THEto the 25 to 35 age range is a transition territory which does not resemble a landing place: it resembles a threshold. It is the age in which decisions weigh but do not define, in which work changes faster than desire, in which relationships stop being experiments without yet being stable architectures. Scholars call it emerging adulthood: a suspended condition, no longer adolescence nor yet adult solidity. We could translate it as “adults in the making”. «It is a fertile, very dense season, full of possibilities and, at the same time, fragile, because every possibility brings with it its own uncertainty» observes the psychotherapist Mauro Di Lorenzo, member of the Minotauro Institute and author of the essay Young adults in crisis (FrancoAngeli).
But when does adulthood arrive?
Many thirty-year-olds cross this suspended space with “a disorientation that they often cannot name”: not a crisis that erupts, but “something that grows slowly, like a thread that pulls from within without ever breaking”. On a cognitive-emotional level, this tension condenses into a background of light and continuous rumination. «It’s the struggle to concentrate when there would be no reason to, the double control over what you have already done, the feeling of not being completely present»: an emotional “out of focus” that does not blockbut it slowly undermines the quality of the days.
The crack, continues Di Lorenzo, can manifest itself as an almost invisible slowdown: «New hesitations, minimal decisions that become unexpectedly heavya morning tiredness that comes early.” Or it can generate a reverse movement, an ordering impulse: “Putting everything back in order, house, email, diary, almost as if aligning the outside could hold back an inside that escapes.” The body, meanwhile, responds with an increase in hypervigilance: the shortening of breath, the sleep that becomes lightthe tension that nestles in the shoulders or jaw, the palpitations that emerge without warning. They are discreet, “almost clandestine” signals that emerge in the most ordinary placesin line at the supermarket, during a silent meeting, in the moment before sleep.
Appointments imposed by the company
The crack also finds nourishment in the external landscape. «It is immersed in a context that is at times antagonistic» observes Emiliano Sironi, professor of Social Statistics at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart. «In Italy people leave their parents’ home around the age of thirtyalmost four years later than the European average, producing cascading effects on all the other stages of entry into adulthood.” In this scenario, continues Sironi, «the terrain on which thirty-year-olds advance is more fragile». And not for lack of will: «It is the cumulative effect of structural obstacles, which expose young adults to a long sequence of economic, work and relational instabilities. When this exposure continues for years, even those who perceive themselves as solid in their beliefs end up becoming more vulnerable.”
“What mother”, photo Ilaria Gioia
Work and private life intersect
Work is one of the places where uncertainties show themselves most clearly. «Today burnout (chronic stress, ed.) it no longer concerns only high-responsibility roles» explains Giovanna Castellini, head of the Stress and Work Maladjustment Center at the Milan Polyclinic. «It affects those who live between short contracts, intermittent assignments, hybrid roles. Chronic instability disrupts the perception of the futurereduces the feeling of having a grip on things. We feel like spectators, rather than protagonists.” And this same vulnerability does not remain confined to the professional sphere, but overflows into relationships, where “it manifests itself as a silent withdrawal, less emotional availability, the sensation that even bonds require an energy that one no longer possesses”. Because it’s hard to be there for others whenfirst of all, we are committed to keeping ourselves together.
The body like a diary
AND, when he can’t find words, anxiety finds a body. In the stories of thirty-year-olds, it is the somatic language that speaks. «We observe dietary rigidity, rituals, hyper-control» says Aurora Caporossi, founder of Comestai, a clinical center for eating disorders, and president of the Animeta association. «They are survival mechanisms: when life seems mobile, uncertain, elusive, the relationship with food becomes a point of attachment. It is not always a clinical disorder: it is often an attempt, even painful, to manage something bigger than yourself. The body becomes the place where we try to put order back when there is no longer any order possible inside».
According to the Ministry of Health, the onset of nutrition and eating disorders is increasingly concentrated in the 25-35 age group. The numbers hide behaviors that do not reach the diagnostic threshold, but have a profound impact on daily life. «They are silent signs: skipping meals without realizing it, alternating obsessive control and abandonment, using food as a measure of a faltering emotional stability. The body, in this sense, is not just a target. It’s a diary. A place where tension is translated and made visible.”
The oscillation that makes you reach your goals
«In the emotional landscape of thirty years, one of the most frequent risks it is believing that uncertainty is a mistake. That the oscillation is a sign of immaturity. That the slowness in finding a structure is a personal fault” explains Cristina Riva Crugnola, professor at the University of Milan-Bicocca and author of Becoming young adults (Raffaello Cortina). Nevertheless, “This stage is an important turning point in the life cycle» he clarifies. «Young adults, oscillating between the different potentials available, must face significant choices regarding autonomy, relationships and career. The oscillation is not a deviation: it is the very structure of the process.”
It is a natural movement, even if culturally little legitimized. «What should be seen as a physiological adjustment is often experienced as a failure» observes Riva Crugnola. The result is a fragility that does not depend on weakness, but on the absence of glances that recognize it. «A generation with fewer networks, more uncertain prospects and slower transitions does not falter because it is fragile: it falters because it is alone in the interpretation of what it feels». And it is precisely this loneliness that makes the discomfort sharper. When a shared language is missing, every doubt becomes private, almost guilty.
Instead, it is within this fluctuating movement, made up of attempts, pauses, restarts, that the space of the possible also opens up. «Many thirty-year-olds find their direction just when they stop wanting to correspond to a defined identity and allow oscillation and exploration to do its work. And this is where the dual nature of thirty years appears: a vulnerable and, at the same time, generative phase». It is the age in which the cracks make themselves felt, but also the age in which, suddenly, something lights up, like a supernova that until a moment before seemed impossible to predict.
