is really affected equally. So this doctor, he suggests that personality, firstly, kind of determines how change impacts our mental health. So for those who rate high in openness to experience, they'll often seek out novelty. And change is usually easier for them to manage because it's something that they can adjust to.

Perhaps their threshold for stress is a lot higher or their brain and the way that they're made. The temperament just means that they do seek out opportunity more than others. But it's those who feel most comfortable with the status quo or how life has usually been that will find those big changes or transitions to be more challenging just because who they are and the way that their brain is isn't necessarily adapted or equipped to deal as easily with big changes and big disruptions to how they tend to leave their lives. Another thing that really impacts whether you see change is something that's exciting or something that's a bit stressful is the type of parents you have.

So anxious parents, they often pass down that worldview that life is filled with danger and risk. And because of that kind of perception for them, the best course of action is to kind of stick to what is safe and stick to what is unknown. And it's often parents who have experienced trauma or severe poverty or abusive upbringings that implicitly teach their own children that life is this dangerous and unpredictable thing and to just stick to what is known. Don't follow or don't kind of pursue too much change. This might be why we see, you know, friends in our lives

or people in our lives who are young and who objectively have a lot of exciting opportunities in front of them remain kind of paralyzed by that fear of changing anything because the change might lead to something unsafe. You know, career change could lead to job loss and homelessness or breaking up with a significant other would lead to dying alone. Or, you know, if you've been doing something a certain way, pursuing a particular project or a business or an idea, you know, getting a job for you might actually just be incredibly disruptive. So for people also who have adjustment disorders, which is a real thing, it's in the DSM.

Change can also be particularly hard, as the name kind of makes it fairly obvious, like adjustment disorder. But basically what this disorder is is it's an emotional or behavioral reaction. to a stressful event or a change in a person's life. And this reaction is considered an unhealthy or excessive response to kind of the thing that is happening. And it often happens within three months of that change happening. So there are six different types, I think, from memory, six different forms of adjustment disorders, which I'm not really going to go into because A, it's kind of boring.

They're all really similar. And we don't really need any self-diagnosis going on. around these parts, but basically the disorder is an inability to cope. And like I said, there's so much literature on this because major life changes are a massive, massive source of stress, not just the good, not just the bad ones, like a death, but like also the good ones. And if you have an adjustment disorder, it's probably likely that those changes are not going to be as easy or as fun as they might be for other people.

So an adjustment disorder, it occurs when an individual stress is kind of, exceed their resources for coping. And this is, there's this woman called Nikki Nance, and she's a professor of psychology at this college in Florida. And she does a lot of work into this. And she says that your reaction with this disorder kind of becomes disproportionate to the event you're reacting to. It's also called situational depression.

So the symptoms are similar to that of other depressive disorders, like feelings of sadness, waves of anger and crying spells. However, unlike a depressive disorder or a depressive episode, the symptoms are exclusively triggered by an outside stressor. And they kind of also, luckily for this person or these people, they tend to resolve once the person is kind of adjusted to the situation. But that three-month period, obviously, it's going to kind of suck a lot.

And I'm sure there's heaps of people listening who've probably had this type of like disorder even temporarily in their lives or for a moment in time when they've had a big life change and it's just been too much to cope with it's just too much all at once and in general one of the major reasons we struggle with change even for those who don't have this disorder and why it can kind of result in cognitive dissonance is the element of uncertainty and uncertainty it's been said is kind of the enemy of our biological impulses like going back to evolutionary psychology if we're unsure whether an animal is you know a house cat or some like awful beast or tiger we're kind of in trouble if we can't tell the difference if we are uncertain about which it is so our brain doesn't like the odds of equations with unknown variables basically um so it defaults to a negative bias for safety so if you're uncertain about something your brain in your body obviously wants to survive. So if one of the options is, obviously, it's going to be

terrible or dangerous. And the other option are it's going to be safe and it's going to be amazing. Obviously, if it's safe and amazing, there's nothing to worry about. But there's also the 50% chance that it's not. And that's the thing that our brain wants us to kind of cope with. So it's going to respond as if it's responding to that negative outcome. And there was a study done and it showed that in people who are uncertain, 75% of people mispredict when bad. things are going to happen. So this uncertainty bias, it kind of trains our brain to expect the worse. And that doesn't mean that change is great and you should expect the best. It's like an amazing thing always, but you should recognize that your brain, it kind of will go into an

automatic negativity bias. And think about this next time you kind of get an amazing job offer and you think about the security of your current job or, you know, you've decided you want to move cities, but your brain is going to tell you it's going to speak to you as if this is going to be a negative thing because it's protecting you, which kind of makes sense. And obviously, our thoughts and our impulses aren't entirely out of our control and to kind of help soothe the uncertainty that's causing the brain to fire its stress response, its stress senses as we've kind of talked about. You can kind of use these like neutral self-talk phrases such as like, you know, uncertainty.

It just means that I don't know the future. It doesn't mean that the future is going to be bad. And attempt to rationalize with your brain, intellectualize the kind of stress that you're experiencing. This is one thing that my therapist, who I've kind of ghosted recently, I need to get back on that. But my therapist, she always says to me when I'm worried about change and big moves,

like the one I'm making now, which obviously we've talked about. And what she tells me is to kind of turn fear into something that is exciting. So excitement and anxiety, they activate the same areas of our brains, that being the amygdala and the hippocampus. They use the same kind of neural and synaptic pathways. So by turning your anxiety into excitement, you can ease any accompanying worry. I'll give an example.

So instead of thinking, like, kind of using my example of moving to a new city. So instead of thinking, you know, like, will I make any friends? What if I don't make friends? What if I'm not financially stable? Will I even like my new life? Will I be lonely? It's better to think of it in terms of kind of a positive excitement, anticipatory way of thinking about it.

So like thinking that thought of like, oh, am I going to make new friends? Instead of being like, oh, what if I don't? Thinking, you know, who are the new people I'm going to get the opportunity to meet? what exciting things will being alone allow me to do? What opportunities or experiences will I get to have that I can't even fathom yet? Like, imagine all the people I'm going to meet who are going to have a huge impact on my life. And I don't even know their names yet. Like, I have no idea who these people are.

And that's like the thing. You can have fear, but that kind of, that thought of who these people are is really exciting instead. And it activates the same areas of your brain. So it kind of tricks your brain into, yes, having. that fear response that it wants to have, but your perception of it is so much different. And I know that positive mind frame philosophy is kind of bullshit for some people, has some doubts surrounding it. You know, like if you just change your thoughts, you can change how you perceive the world.

Like obviously, if a parent has just died, like I don't really see many positives from that. So this is kind of exclusively for things you kind of voluntarily get to do. choose, but it is a pretty powerful tactic for changing fear into excitement, and it works. Here's a quote I saw the other day, and yes, it was on Instagram, but it really did something for me. Here it is. So once we understand that crossing the river of change is the biological, neurological, chemical, and even genetic death of the old self, we have power over change, and we can set our sights on the other side of the river. changing our lives and diving into life changes shifts something really inherent to who we are in the moment

by changing our surroundings and our environment and everything that we come into contact with. So it's kind of like the death of our old selves and sometimes there is that period between your past life and your new life that can be incredibly uncomfortable, that liminality that we were talking about. And often life transitions involve losses like death, the loss of a job or a relationship ending. And even positive transitions like a graduation or a job offer can make you feel a little bit sad. And, you know, sad because the person we were before in our old selves, our old lives, they aren't bad. And they're incredibly comfortable because we have adjusted to the change that we made beforehand to be that person. but difficult and painful transitions, they can actually yield great understanding of our life's purpose,

which increases happiness and decreases stress. So it's kind of better in the long run, like eating a really gross vegetable. So there's heaps of research on this and research on how people derive a sense of purpose. And what it's found is that while periods of pain and struggle and change and transitions can make us temporarily unhappy or lonely, or worried. They also make us feel as if our lives have more meaning in the long run. So going through that challenging time of moving cities or right after you've graduated or there's just so many, you know, so many kind of ways that our life changes.

But whilst it may be hard in the moment, it actually is a really good exercise for our minds. And an exercise for like our souls as well to kind of put things. to perspective and realize what we really want from life. And the most resilient people will see change as an opportunity rather than kind of a monster to fear because they allow you to consider where your priorities lie, you know, which friends you stay in touch with, what you want from your new life, what you want from your new job, who is this new version of you going to be?

And what's really important to you? Like where do you see yourself wasting your time and energy and what that kind of brings is a clear sense of your goals and values, and you find that your body and your mind can be much more resilient when it comes to the stresses of change, because all of it is put into kind of a larger scale. And I think above all, prioritising your health in life transitions kind of means not being afraid to ask for help when you need it,

especially if you're making a change whereby you're just naturally going to be disconnected from people may have previously had a lot of contact with. It can be really, really lonely. And humans, like I hear this said all the time, I can't believe I'm going to say it on my podcast, but it's so true. Humans are social creatures by nature. So you weren't built to withstand every sudden event in life without the support of others. You're not meant to just like try and force yourself to be lonely because you think it's going to create independence. It's important to kind of reach out. And I think something that we need to remind ourselves and that we kind of know is that it's all worth it in the end. We know that.

Otherwise, we wouldn't make the leap. There's something that is pushing you. We would always kind of stay the same until the world forces us to change. It's kind of like what I was talking about, there's people who have that great openness to experience. You know, I have so many friends who have just like completely changed their lives. around so many times and it's not a big deal for them. They travel whenever they want. They change jobs whenever they want. But for others it's not that simple. But I think sometimes staying the same as even more stressful and time consuming and takes more concentration and effort

because things aren't always in our control, like losing a job or getting dumped or surviving an accident. The world will push us if we don't do it for ourselves. So you may as well just take the leap when you have the chance to be in control. Like, I think COVID was a really good example of this. So many people who I think were like working jobs they didn't like or in cities where they didn't feel connected to their family or trying out this new identities or, you know, pursuing careers or degrees they didn't like. When you go through something like COVID, it kind of forces you to change.

It forces you to kind of put things into perspective and make a decision. And that's kind of what life does. Like you cannot just stay the same. The world won't let you. But here's the good news. I think even difficult unwanted transitions are usually seen differently in retrospect than in real time. And there's a psychologist called Fila who studies liminality and life changes and transitions quite extensively, actually. He has a lot of really interesting papers if you're into that.

But he found that 90% of the time the people he spoke with about their life changes. changes. They ultimately judge their transition to have been a success insofar that the transition ended and they found themselves once again on solid ground. Even better. Research also tends to show that we see past events, even unwanted ones, as net positives over time, like getting fired from a job. Even though in the moment you might be stressing about financial security and you know, missing your work buddies, it's often judged as a net positive. over time. And though our brains kind of have a tendency to focus on negative emotions in the present, like we were talking about, that automatic kind of process, over the years unpleasant

feelings fade more than pleasant feelings do. And it's a phenomenon known as, I think, fading effect bias. Yeah, fading effect bias. And it sounds like a cognitive error, but it isn't. It's not like our brain trying to like trick us. Almost every trend. even the most challenging ones does bear some positive fruit. It just may take some time to see it and feel its effects because in the moment our brain is so worried about that uncertainty element and about what might go wrong and why we need to have that fear. But in hindsight, when you're no longer in that situation

where your body is in like flight or fight kind of mode, you're kind of able to appreciate it for what it is. And in his book, Meanings of Life, the psychologist, Roy Bumister, boymister. Can't remember his name. It's called The Meanings of Life. I'm sure that's definitely not a very generic book title. But this psychologist, he argues that a sense of meaning gained through change

makes the rest of life seem more stable. And this is one of the great constellations of like aging and seeing a lot of change is that transitions likely don't cause as much distress. And you might actually be happier because if you've gone through so many periods of ups and downs and roller coasters and transitions, you probably have a pretty stable sense of identity throughout that all and some pretty good priorities about what you want from your life. And the one final thing about big life changes.

I feel like this whole episode has just been me trying to convince myself that moving cities isn't going to be terrible. But another thing is difficult periods can really stimulate innovation and ingenuity. A large amount of literature talks about post-traumatic. growth in which people derive long-term benefits from painful experiences, including more appreciation for life like we've talked about, as well as richer relationships, greater resilience and deeper spirituality. And I think the richer relationships is a big one because when people move or when something changes in your life, if you decide to do something completely

different, you kind of realize who's really there for you in a way and who it's not just convenient to be around but who you actually kind of like and really get along with. And another manifestation of this growth is heightened creativity. This is one of the big reasons why I'm really excited for the next few years of my life, because I think struggle and change really pushes the kind of limits of how your brain sees the world. And I've seen this already. Like breakups are probably the best example of a big kind of shift in your life, kind

of casmic, chaotic. violent shift and change like that brings so many emotions to deal with and process and that can really fuel our creative process because to move past difficult times you really have to embrace them and work through them and work through the sludge and the mud of all the terrible shit that's kind of clogged up in your brain and you have to feel every moment and creating something from that is such a good outlet and I think if you have a mind like that that's often where it's going to go in times of change and transition and stress. That has kind of been, like I said, I feel like this episode is just me

trying to convince myself that this is a good idea. I don't know, maybe I should do like a follow-up episode in a year's time. And I like, if you guys have seen those like Billy Eilish videos where they like record her every year asking her the same questions, it'd be interesting to listen back to this episode in a year's time after I've made the move and see if my predictions about adjustment and cognitive dissonance and new priorities and creativity or right, or whether I'm just like full of crap, or the literature is just like full of crap.

But yeah, thank you so much for listening. Also, you guys have been really hyping the podcast up recently. Thanks so much for that. I really appreciate it. And like I always say, if you want to support us, or I don't know why I say us, it's just me, but if you want to support me and the podcast more, a really great way to do that is to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. If you have an iPhone,

kind of allows more people to find this content and to hear my voice. It's kind of weird to say that. But if you do feel cool to leave a review, I really appreciate it. It really does help us grow. Once again, it helps me grow. And brings kind of more listeners to this space. in the world, space in the metaverse. If you're going through a big life transition as well, as I'm sure many of you are,

I know it's the end of the year, so graduations just happen, everyone's moving. I can feel it all around. Then hopefully this kind of brought some insights into what you might be experiencing and why it's maybe normal or what to expect and why at the end of the day it's really just kind of worth it. So thanks for tuning in and listening wherever you are listening. I hope you're having an amazing afternoon, morning, evening, just an amazing day. And thanks for listening to the very end.

You're my very special listener. And you'll be hearing from me very soon. That's a bit weird. But anyhow, thanks guys. And have a lovely, lovely day. 2%. That's the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter.

And on my podcast, 2%. I break down the signs of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world. Put yourself through some hardships, and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person. Listen to 2%.

That's TWO% on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the Look Back at a podcast. From 1979, that was a big moment for me. 84 was big to me. I'm Sam Jay and I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick a year, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. With our friends, fellow comedians, and favorite authors.

Like Mark Lamont Hill on the 80s. It was a wild year. I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Listen to look back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, what's good, y'all? You're listening to Learn the Hard Way with your favorite therapist and host games. This space is about black men's experiences, having honest conversations that it's really not safe to have anywhere, but you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing. How many men carry a suit or armor? It signals to the world that you're not to be played with.

And just because you have the capability that does not mean that you need to, listen to learn the hard way on the IHard radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. This is an IHart podcast. Guaranteed human