I love being able to talk about brands that I use on my podcasts and I've personally
been using this one for over five years.
Our sponsor Nature's Way Alive Women's Multivitamin Gummies are specifically formulated
for women.
They contain 16 vitamins and minerals including the full B vitamin complex to help convert
food into fuel and have the added benefit of supporting healthy hair, skin and nails.
With just two delicious gummies, Nature's Way Alive Women's Multivitamin Gummies are
an easy way to feel like your best self every day.
To learn more, visit naturesway.com slash Gemma 10 and use code Gemma 10 at checkout for
10% off any Alive Women's Multivitamins, terms and conditions apply valid through June
30th.
Managing our money in our 20s can feel like a bit of a challenge whether you're saving
for your first car or for a big overseas trip, it can take time to get there.
Nature's Way Alive Women's Multivitamin Gummies is a very important thing to do.
To learn more about Nature's Way Alive Women's Multivitamin Gummies, visit naturesway.com
or try to run a small business into it helps you take control through products from
into it like TurboTax, Credit Karma, QuickBooks and MailChimp.
It has helped a hundred million people live their best financial lives.
Shaving is honestly such a hassle but sometimes it just has to be done.
Actually, what if I told you about an alternative, one that was quick, easy and left you smelling
surprisingly good.
Nair's new line of sensational hair removal, shower and body creams gets the job done and
smells delicious.
My friends were all over for dinner the other day and I had this bottle of their oat milk
and vanilla body cream.
Of course we had to try it out and we all agreed.
The results were pretty spectacular after only three minutes of application and actually
smelled delicious like vanilla goodness.
Smell for yourself, try the reformulated Nair body and shower creams available at retailers
nationwide and online.
Ugh, our 20s.
The drunk dialing, the forgetting to wash our face at night and yes neglecting our teeth.
Don't do that last one, you only get one set of teeth so you need to protect them.
Pronamel intensive enamel repair penetrates deep into the enamel surface and locks in vital
minerals to repair acid weakened enamel.
Pronamel also makes a new mouthwash which helps to repair acid weakened enamel beyond brushing
alone.
Pronamel is the number one dentist recommended brand for acid erosion so by pronounble repair
anywhere you buy your toothpaste or mouthwash visit pronamel.com today.
Hello everybody and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s.
The podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our
20s and what they mean for our psychology.
Hello everybody, welcome back to the show, welcome back to the podcast.
New listeners, old listeners, whatever you are in the world.
It is so great to have you here back for another episode as we break down the psychology
of our 20s.
How is everybody doing?
What's what's been on your mind?
What have you been thinking about recently?
Stress about, worried about maybe it's money which is me at all times.
Your bills, how little your job is paying you, maybe it's your current living situation.
Your landlord is quite frankly an asshole.
Your roommates irritating you, you can't find a place to rent in your city.
Maybe it is a break up, a long-term relationship breakdown that you really thought you were
going to be with this person forever.
You had all these plans for the future and then suddenly it was over your facing heart
break kind of in the same place where you fell in love.
All of these situations, states of mind, experiences seem kind of separately, seem to touch on
different facets of dissatisfaction in our lives.
But they have one thing in common and that is that they all cause us to really consider
the possibility of moving back home without parents.
Whether that is to save money because you can't find a place to live, you're going through
a massive life transition, it is becoming a lot more common for 20-something year olds
like you and I to revert back to living in their childhood home or sometimes not leaving
it all until they're in their late 20s, sometimes even early 30s.
Our living situation and our relationship with our parents are two major points of I would
say exploration and theory in psychology, especially during this decade that we call emerging
adulthood which is between the ages of 18 and 29 because these factors, these experiences
are living situation, our parents.
They shape a lot about who we are.
They shape a lot about what we're experiencing in some ways our entire state of mind and
how we go about seeing the world.
We're seeing a lot more research coming out about this in some of the pioneering studies
on emerging adulthood, this chapter that we're in that was conducted by the psychologist
Jeffrey Arnett back in 2014.
He talks about how to the biggest events we go through or kind of battles that we endure
on our path to full-fledged adulthood are leaving home and redefining our relationship with
our parents.
It really used to be the case that people would move out of their parents home and never
return.
For women, it might not be until they got married for men when they got a full-time
paying job as the gender norm goes.
Nowadays we're seeing a real societal shift whereby we are staying in the family home
for much longer, about 50% of people in their 20s right now still live at home with their
parents.
Typically women who move out a lot earlier but on average compared to 40% of people who
were living out of home two decades ago, there is this kind of decline in individuals who
are seeking out independent living during this decade.
Living independently is no longer like a signifier of adulthood as it previously was because
A, it's occurring later but B, we're also boomeranging right?
We're moving out, we're leaving home and saying, bye mom and dad, I'm flying the nest
and five years later we're back where we started, we're back in our childhood bedrooms.
It used to be the case that you couldn't even be labeled as an established adult until
you had moved out of home.
That was the biggest thing that researchers used as a signifier to say this person has
grown up.
I think that that label, that kind of factor, that category no longer applies because there
has been a real change in our willingness and our ability to kind of leave the nest.
So, let's talk about it today.
I really want to firstly speak about why it is that a lot of us are delaying moving out,
staying with our parents or being forced to move back home.
Obviously, cost of living is a huge one but we are also getting married later.
Meaning that we might stay at home for longer before potentially meeting someone and settling
down.
We're also seeing that although there has been a big growth in education levels, more people
are going to university, that hasn't translated into greater job security or financial insecurity.
So I asked you guys on Instagram, there's almost I think 10,000 of you who answered me
and the question I asked is why do you still live at home with your parents or why did
you move back home with your parents?
Because about 50% of you said that they had moved out, you had moved out of home and you
would have found your way back.
So there were three main contributors factors really that stood out to me.
Firstly, this one I'm going to just put in its own category was COVID, of course, huge
life changing medical epidemic event.
So I moved out when I was 17 but I moved back home with my parents for three months when
COVID first began at like 20 years old.
And I think that was a lot of people's experiences.
My mom had a total mental breakdown about me getting sick and dying and having no one
around to help me because we knew so little about the virus.
So I lasted about three months before I literally begged them to let me go back to Canberra
where I was living at the time and it was so strange because I could have left at any
point, right?
Like I was an adult.
My residential address was in Canberra so it was like full within the law to travel back.
But the dynamic of being at home made it feel like I have to get their permission that
suddenly all of my agency, all of the authority I had over my life was kind of gone now that
my parents were living under the same roof with me.
So COVID was a big thing for a lot of us, I think a lot of us did find ourselves moving
back home around that time.
It really was though, I think once in a lifetime situation, I don't think that we're going
to experience that again in our life if not in our 20s.
So we're going to count that as its own separate category.
But the second biggest reason that people told me about around why they either didn't
revout or moved back home was finances and saving money.
Oh my goodness, the world that we have inherited from our families, from our parents and their
parents and their parents before them is a broken world.
There is an insane cost of living crisis going on.
And I don't think I could name a city that isn't experiencing this or I could name a country
that isn't experiencing this.
So a lot of us aren't able to afford rent, I think in Sydney right now, the average rent
is $750 a week when the average income is $1400.
And that is including people who are directors and executives and at the very high level of
their career, I don't think the average 20 something year old, like you and I is making
$1400 a week.
So even if that was the case, almost half of your salary is going to just putting a roof
over your head.
So that's not really accessible, is it?
I think the rule of thumb is like a third or a quarter of your income should go towards
paying rent.
That doesn't seem like, but it's a $1400 versus $750.
That really is just taking out a huge chunk of what you're taking home each week.
So we can't afford rent, we don't want to pay rent.
You know, I think a lot of us are getting fed up of paying off somebody else's mortgage
whilst you're never going to be able to afford a place.
And I think that's stark inequality that we are observing is creating a huge mental
strain on the lives and health of young people in this generation, primarily through I think
an increased prevalence and incidence rate of financial anxiety, constantly being concerned
or hyperfixated on your income, on job security, on your debts, on your ability to afford
necessities.
I really don't think I can overstate how much financial anxiety this generation is experiencing
that previous generations did not have to experience whereby rent is one thing we can't
afford, a roof over our head.
We can't afford that without skimping on essentials like food or transport or health
care or even a social life.
Yes, your social life is a necessity.
It is essential being able to positively maintain your relationships.
It's not a luxury.
So all of this leads to a deep sense of unease which makes it really hard to relax in our
lives.
And moving back home with our parents can relieve that by taking away the primary trigger
I would call it for our worries about money which is rent and bills.
It's interesting because I saw this quote that said, living at home with your parents may
be free but you pay with your mental wellbeing.
You might not be taking on any tangible financial responsibilities but it does sometimes come
at the small cost of your emotional health and we're kind of forced into this really difficult
trade off during this decade.
Do we lose our health or do we lose our wealth?
That's what it comes down to.
The second biggest factor that people spoke about which I was surprised about and then
actually equally not as surprised about was a breakup.
I think when you start a life with someone in your 20s thinking it will be forever and
it isn't that is a significant disruptor to your sense of self, to your plans for the
future, your plans for tomorrow, even.
Sometimes we need the safety and security of our family to heal or to just give us a place
to stay.
I've seen so many friends enduring this recently whereby they've been with someone
for like years and they've been living together.
They're making plans for the future and then all of a sudden one of them turns around
and calls it quits and they're forced with this like really awful horrendous reality of
having to clean out the place you live together.
Break a lease, you know, just push forward do the daily things you used to experience with
them by your side.
That is its own unique form of psychological torture especially in our 20s when it does
kind of feel like a race to find the one as much as I disagree with that.
You know there is a societal pressure to like have a mate to have a partner by the end
of your 20s.
So I think they're also battling this sense of like we're now in back at square one.
I have to begin this whole thing again.
So that was another big factor was people experiencing a breakup and that being a catalyst
for moving home.
And the final one was the beginning or the end of a huge life transition that kind of
prevents us from having permanent housing.
A really great example of this is that period between graduation and starting a full-time
job, perhaps not having a job lined up, not making any money when you return overseas
without a lease.
You know that is another real big catalyst for moving home.
Some of us just want to be prepared, you know, to take our time until it feels absolutely
right to move out.
And if that means continuing to share a space, a home, our privacy with our parents, there
is one final factor that I actually want to talk about really quickly.
A lot of you actually talked about how when your parents became ill, you felt this real
sense of obligation to take care of them as they got older, as they kind of took care
of you when you were younger.
I think those of us with a real strong sense of family values, family obligation may
feel compelled to kind of give up our independent lives in our 20s to very selflessly assist our
parents.
And I'm sure it's not the easiest decision, but it definitely feels like the right one.
So what are the consequences of this?
Why does living with our parents in our 20s seemingly take such a psychological, emotional,
even sometimes physical toll and there is a toll, a very scientifically observable one?
So a recent Australian study published last year, one of the first of its kinds in Australia,
looked at cohabitation between parents and young adults.
So parents and children living together in the same house.
And they found that young adults, particularly those in their mid to late 20s living with
their parents, had poor mental health in those living independently.
And those mental health impacts become larger, the older that we get.
So when you're 21 living with your parents, it might still be a struggle, it's not that
bad compared to if you were 29 and living with your parents.
And the authors attributed this to several factors.
The first one is a sense of feeling stuck or feeling behind that you haven't yet reached
a milestone that other people in your life have.
You just feel like you can't progress your independent life.
And I think that there's a real cultural element in that, especially in Western nations,
like Australia, like the US, like the UK, like Canada, all of those.
Whereby, historically and psychologically, Western societies really value independence.
And they see a dependence on the family home and on family resources as a failure,
by more eastern cultures are a lot more collective, you know, collectivism.
That's a big part of their identity as a community, which is we help each other out.
It's not unnormal, unnormal, unheard of against for people in their 40s to still be living
with their parents or to have their parents move in with them.
So I really think that the impact you're going to feel is really dependent on a couple
of things, obviously culture, expectation, that's a big one.
But I also think the reason that we tend to struggle comes down to the innate nature
of a parent-child relationship.
And how that develops in our 20s when we are no longer a child by age, but we are a child
by relationship to our parents living under their roof, feeling like we're not fully able
to express or practice our freedom, we're not fully able to be recognized by them as an
adult, but rather as the child that they raised, the teenager that they scolded, the young
adult that they still feel a sense of protectiveness or control over.
Once again, this environment positions you like relationally as a child.
You are still that 16, 17, 18 year old version of yourself that your parents could control
and could send to your room and could ground, because the environment in which that relationship
and that dynamic occurred is the same, even if you have matured and grown older.
Our relationship with our parents I think is always going to be hierarchical.
They're at the top.
They have more power because of just the nature of the fact that they gave birth to you.
They created you.
They chose you if you were adopted, there was an active choice by them to have you as a
child and they got to implant you with their values.
Your childhood was formed by their choices.
They financially supported you for many years.
So when you spend that first 18 years of your life having to listen to them, perhaps having
to conceal parts of you to still seem like a child in their mind, arguing with them,
needing their permission, that doesn't shift overnight.
I think that's why we see the moment that we're back within the orbit of our family, we
like, regress significantly.
We become very dependent.
We argue like we did when we were a bratty teenager.
We don't pick up our laundry.
We just, we become this version of ourselves that we left behind, but when we come back
into the relationship, it positions us as being immature as still being a child.
And fact, I actually read this really fascinating piece of work in which one psychologist noted
that it's really common for people to regress psychologically, especially when faced
with tension or conflict within the family.
We revert back to the old patterns that we know that we have rehearsed and remembered from
childhood because this is the only way that we've ever related to our parents in these
situations.
It's so interesting because I was having like an argument with my mom a couple months
back.
I would say this is a weird thing.
I'm very good at arguing like in a mature way, like with my partner, with my friends,
with, I don't really argue.
You know what I mean?
Like it's, and when I do it, it's like safe and it's respectful and I know when to take
breaks with my parents, it's just like, I'm this feral human because it's just like,
I'm this child again who doesn't have emotional regulation because our relationship allows
me to fall back into that.
I always felt really embarrassed about it.
Turns out this regression is actually very universal.
It's reflecting our longest relationship, the one that we've had without caregivers and
with that a very deeply embedded pattern of behavior.
And it's very, very hard to break, especially if you continue to live at home and you haven't
yet separated from the family unit because that would give you kind of a form or a way
of psychological separation in which you would have the space to form your own values,
to form your own beliefs, to form your own attitudes beyond the family unit that need to
separate socially, physically, psychologically, get stronger and stronger the older we get
because that part of us that wants to be an established adult who wants independence,
who wants to decide what they have to do now, who wants to decide whether they're going
to leave a mess or not.
That gets harder to ignore even if we know that we are saving on rent, even if there is
a practical consideration there.
So this is what the very famous psychologist Eric Erickson calls the battle between identity
versus confusion, whereby we start to really push back against our childhood identity and
discover who we are, beyond the wants and beliefs of our parents.
We need to overcome this conflict between identity and confusion in order to progress in
our lives.
This used to occur when we were about 18.
But the fact is that adulthood is being delayed for a lot of us because the milestones that
normally defined our 20s are shifting.
So we're feeling this conflict and this urge for separation later on, perhaps, but more
intensely.
That's the argument that's been made in recent years.
And I think the luxury of having our own say over our environment, which we didn't get
as children, it becomes a necessity the older we get.
And having our own space becomes very psychologically important because your own space is an expression
of our emerging identity.
Having our own space allows for the expansion of our personal boundaries onto our external
environment.
So it's not just about how you want your parents to treat you.
It's how you want the control you have over your space, the control you have over your
furniture, over your mess.
I think having private and personal space is one thing, but having enough of it is another
thing.
You know, like you may still have that sense of control over your bedroom that's at your
home.
But you need more space than that as you get older because a private life cannot be
lived in one bedroom alone, especially when someone can easily walk in or can maybe hear
through the walls, especially when that bedroom is one that your parents essentially own.
You just don't have room to expand.
You don't feel as if you have the ability to actually be you.
And I think that can lead us to feeling very claustrophobic.
Alienated, maybe stuck.
It's really interesting because there was this study down on this that estimates that we
need at least 15 square meters of personal space, minimum as we go to.
So that's about the size of one and a half school buses.
You're probably not getting that with your parents living in your childhood bedroom.
So what you're going to see is another thing I want to focus on within that.
So privacy is a really interesting concept because it is quite literally defined as a fundamental
human right, meaning that there are major bodies across the world from the UN to major psychological
societies to the human rights commissions of the world that see it as essential for
well-being, essential for human safety, human security, but finally human fulfillment.
And it's not that our parents are deliberately withholding our privacy in most cases at
least, just that there is not much privacy to be heard by nature of living at home, by
nature of sharing living spaces.
And I think that we feel that especially when it comes to our relationships, both romantic
and platonic, I think inviting friends over becomes a lot harder because you can't use
the space exactly how you'd like.
Your parents may kind of always be lingering in the corner.
You can't necessarily talk openly about whatever you want.
You can't behave however you want.
There is still an illusion you want to maintain with your parents that you are a child.
There is still a way that you are kind of expected implicitly to act.
This is not the place to be uninhibited.
This is the place to be cautious.
Additionally, unless our friends are particularly close with our parents because I know that
does happen, sometimes you can feel quite on edge when you visit a friend's house and
their mom opens the door or their dad is sitting on the couch whilst you're cooking dinner.
Or he's like, I don't know, going to the bathroom whilst you're trying to catch up over
a glass of wine.
You always have a sense that you're not just speaking to your friend.
There are other years that are tuned in.
So it's hard to really get to that level of depth where vulnerability exists.
Things might feel strained.
Now, romantic relationships are a whole other bag of buttons, bag of buttons.
And I think that living at home can really change the whole trajectory of what happens between
us and someone that we're dating, particularly when we start courting someone, start feeling
them out, start sleeping with them.
It's kind of awkward to be like, do we want to take this back home?
Do we want to extend this date in a place where more comfortable?
By the way, I live with my parents.
You know, let's be real dating people casually.
It usually means you're sleeping together or you're doing something intimate in that sense.
You can't really invite them back to your place without fully introducing them to your
parents on date three or five.
And that completely once again speeds up the intensity of the relationship in an instant
whereby people who live alone or with roommates, you have time to feel this person out.
You have time to date them before they meet the parents.
You know, whereas if you're living at home, especially when it comes to sex, you know,
they might be meeting them pretty soon.
And it's also a bit of like a weird thing to have sex in your parents' house, thinking
that like they might be able to hear what's going on.
You kind of want to maintain this like facade that you're not a sexual creature, almost
for their peace of mind.
And that makes it harder, it makes it like a lot harder to do the deed.
So I remember when I moved back with my parents.
Not for very long, it was like probably only three weeks over the summer after I finished
my degree.
I was dating this guy who his parents also lived in Melbourne.
And so of course we're both in Melbourne at the same time.
We keep seeing each other over the holidays.
But because both of our parents were always home, we couldn't have sex.
And then one night I stuck him in through the side gate to this literal shed, like this
shed like studio thing we have in our backyard.
And he slept overnight on this blow up mattress and the next morning for some reason, because
literally no one ever grows into this room.
My mom like walks in and there is me in the sky like naked on a camping mattress.
And it was so funny because my mom always had this rule that her and my dad needed to
meet anyone who stayed over.
Like boyfriends and such.
I guess she did kind of meet him in a strange way.
But yeah, it was embarrassing.
And it felt like this weird curtain that you have around your private life is like pulled
aside and it's kind of ghastly.
And it can also lead to some intrusive questions, which I think is just sometimes our parents
attempting to connect with us.
But it feels really awkward and embarrassing.
And there can also be judgment within that if your parents attitude to dating is also
different to yours, which I think generationally is bound to happen.
They might not understand more modern dating practices like hooking up, like situationships
like one night stands friends with benefits or maybe they do understand it and that's
the problem.
They know that what might be taking place is transactional and it's an uncomfortable
mutual acknowledgement at that stage.
All of this comes down to once again, the innate child parent relationship dynamic.
That's what's playing out in this situation.
As we seek opportunities to redefine ourselves, to expand our personal lives through our
relationships, to make our lives our own, to kind of create new values for ourselves,
new environments, whatever it is.
Our childhood environment remains the same and it remains the environment that we're
in.
So I think that is a big adjustment, especially if you've moved back home after independent
living.
It's a bit like a yo-yo, right?
Like you've gone the full length of independence.
You've reached the full limit of what it means to live independently right to the end of
the string.
You've adjusted to the sense of liberation and freedom and choice and then you're kind
of pulled or yo-yoed back.
And that reverse adjustment is a lot harder because you know what's out there.
You know the grass is actually greener and you live with this realistic comparison between
living.
I don't want to say living alone, you could be living with roommates, but living independently
and living with family.
I think whatever your situation, cohabiting with your parents is obviously a scale.
Some people I spoke to loved it.
We're going to talk about that in a minute.
But the main factor that seemed to determine enjoyment versus dissatisfaction is the type
of parents that you have and your relationship with them.
Parents who were strict or controlling in childhood who are so-called helicopter parents are
probably not going to grow out of that because I think a part of their makeup is this like
sense of neurosis, this sense of needing control and authority and to be in charge.
And that part of who they are, that part of their personality does not disappear as their
children get older.
It makes it especially hard to seek out freedom in a cohabitation situation with your parents
or to even have a fruitful conversation about what needs to change to ensure you guys have
a positive relationship because they're not really open to discussion.
And that may have been the case always.
Perhaps they just never really got you.
They didn't respect your identity.
They didn't really respect what you were doing, what you wanted to do in your life, your
decision.
So that creates attention and it creates conflict that is heightened in close quarters whereby
each of you is trying to enforce your view and stand your ground and no one's willing
to shift.
And I think that that doesn't happen when you don't live with them.
It might happen to some extent but they don't know everything that's going on.
They don't have as many opportunities for contact to say what they think, even if it's
not what you want to hear.
They don't have as many opportunities to be intrusive.
So I think that that's a really common thing that happens whereby it feels oppressive
almost to have their constant, not a judgment but their constant opinion and they may also
kind of engage in a bit of guilt tripping.
They made Lord things over you.
That's a really common thing when we live at home.
You need to do this for me because you live under my roof.
I paid for this so you should show this house and respect.
You should do this.
You should come home before 12.
They have the power because they own the home and this kind of guilt tripping is a form
of manipulation even if it's implicit, even if they don't understand.
That's what they're doing.
Maybe because your parents don't have the skills or the language to assertively communicate
their feelings and so they resort to implicitly controlling your actions through guilt and
it leaves both people feeling terrible.
It leaves you feeling terrible.
It leaves them actually not saying what they mean and they've looked into this.
There was a study done in 2013, a study done in 2014 that confirmed the initial findings
that when guilt tripping happens frequently in a parent child relationship, it leads to
resentment and it leads to a loss of closeness and intimacy and it leads you feeling like
you need to get away that you don't want to come back.
It can also just be this elevated sense of conflict.
We were talking about with them giving out their opinion.
You feel very stuck because you don't have the distance that people who live out of home
have and I think that sometimes it can be very revealing of a lot of repressed childhood
trauma or missteps or resentment that is bound to come up in such close quarters.
It's just that now you have the adult understanding of your experiences and the adult rationality
to know that your parents probably may have been in the wrong to see what occurred that
could have been done better and your parents are not going to stay at the same way.
It can often promote this rehashing of negative, difficult behavioral patterns between you
and your mum and your dad and your caregiver that there has been no circuit breaker.
There has been no psychological separation to stop this from occurring.
Again, I just think this goes to show how your relationship with your parents can become
strained when you live under the same roof because we're not able to assert or practice
our independence.
We still feel childlike.
We still feel stuck.
Our relationships may suffer but sometimes maybe it's worth it to you to save some money,
to not drown in debt, to have housing stability and one part of it that we haven't discussed
is that there are benefits.
Some people just really like living with their parents and I think that that is also just
a completely valid perspective that I'm going to talk about after this short break.
We're also going to talk about some tips to cope, how to assert boundaries, how to get
the most out of this situation.
We'll be back shortly.
I love being able to talk about brands that I use on the podcast and this is a brand
that I've been personally using for over five years.
Our sponsor Nature's Way Alive Women's Multivitamin Gummies are specifically formulated
for women.
They contain 16 vitamins and minerals including the full B vitamin complex to help you convert
food into fuel, they also have calcium and vitamin D to support bone health and healthy
hair, skin and nails.
And for those of you who may be watching your sugar intake, they now have a zero sugar
version made with plant-based sweetness including stevia extract and monk fruit extract.
With just two delicious gummies, Nature's Way Alive Women's Multivitamin Gummies are
an easy way to feel like your best self every day.
To learn more, visit naturesway.com slash jema and use code jema10 at checkout for 10%
of any alive women's multivitamins, terms and conditions apply valid through June 30.
NutriFull is the number one dermatologist recommended hair growth supplement with over
1 million people seeing thicker, stronger, faster growing hair with less shedding.
Hair thinning is stressful and it's also complicated.
The problem is it's actually much bigger than your hair alone.
A whole number of internal factors can impact the way your hair looks, feels and grows.
NutriFull's whole body approach multi targets underlying root causes like stress, hormone
fluctuations and nutrient gaps for visibly thicker, stronger hair.
When I was experiencing hair shedding due to stress, NutriFull was a life savior.
It has multiple formulas that are tailored to give your hair what it needs based on biology,
life stage and lifestyle factors.
Take the first step to visibly thicker, healthier hair.
For a limited time, NutriFull is offering our listeners $10 off your first month subscription
and free shipping when you go to neutriFull.com and enter the code psychology.
Find out why 4500 healthcare professionals and stylists recommend neutriFull for healthier
hair.
neutriFull.com spelled N-U-T-R-A-F-O-L.com promo code psychology.
That's neutriFull.com promo code psychology.
Many people feel anxious when they think about their finances.
It can be really overwhelming, stressful, even feel hopeless, especially when we're in
our 20s and we're first starting out and not really sure what to do.
But when you have a solid financial plan in place, this anxiety turns into confidence.
Intuit is the financial platform that helps everyday people prosper.
Whether you are trying to manage your money in your 20s or trying to run a small business,
Intuit gives you the confidence to take control of your finances so you can live your best
life.
It helps you take control through products from Intuit like TurboTax, Credit Karma, Quick
Books and Mailchimp.
Intuit has helped a hundred million people live their best financial lives.
Visit Intuit.com-intuit.com to start living yours.
Let's get into it.
Ugh, our 20s.
The drunk dialing, the forgetting to wash our face at night and yes neglecting our teeth.
To do that last one, you only get one set of teeth so you need to protect them.
Pronamel-intensive enamel repair penetrates deep into the enamel surface and locks in
vital minerals to repair acid-weekened enamel.
Pronamel also makes a new mouthwash which helps to repair acid-weekened enamel beyond brushing
alone.
Pronamel is the number one dentist-recommended friend for acid erosion, so by pronounble
repair anywhere you buy your toothpaste or mouthwash.
Visit pronamel.com today.
If 50% of 20-something year olds are living at home, I don't think all 50% are struggling
because there are definitely some perks.
Beyond just lessening, you know, our financial anxiety or for temporary housing, there are
people who I know, who I'm friends with, who actively choose this lifestyle and living
arrangement even if they can afford to do otherwise, even if they have all available
opportunities to live out of home.
Again, I wanted to hear from you guys the listeners about your experience with this and you came
through, you provided some really fascinating insights.
A big benefit that was spoken about is knowing that you're always going to have a support
system and someone to turn to for comfort.
That is something a lot of us lack in our 20s when we do feel especially disconnected
and lonely, having someone who is always around is a blessing is really special, especially
if you're struggling mentally after a breakup or because of a mental health condition,
or if you're chronically ill or sick, I do think that that is a massive pro of living
with your parents in your 20s.
And honestly, I love being baby by my mom sometimes when she comes to town.
It feels really good to kind of switch off a part of my brain that is adult because
I suddenly have like my protector here.
I have someone older, I have someone wise out, someone who's definitely going to pay for
dinner.
Some of you people also said that you are actually really good friends with your parents,
which actually tends to occur more the older we get.
So there's been some research on this that shows that a level of contact and connection
with our parents tends to dip around 20 to 25 but then steadily rises thereafter.
That dip and they do say sometimes it begins much earlier around 17 but 17 to 25 is like
when we most likely say it's a large range but most of us will fall into it.
That dip is probably attributable to the need for distance in early adulthood to form and
identity that is separate from our caregivers.
But I think we do truly appreciate how valuable family is as we get older, how helpful they
are.
Living with our parents can be quite special because we do have a deep connection that we can
nourish and which can bring us a lot of comfort especially as they're getting older.
I think there is a sense of like I don't want to miss out on this time because we become
more acutely aware that we're not going to have them forever.
If you have kids as well, there's such a great help I heard from a few people who were single
mothers and honestly I admire you guys so much.
I'm sure parents are a really great help, a godsend at times and it just comes down to
the sharing of responsibilities.
You know, living in a house by yourself, even with other people, I don't think we kind
of appreciate how much work it is.
Like I really was not grateful enough for what my parents did for me back then in terms
of paying bills, keeping on top of cleaning, keeping on top of maintenance, keeping on
top of laundry, keeping on top of just like the most randomest things, locking the door.
Like there is a lot to be done and I think that when we share that responsibility, there
is obviously less of a burden on us and just like a sense of community and belonging
that we don't, you know, we tend to stray from in our early 20s.
It's like an unconditional love that money really can't buy.
So what do we do to make this experience more pros than cons?
What are some of the behavioral, psychological, emotional strategies for getting the most
out of this time?
Even if this is not your first choice for a living situation, you can make it better
and I want to talk about six tips to help you manage.
So the first one is to actually keep your parents updated on your life.
I do believe that a lot of like the inquisitiveness, the curiosity, what feels like, intrusiveness
comes down to them just wanting to know you.
So make it so that they're not surprised.
I think that creates tension when they're used to having, you know, they plan to have
this house by themselves once they were past a certain age for their children to leave
the nest, I guess, it's like the best way to put it.
And so you still being there makes them feel like they still have some kind of right to
know what's going on.
So invite them in so they don't feel like they have to force themselves in through opinion
and judgment.
But is telling them about your dating life in not as much detail, but in some detail
or about your friends or about how work is going?
I think that that just creates open channels for communication and it stops them from feeling
like, oh, you're just there eating my food.
You're on great for you.
You're not coming to me for the emotional support that I think they do kind of want to
offer.
The other thing is to articulate boundaries.
I feel like everyone knows this, but sometimes we're not great at knowing when to set a
boundary and about what, right?
We know we feel uncomfortable, but we're not sure what kind of behavior would prevent
that level of like uncomfortableness and distress from happening.
The best way to tell when a boundary needs to be set is by noticing your feelings and
when something you can feel something in your body, when you feel uncomfortable, that
is your brain telling you that something needs to be fixed or rectified.
That is your best alarm system right there.
So what about that moment, the words said, the situation, made you feel upset, made you
feel angry, made you feel frustrated.
Was it because they crossed a line in terms of like asking about your personal life?
Was it because they guilt-tripped you?
Was it because they asked you to do something that you didn't want to do?
Once you can articulate what it is that made you uncomfortable, then you can set a boundary.
Not before, you have to actually know what it was that was frustrating, what it was that
made you angry.
You need to express that boundary before it can have effect.
It might be like, hey, I don't want you to speak to me like that.
I'm not a child anymore.
So when we're having conversations, please speak to me as you would speak to one of your
friends or to, you know, my dad or to my mom.
Or it might be, hey, like actually, I understand that I'm living under your roof, but I'm still
in adult and I don't need a curfew.
I don't need you to tell me what to do.
And we have some respect around allowing me to live independently.
I think it takes courage to do that, but it will improve your life.
And just even speaking about what it is that's upset you, does allow you to come back and
reference that and say, like, hey, we talked about this.
And we spoke about the consequences of what would happen if this wasn't fixed.
Which outcome would you like here?
Do you want the outcome where I move out and we don't speak anymore?
Or where our relationship is incredibly tense?
Or do you want the outcome where we do have open channels of communication and we can
speak about this, like adults, rather than like, I'm still a child?
This also leads me to my next tip.
When you fight, don't go downstairs, stay high.
I understand as we spoke about, it's very easy to regress and become quite childlike in
conflict with our parents.
This is your reminder to be calm, to take a break, take a step back, go for a walk, and
to not let your parents put you in the position where you feel like you need to be emotionally
immature, they might be very high.
I don't know.
I feel like sometimes parents can be very much like up on their high horse, very much like,
oh, you don't understand, dismissive.
That's really freaking angry when you feel like you're still an independent person.
So don't let them put you into a place where you confirm that you are still a child, where
you confirm that you are not able to have constructive conversations with them.
So these next two, I think, are really practical.
The first one is to take on some adult responsibilities in the house so you don't feel like you've lost
control over your environment, that you're not doing something, you're acting to maintain
a home and pay some rent so that you still feel like you have some rightful ownership
over your space and that you're contributing.
Now, obviously, a big factor that we spoke about was that we move in with our parents,
we stay home with our parents because we can't afford to move out, so how can we afford
to pay rent?
I'm not saying pay the 750, that's the average weekly rent in Sydney or wherever, pay like
50 bucks.
We'll put like $20, what you buy, $20 doesn't buy them any groceries anymore, and there
are 100 bucks where you buy all the groceries for the week.
So that you still feel like there is a level of entitlement you have over this space because
you are making some kind of financial commitment, contribution that increases a sense of ownership
for you so that this is your space.
You don't own it but you're contributing to it, you have an investment in it.
Do things outside of the home.
This one is probably the most important of all of them.
Don't let your identity get tied up with being an adult who still lives in your parents'
house.
I know sometimes it can feel kind of strange, maybe shameful, you know, maybe not what
you wanted.
But that doesn't mean that you can't still get the most out of your 20s, right?
You should join a social club, a book club, late night sport, volunteering, rock climbing.
I think that these activities allow you to feel like you still have a sense of self outside
of the home, that you can still be free, you can still be your own person, you can still
be, you know, in this phase and this chapter of exploration and like journeying into adulthood
beyond the orbit of the family.
It's really, really valuable to keep up a sense of like, keep up a sense of like not independence
but a sense of engagement, maybe with the life that's going on around you and with other
people who are maybe living out of home, maybe aren't just other people like our age.
Put a lock on your door, someone actually sent this in.
That's just like a smaller session of privacy, right?
Like, sometimes it's nice to just know that mom isn't going to like go through your
like naughty drawer, like when you're when you're not at home, I understand if it's a rental
property that might be harder, but you can get a removable lock that you can take off
before the lease expires.
Just some way to assert that like this is my space, like we said, personal space is vital.
Psychologically, very vital, the older we get.
So that's really valuable to like assert that like this is my way, says this is sacred to
me, I can use this space as my own.
And finally, have some productive check-ins with your parents, with your family.
The same way you would have check-ins with roommates, right?
Living under one roof, people cohabitating is a melting pot, is a like a kindling for
conflict.
Like, something is going to go wrong because everyone has different preferences, different
ways of expressing their emotions, expressing their needs, different stresses going on
in their life that might be triggered or, you know, kind of broken by someone else's,
just doing something small, right?
It's the straw that breaks the camel's back as the saying goes.
So you do actually need to still be actively communicating about what's going on in each
other's lives, what needs to be done around the house so that there is a level of resentment
that builds up and spills over, what people are dissatisfied about, should there be a cleaning
roster, like not to turn it into a share house, but I think the secret to any good relationship
is really just having the guts to just be like, this is uncomfortable, but we're going
to talk about it anyways, because it's like a really painful massage.
You know you're going to feel better, you know that the future outcome is going to be
a lot more enjoyable.
I think living with home with your parents in your 20s takes a bit of courage.
It definitely takes a lot of emotional regulation and it takes effort.
It takes effort to still feel like you are independent and free and live in your best
life.
So I really hope that you enjoyed this episode.
I really enjoyed exploring this because I do believe that our living situation and our
relationship with our parents are two of the most significant contributors to our mental
belt well being in early or emerging adulthood, especially when they intertwine, especially
when they interact.
I want to hear more about your experiences.
If there's something we've missed, please reach out.
This is such a fascinating area of research, especially as we're seeing, rehabilitation,
rise we're seeing young adults move back more frequently.
I think it all points to like a broader societal shift in which it's hard for 20 somethings
to be as independent as our parents were.
And that's not to say that we don't want to be, right?
It's because of a whole range of factors like finances, like cost of living that interact
with our personhood and interact with the decisions that we are able to make.
So I really hope you enjoyed this episode.
I hope that you learnt something.
I hope that it improves your living situation.
It helps you redefine your relationship with your parents, whatever it may be.
As always, if there is someone who you think needs to hear this episode, maybe not your
parents, maybe your friend.
Or someone like that, please feel free to share it with them.
That is the main way that this show grows and reaches more people.
Make sure you're following.
You never know when a new episode might be one that you really need to hear and it pops
up on your feed and I don't know, it becomes part of your day.
So hit the follow button if you're on Spotify and subscribe, I think if you're on Apple,
I really need to brush up on my podcasting app knowledge.
And if you have an episode suggestion, if you want to contribute more to this conversation,
of course I would love to hear from you.
You can reach out to us at that psychology podcast on Instagram.
And as always, we will be back next week.
Stay safe and be kind to yourself until then.
