The Fear of Being on Early Stage of Adulting
The struggle of becoming an adult
For me, adulting is quite a daunting stage of life. In the beginning, I feel like freedom. You can set your own life path without anybody forces you to pursue a certain path.
However, as I go through this phase even further, it causes a lot of dilemmas in several life aspects. Somehow these dilemmas transform into a new form of fear.
1. Fear of Losing Something Precious
Death is one thing that can’t be avoidable. How fearful to think that in these past 10 years, I heard so much sad news about passed away people. And the more I grow older, the more I notice that a person that I know or aware of, at least hear it or meet on a frequent basis already passed away. Your favorite singer whose songs you often hear in the past, your teacher who thought you back then in school, or maybe even your close relative.
Since 2020, the frequency became massive. We heard about our friends losing their families due to the pandemic impact. Hearing that news, make me afraid to go outside because I can potentially transmit the virus to my family. This makes me paranoid. I still remembered the time when the people that I look at on social media is in the good shape but unfortunately he passed away after less than 2 weeks.
We never know when our significant one will leave us. And it really frightens me. As far as we try to prepare, it still really hard to accept it when the time it’s come.
2. Fear of Believing Someone
I really avoid reading political news so much also the news that contains a lot of conspiration.
With politics, I feel like it’s hard to get the real truth as people try to oppose each other perspectives. Certain political parties will always try to argue their opposition. Even if they did something good for society, the opposition will accuse it as a “hidden agenda” activity.
But sometimes it may be true. With the people who always have a good image in media. Doing speech that focuses on improving society and reducing the poverty rate. It is not uncommon to see those people related to corruption or other crimes.
That is just an example of a political case, but it can be found in several aspects of our life. Maybe we found it in the office environment, friendship, relationship, and others. The example is varying in everybody's case.
It causes us to have a trust issue even to the people who really kind to us. We may question the motive for every people’s action. Is it really pure kindness or is it for other intentions?
As an adult, I try for being selective about which information or people that I can trust.
Trust become expensive stuff even though maybe we already used to being betrayed.
3. Fear of Health Degradation
Being an adult, we don’t feel energized as we did back then we were a child. At some point, we start to worry about our health. Well, in my case, especially in the middle of this pandemic, I really start to feel anxious if there is a disturbance or may be mild pain and a small lump in my body. For example, if I feel a headache in one day, I start to think like is there anything wrong with my health? Is it like mild symptoms of a serious disease?.
But we know that overthink about it will make our medical condition becomes worse. It turns to another new problem which we afraid to check our medical status. In some cases, we may not embrace the situation when the record is not as good as we think or even worse when the doctor states that we have severe disease. Avoiding overthinking, we halt ourselves to check our medical records but at the same time, we may not aware of what happens to our bodies. And it just turns out to new cycle of fear.
4. Fear of the Uncertainty Future
This is the major concern for early adults, especially for those who just graduated from college.
Let me share my experience.
I graduated from engineering school who learn more technical stuff. At that time people said that the demand for this degree is at the peak. I planned a lot of stuff with regards to my career plan. However, as I graduated the industry was in a crisis and a lot of companies didn’t hire fresh graduates. At that moment, I felt like each plan that I developed and the efforts that I done were futile.
With this pandemic, the future becomes more uncertain. We become second-guessing ourselves, feel doubt with our plan, afraid to move. In case we try to move on and decide to do action, sometimes it’s hard to face any consequences that potentially face us in the future. We are not ready to accept the undesired outcome considering all of our efforts and sacrifice that we did.
On the positive note
Excessive fear is not good for our body and mind.
But there is a thing that I learn from someone.
We can’t control death, we can’t control people, we even can’t control the future.
To overcome this fear, what we can do is just focus on ourselves and the present time.
Maybe we’re too anxious about our future so we halt ourselves to move. But, doing nothing in the present can’t alter your future better as well.
Too anxious about losing someone, means we need to appreciate each moment with someone who you love.
Feeling betrayed makes you learn to identify the person that you can really trust. Besides, it teaches you not to let them down because you ever experience the hardship to find people you can trust.
Maybe you afraid of your body condition, but this fear force you to more aware of every activity that you do and every nutrient that you consume.
All of this fear give us positive learning to continue our life as an adult.
