Practice Log
Clinical Issues, Articles & Posts
Many people who are single, unpartnered, childfree, or simply on a different path know this feeling. Because the shift is normal and nobody has done anything wrong, we rarely give ourselves permission to talk about it. We tell ourselves we're being oversensitive, petty or ungrateful. In truth, this is one of the most common and least discussed emotional transitions of adult life.
There is a quiet assumption many of us carry into adulthood: that by a certain age, we should know who we are. When life does not cooperate with this assumption, when we find ourselves wanting different things, drawn to different people, or uncertain about paths we once felt sure of, it can feel less like growth and more like something going wrong.
It is not going wrong. It is, in fact, what psychological development looks like across the full span of a life.
Career change can affect far more than our working lives. For professionals, managers and executives in mid-career, retrenchment, restructuring, stalled progression or an unexpected shift may disrupt established roles, responsibilities, future plans and a sense of professional identity. However, change is not always experienced as entirely difficult or negative. Even when unplanned, it can open new possibilities and evoke optimism, motivation, curiosity or excitement.
You cannot focus. You are forgetting things you never used to forget. Deadlines feel harder to hit than they used to. And somewhere along the way, you started wondering: is this Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)? But before you settle on an answer, it is worth knowing that ADHD, anxiety, and burnout can look remarkably similar on the surface, while needing very different kinds of support underneath.
