Even with a good career and all the "adult milestones" I don't feel like an actual adult. I feel like I'm pretending to know what I'm doing. Anyone else experience this?
I see adulthood as a gradual undoing of the damage that the process of going through childhood and "growing up" does to us. Not necessarily from any specific trauma, but just that almost all of us will reach our 20s and beyond with quirks and mental health issues just by nature of a very complex and at times traumatic world. And an ideal adulthood is the ability to eventually move beyond merely coping but regaining some of the lost joy and innocence of childhood but with the increased responsibility of the self and others that comes with adulthood.
I came to say exactly this. I have a career, have hit life goals, and done all that stereotypical stuff, but I didn't really feel like an 'adult' until powering out with my therapist through childhood trauma and weird mental things, like handling my ADHD and coming to terms with my mortality.