Your 30s and 40s are what some would consider the best years of your life. You’re no longer ‘figuring it out,’ but you aren’t ‘old’ by society’s ageist standards either. It should be a sweet spot, right? But despite the illusion of stability and security, it’s also common for anxiety and self-doubt to worsen during your most ‘put-together’ decades, research shows.
“There’s this expectation from society that by this time, you have a career path. You get married. You have children,” Kristen Jacobsen, owner of Cathartic Space Counseling in Chicago and author of Unpacked: How to Detach From the Subconscious Beliefs That Are Sabotaging Your Life, tells us. Therefore, if you’re 40 and still questioning who you are, it can feel as if you’re ‘behind.’
But even for those who have checked these boxes, anxiety in your 30s can still hit hard, Jacobsen says: “At this stage in life, every decision can feel high-stakes and seemingly permanent, like there’s less room to experiment, no space to take risks and ‘fail,’ and fewer opportunities to pivot.”
While the roadmap for adulthood is less rigid today (with people marrying later, switching careers more often and redefining what ‘stability’ even means), the pressure for many hasn’t disappeared. In fact, it’s just become more internalised, Jacobsen points out, which doesn’t just cause catastrophising; it can also make you more sensitive to how others see you.
Why criticism hits harder in your 30s and 40s
When you were younger, you might have guessed that by your 30s and 40s, you’d be too ‘grown up’ to care about others’ petty judgments. Jacobsen says she sees otherwise in her practice. “I work with a lot of clients [in this age range],” she says. “And if they haven’t met certain ‘milestones,’ they spiral over even small questions like, ‘Oh, are you dating?’ ‘Are you planning on having kids soon?’”
Part of this is internalised: if you believe you’re not established, even well-meaning comments about your job, family or life choices can seem like confirmation from others that you’re not measuring up.
This sensitivity can be especially intense for new moms, many of whom, of course, are in their 30s and 40s. “They experience something called ‘matrescense,’ a profound identity shift similar to what we go through during puberty in adolescence,” Jacobsen explains. “When someone becomes a mother for the first time, they no longer have a solid foundation of who they are,” which can make outside opinions land harder. That’s why a casual comment about feeding choices, sleep routines or returning to work doesn’t always register as neutral or helpful, but rather as an attack for parenting ‘wrong.’
Beyond individual circumstances, external pressure also creates the perfect conditions for rejection sensitivity, where comments you once would have brushed off now stick. Hustle culture, for instance, teaches us there’s always a new goalpost to chase—a bigger promotion, a larger apartment, a more accomplished partner, a baby (then perhaps a second). “We all have our own timelines, but social media is another factor that makes it hard to acknowledge this,” Jacobsen adds. Exposure to others’ highlight reels—engagement photos, flex-worthy splurges, career wins—creates the illusion that everyone else is effortlessly thriving…and reminds you that maybe you aren’t.
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