Psychology & Counseling
![Satya Doyle Byock - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_a_satya_doyle_byock.jpg)
Quarterlife: The Search for Self in Early Adulthood
An innovative psychotherapist tackles the overlooked stage of Quarterlife-the years between adolescence and midlife-and provides a guide to navigate it and thrive.
"Quarterlife is an insightful, revealing look at the messy and uncharted paths to wholeness, and a powerful tool for anyone navigating early adulthood."-Tembi Locke, New York Times bestselling author of From Scratch
I'm stuck. What's wrong with me? Is this all there is? Satya Doyle Byock hears these refrains regularly in her psychotherapy practice where she works with "Quarterlifers," individuals between the ages of (roughly) sixteen to thirty-six. She understands their frustration. Some clients have done everything "right": graduate, get a job, meet a partner. Yet they are unfulfilled and unclear on what to do next. Byock calls these Quarterlifers "Stability Types." Others are uninterested in this prescribed path, but feel unmoored. She refers to them as "Meaning Types."
While society is quick to label the emotions and behavior of this age group as generational traits, Byock sees things differently. She believes these struggles are part of the developmental journey of Quarterlife, a distinct stage that every person goes through and which has been virtually ignored by popular culture and psychology.
In Quarterlife, Byock utilizes personal storytelling, mythology, Jungian psychology, pop culture, literature, and client case studies to provide guideposts for this period of life. Readers will be able to find themselves on the spectrum between Stability and Meaning Types, and engage with Byock's four pillars of Quarterlife development:
• Separate: Gain independence from the relationships and expectations that no longer serve you
• Listen: Pay close attention to your own wants and needs
• Build: Create, cultivate, and construct tools and practices for the life you want
• Integrate: Take what you've learned and manifest something new
Quarterlife is a defining work that offers a compassionate roadmap toward finding understanding, happiness, and wholeness in adulthood.
"Quarterlife is an insightful, revealing look at the messy and uncharted paths to wholeness, and a powerful tool for anyone navigating early adulthood."-Tembi Locke, New York Times bestselling author of From Scratch
I'm stuck. What's wrong with me? Is this all there is? Satya Doyle Byock hears these refrains regularly in her psychotherapy practice where she works with "Quarterlifers," individuals between the ages of (roughly) sixteen to thirty-six. She understands their frustration. Some clients have done everything "right": graduate, get a job, meet a partner. Yet they are unfulfilled and unclear on what to do next. Byock calls these Quarterlifers "Stability Types." Others are uninterested in this prescribed path, but feel unmoored. She refers to them as "Meaning Types."
While society is quick to label the emotions and behavior of this age group as generational traits, Byock sees things differently. She believes these struggles are part of the developmental journey of Quarterlife, a distinct stage that every person goes through and which has been virtually ignored by popular culture and psychology.
In Quarterlife, Byock utilizes personal storytelling, mythology, Jungian psychology, pop culture, literature, and client case studies to provide guideposts for this period of life. Readers will be able to find themselves on the spectrum between Stability and Meaning Types, and engage with Byock's four pillars of Quarterlife development:
• Separate: Gain independence from the relationships and expectations that no longer serve you
• Listen: Pay close attention to your own wants and needs
• Build: Create, cultivate, and construct tools and practices for the life you want
• Integrate: Take what you've learned and manifest something new
Quarterlife is a defining work that offers a compassionate roadmap toward finding understanding, happiness, and wholeness in adulthood.
Editorial Reviews
"For decades now, there's been a psychological, existential crisis among America's young adults hiding in plain sight. There is no better person to address this than Satya Doyle Byock, who has made this age group her life's work. Quarterlife is compassionate, specific, forceful, lucid, and very wise. This is the book many people have been waiting for, whether they know it or not."-William Deresiewicz, New York Times bestselling author of Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite
"I'm obsessed with this book. If you're a younger millennial, or a Gen-Zer and trying to figure out why do I feel this way, why don't I feel satisfied, why do I always feel like I'm behind?-this is the book for you."-Anne Helen Petersen, author of Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation
"The years between adolescence and middle age are arguably the most formative in one's life, and yet so many young people spend them dissatisfied, confused, and unmoored. Quarterlife makes sense of this period and offers a roadmap for finding both meaning and stability on the path toward maturity. If you're a young adult looking for a way through, or if you're seeking to understand the struggles of young adults, you must read this timely and illuminating book."-Jill Filipovic, author of OK Boomer, Let's Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind
"Absent structured rites of passage to emerge from childhood into adulthood, how is a young person supposed to grow up today? Quarterlife is a valuable guide to the perplexed in those seas. Filled with illustrative examples, Byock provides tips, clues, and guidance for those who otherwise feel alone."-James Hollis, Ph.D., Jungian analyst and author of Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life
"I'm obsessed with this book. If you're a younger millennial, or a Gen-Zer and trying to figure out why do I feel this way, why don't I feel satisfied, why do I always feel like I'm behind?-this is the book for you."-Anne Helen Petersen, author of Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation
"The years between adolescence and middle age are arguably the most formative in one's life, and yet so many young people spend them dissatisfied, confused, and unmoored. Quarterlife makes sense of this period and offers a roadmap for finding both meaning and stability on the path toward maturity. If you're a young adult looking for a way through, or if you're seeking to understand the struggles of young adults, you must read this timely and illuminating book."-Jill Filipovic, author of OK Boomer, Let's Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind
"Absent structured rites of passage to emerge from childhood into adulthood, how is a young person supposed to grow up today? Quarterlife is a valuable guide to the perplexed in those seas. Filled with illustrative examples, Byock provides tips, clues, and guidance for those who otherwise feel alone."-James Hollis, Ph.D., Jungian analyst and author of Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life
Short Excerpt Teaser
CHAPTER 1
Something Better Than This
My interest in this time of life began as I neared my college graduation. I couldn't help but notice that practically everyone in my class was uncertain about their future. Except for the calm and happy few who had jobs lined up or were headed to law school, the scene felt like Godzilla had suddenly arrived on our shores. Some people started to panic and were throwing themselves in one direction or another, seeking some plan, any plan, to survive. Some seemed utterly resigned, as if they'd determined that their best days were in the past. Others still were partying a little too maniacally, as if they believed that keeping the college life going would make the enormous threat disappear.
Up until that point, we'd studied, written papers, and taken tests. We'd played sports, protested, partied, eaten lunch together in the cafeteria, and lain out on the vast lawn when it wasn't raining. We were occupied almost all of the time, but we were focused on getting through school and getting to graduation. Each class had deadlines and tests. Each semester led into the next one, until graduation day itself reached only after a last round of finals and preparation for visiting family. It happened quickly. Suddenly, here we were: finishing nearly two decades of school with very little direction on what to do afterward. Ample attention had been spent on how to get us into college and on sales pitches for which schools to attend, but now we weren't customers anymore, just a bunch of people in our early twenties being tossed from the academic nest with no instruction other than: Go. Go on. That's all we have for you.
I felt no clearer about what I was doing with my life than I had in high school. Most of the time when I expressed my existential protestations, they fell on deaf ears. This was just "the way things are," and I would "figure it out." I found myself reflecting on one of the last scenes in the beloved rom-com of my youth Say Anything. When I was a lovesick teenager, the scene that I'd replay over and over was of Lloyd Dobler holding a boombox above his head, like Romeo wooing his Juliet. (Of course, I also listened to the song he was playing, "In Your Eyes" by Peter Gabriel, on repeat.) But as I neared graduation, another scene from that movie started to creep into my consciousness. Diane Court, class valedictorian and Lloyd's Juliet, delivers a speech to a throng of fellow graduates and parents with whirring video cameras. She says at the end, "I have all the hope and ambition in the world. But when I think about the future, the truth is . . . I am really . . . scared." That was me in a nutshell. All the ambition in the world, and undeniably, utterly scared.
Three years after graduation, I was working as a project manager at a software start-up in downtown Portland. Between this job and college, I'd tried to devote myself to a career in humanitarian work or social justice. I'd applied to countless nonprofit jobs and had volunteered a couple of times abroad, first at a prison in Bogotá, Colombia, and then on the tsunami-ravaged coastline in Sri Lanka. I'd also worked various part-time, entry-level jobs to pay my bills. And in the early days of both "social entrepreneurship" and social media I'd tried to start a company that would connect young people like myself with opportunities to help communities at home and abroad. (Hence the foray into start-ups and tech.) This project manager gig was my first well-paid, full-time job since graduating, and I was grateful to suddenly have a savings account. But I wasn't happy. Beyond financial survival, I was no closer to understanding "the point" of what I was doing, nor did I feel like I was living a life destined for me. I had a "good job" and was grateful for that, but I was helping to build an entirely uninspiring tech product seemingly born from the connections of an old boys' club rather than any genuine vision or need. Most days, I stared out the window at the summer sky from twenty-six floors up wishing that I were on the ground and on my bike instead. I had attempted to create a life for myself that made sense to my insides and also made an impact on the world, but I was failing. This wasn't what I'd envisioned for my future. This couldn't be the purpose of all I'd been working toward in so many years of school.
I spent a lot of time journaling back then and wrote about my perpetual sense of disorientation. I wrote about all the wild animals that seem to have some form of navigation built into their instincts. Like how when male wolves leave their pack and venture into the world, they appear to have a sense of direction and purpose. Or how elephants ...
Something Better Than This
My interest in this time of life began as I neared my college graduation. I couldn't help but notice that practically everyone in my class was uncertain about their future. Except for the calm and happy few who had jobs lined up or were headed to law school, the scene felt like Godzilla had suddenly arrived on our shores. Some people started to panic and were throwing themselves in one direction or another, seeking some plan, any plan, to survive. Some seemed utterly resigned, as if they'd determined that their best days were in the past. Others still were partying a little too maniacally, as if they believed that keeping the college life going would make the enormous threat disappear.
Up until that point, we'd studied, written papers, and taken tests. We'd played sports, protested, partied, eaten lunch together in the cafeteria, and lain out on the vast lawn when it wasn't raining. We were occupied almost all of the time, but we were focused on getting through school and getting to graduation. Each class had deadlines and tests. Each semester led into the next one, until graduation day itself reached only after a last round of finals and preparation for visiting family. It happened quickly. Suddenly, here we were: finishing nearly two decades of school with very little direction on what to do afterward. Ample attention had been spent on how to get us into college and on sales pitches for which schools to attend, but now we weren't customers anymore, just a bunch of people in our early twenties being tossed from the academic nest with no instruction other than: Go. Go on. That's all we have for you.
I felt no clearer about what I was doing with my life than I had in high school. Most of the time when I expressed my existential protestations, they fell on deaf ears. This was just "the way things are," and I would "figure it out." I found myself reflecting on one of the last scenes in the beloved rom-com of my youth Say Anything. When I was a lovesick teenager, the scene that I'd replay over and over was of Lloyd Dobler holding a boombox above his head, like Romeo wooing his Juliet. (Of course, I also listened to the song he was playing, "In Your Eyes" by Peter Gabriel, on repeat.) But as I neared graduation, another scene from that movie started to creep into my consciousness. Diane Court, class valedictorian and Lloyd's Juliet, delivers a speech to a throng of fellow graduates and parents with whirring video cameras. She says at the end, "I have all the hope and ambition in the world. But when I think about the future, the truth is . . . I am really . . . scared." That was me in a nutshell. All the ambition in the world, and undeniably, utterly scared.
Three years after graduation, I was working as a project manager at a software start-up in downtown Portland. Between this job and college, I'd tried to devote myself to a career in humanitarian work or social justice. I'd applied to countless nonprofit jobs and had volunteered a couple of times abroad, first at a prison in Bogotá, Colombia, and then on the tsunami-ravaged coastline in Sri Lanka. I'd also worked various part-time, entry-level jobs to pay my bills. And in the early days of both "social entrepreneurship" and social media I'd tried to start a company that would connect young people like myself with opportunities to help communities at home and abroad. (Hence the foray into start-ups and tech.) This project manager gig was my first well-paid, full-time job since graduating, and I was grateful to suddenly have a savings account. But I wasn't happy. Beyond financial survival, I was no closer to understanding "the point" of what I was doing, nor did I feel like I was living a life destined for me. I had a "good job" and was grateful for that, but I was helping to build an entirely uninspiring tech product seemingly born from the connections of an old boys' club rather than any genuine vision or need. Most days, I stared out the window at the summer sky from twenty-six floors up wishing that I were on the ground and on my bike instead. I had attempted to create a life for myself that made sense to my insides and also made an impact on the world, but I was failing. This wasn't what I'd envisioned for my future. This couldn't be the purpose of all I'd been working toward in so many years of school.
I spent a lot of time journaling back then and wrote about my perpetual sense of disorientation. I wrote about all the wild animals that seem to have some form of navigation built into their instincts. Like how when male wolves leave their pack and venture into the world, they appear to have a sense of direction and purpose. Or how elephants ...
