Update, 2019: Wow, I developed this post into a book! You can order it here!
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I was in graduate school when I first heard the term “millennial.” It was at a conference. The session was about how to serve millennial students, because they have different characteristics than the Generation X students that went before them. It was here that I first started hearing things like “millennials need to be recognized for participation,” “millennials feel they are special,” “millennials are sheltered,” “millennials are likely to have helicopter parents,” and more. Society as a whole loves to hate on the millennial generation (those born between 1980-1999), calling us “special snowflakes” and sarcastically referring to us as “social justice warriors,” calling us out for “being offended by everything” and, everybody’s favorite, pointing out how very entitled we are.
Here’s the secret: We’re not.
The negative opinions directed at millennials are a perfect example, on an enormous societal scale, of cultural gaslighting.
What’s Gaslighting?
Glad you asked. I learned about gaslighting within the last couple years as I explored topics surrounding emotional abuse and narcissism. Gaslighting is the psychological manipulation of making someone question their own sanity. It’s an emotional abuse tactic. It can also be described as “the attempt of one person to overwrite another person’s reality” (as defined in this article from Everyday Feminism).
Have you ever gotten into an argument with a parent, boss, or romantic partner about something they’ve done that upset you, but by the end of the argument, YOU’RE the one apologizing for hurting their feelings? This is often a result of gaslighting. They flip it around and become the victim, and your original feelings never get resolved because the conversation always descends into the other person’s victimization.
As one example from my life, when I first faced up to the fact that my first marriage was in real trouble and I was considering divorce, I (very calmly) asked my ex-husband if he’d consider marriage counseling. His response? “I cannot believe you can even ask that of me.” He was so offended by the suggestion that something was wrong that I questioned the validity of my feelings. “Oh my god,” I thought, “I must be terrible. Is anything even wrong or are my expectations just crazy?” This is an example of gaslighting.
Now imagine a similar scenario where you are applying for a job, but the job requires a college degree, but you can’t pay for a college degree without a job so you end up taking out massive loans. Then when you graduate, you still can’t get a job without experience. So you end up in a minimum wage job (or three), making ends meet and barely making your loan payments. You say something like, “the minimum wage needs to be raised, people can’t live like this,” only to receive a barrage of old, crotchety white people yelling at you about how gosh-darn ENTITLED you are, and how THEY got a college education working part time and how it’s your fault for taking out the loans in the first place.
This is what I’m talking about. Generations before us completely drove the bus into a lake and it’s somehow our fault everybody’s drowning.
What are Millennials really like?
So if millennials aren’t a bunch of spoiled brats with an entitlement mentality who need a trophy just for putting on pants in the morning, what are they?
I am in a Facebook group of geeky women (mostly moms) from around the world, and our group is capped at 500 members. When it was discovered that two of our members were actively fighting to get out of physically and emotionally abusive marriages and needed money for legal help and deposits for moving, the group arranged a massive auction and hundreds of members donated their belongings and purchased in the auction to raise thousands of dollars.
When another member of that same group was faced with an unimaginable loss and an enormous bill, we had more auctions and helped her get through the worst moment of her life as best we could.
I have shipped pet supplies, groceries, books, clothing, and more to broke friends whose kids and cats were hungry, who have experienced loss and just couldn’t get up to “adult,” and to people who needed to receive a message to pull themselves out of a bad place.
I see us raising money for funeral expenses, medical bills, emergency surgeries for beloved pets, and more. I see us trading services or goods for other services or goods. I see us sending money via PayPal to make somebody’s day a little easier. I see us buying things from work-at-home-moms on Etsy or Facebook rather than support large corporate stores.
Once, I could feel a cold coming on but I was out of grocery budget, and a friend shipped me a box of tea from Amazon. I’ve sent her groceries and pet supplies when her budget was tapped. This is our generation.
We barter and trade, we lift each other up when we need it, and we empower each other. We have each other’s back.
But what are they reeeeally like?
Anecdotal evidence aside, here’s some science.
First of all, it’s important to note that there are some 80 million people in the millennial generation, making us the largest cohort in history. This makes us very fun and easy to study. I pulled some data from a 2012 report from the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation.
Millennials are tech-savvy, having been raised in the most technologically advancing decades of recent human history. We are optimistic (41% report satisfaction with the way the country is performing, compared to 26% of people over 30). Please note that this data was from 2012 and if I were a betting woman, I’d bet that fewer millennials are pleased with how the country is doing at this particular moment in time. 2016 has been rough.
“Young people are more tolerant of races and groups than older generations (47% vs. 19%) with 45% agreeing with preferential treatment to improve the position of minorities.” Not only are millennials the largest demographic, we’re also the most diverse. We are 60% non-Hispanic white (compared to 70% for older generations), 19% Hispanic, 14% black, 4% Asian, and 3% mixed race. Eleven percent of us are born to an immigrant parent. So the generation that hears “Why are you kids so offended by everything these days,” is offended because we’re sick and tired of seeing minorities vilified and punished by systemic racism within the system.
Millennials are multi-taskers. Multi-tasking is actually harmful to the brain and leads to a huge decrease in productivity. But, you know, we gotta work all these jobs and get everything done, lest we die penniless in the gutter.
Millennials are engaged and expressive: 75% have a social networking profile, 20% have posted a video of themselves online, 38% have 1-6 tattoos, 23% have non-earlobe piercings. The research indicates a trend toward “self-promoting,” which some skew to mean that millennials are self-confident (OH NO, THE HORROR) and self-absorbed. Others take this data to conclude that millennials are identifying their passions and making their own path instead of following others’ paths for them.
Millennials get their news from TV (65%) and online sources (59%).
Millennials may be the first generation in over 100 years to have a decrease of their average lifespan.
Millennials have a high graduation rate from high school (72% in 2012) and college enrollment rate (68% in 2012). Over half (58%) of millennials that enroll in a four-year college graduate within six years.
Millennials have an average of $25,000 in student loans. There is more student loan debt than credit card debt in the United States. Tuition rates are rising faster than inflation. However, enrollment continues to increase and there is a trend that jobs are paying more for more educated applicants.
On and on and on and on. Read the full report linked above for more statistics and research.
Millennials struggle with mental health
Most millennials I know struggle with mental illness to some degree. Anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, and more. I wonder how much of that anxiety comes from being told that wanting a living wage, affordable college, or adequate healthcare means that you’re being a spoiled entitled brat. It really doesn’t. The generations before us HAD a living wage, affordable college, and adequate healthcare. But now, inflation has far surpassed the minimum wage, college tuition and loan interest rates are through the proverbial roof, and medical bills are the top cause of bankruptcy in America.
These things were not caused by millennials, but after being raised on a steady diet of “you’re entitled,” we don’t even need to hear it from other people. We believe it about ourselves. As a society, we now romanticize struggle, busy-ness, and “the hustle.” If you’re not losing sleep and working two or three jobs, you must not want it enough.
What if we’re actually not crazy? What if wanting to work one full-time job and have the ends not only meet but actually overlap a little is NOT an entitled pipe dream?
The sheer stress of existing in today’s world is enough to give anybody an anxiety disorder. Add the fact that we’re told over and over again how we need to just bootstrap it, because generations before us handled life just fine, and you have a recipe for disaster. The generations before us could afford college tuition on minimum wage and didn’t have bosses who expect us to be tied to our devices at all hours.
I often feel this way about our financial goals. I have a full-time job and bring in extra income from freelance marketing work and resume writing. I make “good money” by most standards. And I catch myself thinking I should be working a part time job in the evenings or on the weekends to make our financial goals happen faster. But at what cost? I know for a fact that my mental health would suffer if I did that. I can’t even imagine the psychological stress of people who have to work multiple jobs just to meet their basic needs. We’ve got people working two or three jobs to feed their families that they barely see. That’s not even getting into the cost of child care.
More reading on millennials and mental health:
- Mental Health Issues and College-Age Millennials, Psychology Today
- A generation on edge: A look at millennials and mental health, Vox Magazine
- Are Millennials Really the Most Mentally Ill Generation?, Moods Magazine
Conclusions (for now)
The millennial generation has been tasked with fixing the broken system we inherited and chastised for not doing it right or for daring to suggest improvements.
If you think we’re doing a bad job, ask yourself how it got this way in the first place.
Born Again Minimalist 
Is the following really a true statement?? “The generations before us HAD a living wage, affordable college, and adequate healthcare.” I think not.
That said, great article! I have three millennial daughters; needless to say, I am discouraged about the state of the society they must traverse.
Outside of WWII times, the generations before us did have a living wage and well beyond affordable college, healthcare, and housing.
Wrong, I was born in 1968 and those statements are not true. Housing is close to what it was in the 90s and college could not be paid for with a part time job then either. Same with self insured insurance, it cost over 600 to self insure a family with high deductibles and awful caps in the 90s. Again, those statements just are not true. I know my brothers in the 70s had to take out loans for college too.
I am the generation before you, with 4 millennial children (20, 21, 24, 25) yes i was a mom at 18. My first jjb was for $ 2 an hour plus tips. I doubt that even in 1986 ( I was 14 when I had my first job waiting tables, I have worked ever since full time even through college with children). The idea, concept, current verbage to suggest that the millenial generation has it worse is absurd. My parwnts did not pay for my school, not one dime. I took out loans that to this day I still pay back and it never bothers because without those loans and the foresight in making a decision to pursue a job in an in demand profession instead of “following my dreams” I have been able to give my children a better life than i had growing up, buy a home, and pay for my kids college although I pay after the student loan which is about half so yes my kids will graduate with loans but also with a profession that allows them to financially become independent . We have to make everyone accountable for their own life, ddecisions and finances. Stop making excuses
I went to graduate school in the late 60s. I borrowed money for tuition. I had the GI Bill, but still had to get a part time job to pay for living expenses
Hi. I am a Gen Xer who graduated with $18,000 in college loans and made less than $1000 a month at my first job which was IN MY FIELD. By the time I paid rent, student loan and gas and insurance each month, I did not have enough left for food and utilities.
20 years down the road, my husband and I have lost five jobs between us since the Great Recession began—everyone of them for reasons related to the recession–downsizing and cuts. We still do not own a house.
Then, as millennials rarely do, I spent three years as a caregiver for my terminally ill parent. Now I am doing temp work and compete for jobs with Baby Boomers who retired with full pensions but are “bored” and want to work so they actively take food out of my mouth.
Tell me again about how my generation has a living wage and affordable healthcare and college and all is great for us. I really want to know.
Affordable college for sure…. https://www.google.com/search?q=yale+tuition+then+and+now&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS706US706&espv=2&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiw3I6m6vnPAhUHwVQKHSiXBYIQ_AUICCgB&biw=1242&bih=910#imgrc=BA1eik4jKJQ9MM%3A
Yes, when I was in my 20’s and 30’s (in the 60’s and 70’s) I easily earned a living wage at one job, college tuition was so low, under 2,500 for an entire year of college, and well healthcare wasn’t as expensive as it is now. My doctors would let me pay on a plan back then. Oh no not now you must have their money up front, or be insured. On the whole it was way easier to be financially secure holding one job.
I graduated with a teaching degree in 1979. It cost $8,000.00, 4 years, room and board, student teaching included. Starting salaries were about $12,000. Definitely more affordable and doable than today. You could start a job that paid you more in one year than what your whole 4 year tuition cost you. Not true today.
I am 65. My dad didn’t make a lot of money but he with budgeting we had a home. College tuition was very affordable and before insurance, our family MD was a few blocks away and affordable. There were sliding scale mental health clinics all across the US before Reagan.
I feel for Millennials. I often wonder who they will every own a home, get a Master’s if they want it and have the time and freedom to really explore and fulfill their potential.
I’m 73 years old, and I put myself through college on a work-study job and two very part-time jobs: Officiating at local middle school girls’ basketball games and cashiering two nights at a local discount department store. Graduate school didn’t happen for me until I was much older (I graduated in May, 2016) but my work position has not changed — I’m still underpaid for my experience and education.
The point I’m making is that college was more affordable in the sixties and way less affordable in the late eighties and the nineties (when I was trying to get my children educated). This author is right. As for entitlement and narcissism, I see what looks like that in my workplace and at professional conferences, but perhaps that’s optimism I’m witnessing, not ageism.
This is a great article. I wrote something similar recently about how the Baby Boomer generation is responsible for how we got here and how I am optimistically hopeful that the Millenial generation will change things moving forward.
View at Medium.com
Past generations have retired with generous pensions and their employers health plans for life. These have been replaced by a 401k if youre lucky, and Medicare. Past generations were able to afford college without giant piles of debt, some even didnt go to college and had living wage jobs that enabled them to buy a home and comfortably raise a family. Healthcare did not cost what it does now. So I am not sure where you draw your conclusion from, but my parents generation are all living fat and happy in their retirements and I cant even afford to buy a house-thats mainly because my first property investment at the age of 23 went down the tubes with the real estate market. I suppose as a millenial thats my fault too.
The simplest example I can summon is the cost of college tuition in the 1970’s vs. the average hourly wage for students. The average college tuition in 1980 was $2,100 public/$9,500 private; meanwhile federal minimum wage in 1980 was $3.10/hr. The number of hours needed to work in 1980 to pay for a full year of tuition was 678 hours/year – or just over 13 hours/week public and 2,742 hours or 59 hours/week private.
In 2010 those numbers are $7,600 public/$27,300 private at a $7.25/hr minimum wage. This translates to 1,049 hours or 22 hours/week for public/ 3,766 hours or 73 hours/week private.
In 1980 the average student could work a part time job with no scholarships and pay for college, only rarely taking out student loans if they happen to live in an area with a high cost of living and state minimum wage that wasn’t adjusted to compensate.
In 2010 the average student with no scholarships would not be able to afford college working a part time job. In areas with even moderate cost of living such as Ohio, even maximized students loans and 30 hours/week are barely enough to live off of.
In summary: Students in 1980 could afford college easier, had more options to finance their education, and typically had a higher quality of living and more time to focus on academics than students in 2010.
I meant 1980 in the first paragraph. My apologies.
I wish I could find the source, but I know for a fact that in 1970, one needed to work around 4 hours a day average at minimum wage to pay for average college tuition. Today, that number is somewhere around 18 hours a day at minimum wage to pay for the average college tuition.
Generation X: we HAD a living wage ! Thanks God racism, sexism and all the ugly “isms” are out of the way with milleniums! Mum of two millenium kids. From Africa.
It’s true. I was raised in a one income family, and we did not fare at all badly. My mother stayed at home and took care of home and hearth. It was by no means perfect, but it was vastly better than today’s conditions.
I would agree. I was born in 1968…I never had a living wage for a minimum wage. When I was in high school, I worked at McDonalds for 3.65/hr. When I was in college, I worked at Pizza Hut and McDonalds for 4.25/hr. Later, I was working jobs in the 7-10/hr range in warehouses and factories. I didn’t break out of that until I started working as a web developer. The first few years were great until the dotcom bust happened, and then after that, I may as well have been working a minimum wage job as I was stuck working contract jobs with lots of large gaps in between contracts. I was probably working 1/3 of the year and the rest of the year I was surviving on unemployment. It all came to a head last year when my contract ended in November of 2015, then unemployment ran out in March. I ended up homeless at the end of July until the end of August, living in a tent at a local campground borrowing money from my parents to survive, when I got into a house with the help of Catholic Charities. I am now on SSDI (I am a disabled vet and some of my disabilities played into making it difficult tio find positions, plus I am a single parent, so I was pretty much stuck in this area for job hunting unless I could find work from home positions…which I have had a few, but unfortunately, that are not as common as they should be in the web development world). I have decided to retire and just live off of my VA disability and SSDI as it is stable. It’s not as much as I was making working, but I know that I have a check every month. My adult daughter has moved in with me so I can provide daycare for my grandson so she doesn’t have to spend most of her paycheck on daycare…something that is not cheap. In return, she helps around the house and with bills. Once we stabilize, financially, we will be doing ok…nothing lavish…but I think we might actually be comfortable. But as you can see, the idea that previous generations had it easier is a load of crap. I have struggled and struggled for most of my adult life. I went to college and amassed student loan debt that I can never hope to get paid off. That will always be like the sword of Damocles hanging over my head. The promise my generation had ended when Bush jr was elected. It has been a steep downhill slope every since.
I’m a 61 y/o boomer but I have worked with a lot of millennials in my job. I think you describe them fairly well. I would add that they are a lot more teamwork oriented than my fellow boomers. They are also the leaders for the community service things that my employer does. So I”m a millennial fan.
I think many of them have huge debt, as you describe, when they get out of school and that is a problem that society needs to address. My tuition in the mid 70’s was a flat $162 per semester. Not per semester hour, just $162 flat for anybody taking 12 hours or more. Plus it was easy to get scholarships and on campus jobs. And I lived at home. My cost of education was nothing.
So I had no debt, to say the least. It is a lot easier to get started in life when you don’t have to maneuver around a huge debt load starting out. I think society has failed our young people by not subsidizing higher education more. I think it is a big mistake not to provide quality, inexpensive education.
I’m going to go cry in a corner now… In the 70s, tuition was $162 a SEMESTER?! I knew that there was a disparity but I had no idea how much! I graduated from Truman State University in 2012 (which has recently been awarded for being the best quality education for the least price in the state of Missouri) and the average cost per semester all 4 years that I was there was about $8000 and that didn’t include extra fees, another $1000 or more for books, and what have you. After getting a 4 year degree, I am $30,000 in debt…from one of the ‘cheaper’ schools in the country… The idea that it is entitled to want that to not be the case is bogus.
Just spent the last 4.5 years paying $10,000 a semester in California. Working only really covered housing, living, and supply expenses. Had to borrow every last penny for tuition. Thankfully CS pays very well out of school but still, ended up with a six figure college debt after interest.
Here’s some perspective…
$162 comes to almost exactly $1000 in 2016 dollars. So *four years* of tuition in 1970 is the same as your *one semester’s*. That’s some real perspective right there.
For those wondering, this is about $730 when adjusted for inflation. Not much at all for a semester.
I think this a great article and opens up a conversation that needs to be had. I am not going to define the millennial because I have always been against labeling people. Unfortunately we have become very good at labeling individual people and then flipping them into groups and discounting the very things that make us unique. Life events shape each and everyone of us differently. I am 58 years old, if you insist, yes I fall into the boomer category…barely. And I am far from old and crotchety. My dad worked the midnight shift, and when I was 10 years old, my brother 11, and my sister 5 my mom at the age of 29 nearly died and ended up on years of twice a week dialysis. At the time health insurance had a major medical rider for one million dollars. Sounds like a lot doesn’t it? It wasn’t. Relatively speaking healthcare was just as expensive to those who could not afford then as it is to those who cannot afford it today. We blew through that catastrophic coverage and lost health insurance altogether. My dad was only bringing home $442/biweekly. and even though I started working part time at the age of 15 by obtaining a worker permit we were obviously a one income home. Our family of 5 shared ONE CAN of veggies between us at a supper meal. My father could have applied for the free lunch program in high school but dad was so proud that he refused until he was in such bind with healthcare expenses that he finally surrendered his pride. By then I was a sophomore and bro was a junior. Food stamps were not available for us but boy were we “lucky” to be able to go and pick up the 5 pound block of American cheese that the county gave us every month instead. (YES that is sarcasm…although the cheese was pretty damn good.)
YOGIABB; I am not sure where you went to college in the 70’s for $162 a semester but I wish I had lived where you did. I worked three…count them…three part time jobs while attending day and evening classes at the community college. No one in my family even attempted to go to college. I was the first. It took me three years to get through a two year degree; a degree in criminal justice, (although I fractured my leg 2 weeks prior to finals and spent the next 9 months in a cast never having a chance to graduate in person.) I had student loans up my ass. Tried to find work but most good law enforcement jobs were all civil service by then and often required a 4 year degree. I was selected from the civil service exam list for a C.O. position and wound up working at the infamous Attica prison. Depending on your age, you may or may not be familiar with the riots that occurred and the many who were shot dead during that prison uprising. I could not stand working there. I resigned, decided that I wanted to help people rather than lock them up and went back to college to become a registered nurse. I took required class courses for nursing part time as I continued to work part time and then started nursing school. Eventually I went all in. I boarded and took the max loans out so I could concentrate on nursing school.
At almost 30 years of age I graduated from nursing school and took the boards to be licensed to work in my state. More loans up the ass…a little more than $25,000. When the clinic I was working in as an RN shut down and I lost my job (after I had JUST cosigned on a mortgage) I called the bank and asked for a deferment for my school loan; I did not declare bankruptcy or simply not pay my loan, I deferred it, continued to pay interest and eventually began repaying the loan again. It took me fifteen years…that’s right…FIFTEEN to pay them all off. But that was the way I was raised. You always pay your debt first. College was NOT cheap, Inflation was on the rise and by the end of the Carter admin. I was only allowed to purchase gas on even days. I look back on it now and realize how difficult things actually were for my family, (mom died at the age of 40) but back then, in the midst of it all, I never felt that way…NEVER. I didn’t blame anyone for anything going wrong I wasn’t cursing the world for our hardships because it never occurred to me that I was enduring a hardship. That’s not to say that I didn’t curse God a few times because I most assuredly did but God has broad shoulders.
So what is my point? Simply this; let’s try to get away from labeling people altogether. For every human being on this earth there is a story and that story is unique and consequential to how that person will live out their life. I don’t know you and you have no clue who I am. But we love to put people in boxes without even trying…like a book cover that doesn’t appeal to you so you never even crack it open to read what is inside. We should we desperate to stop labeling and attacking each other and excited to talk to one another instead. There is so much we can learn from one another and if we want to be understood then we must be willing to understand in return. NAMASTE’, my friend.
I love using the inflation calculator, so hold on.
$162 in 1977 (an arbitrary “mid-70s” year) is the same as $645.40 today.
Still much, much, much cheaper than today!
I forwarded this to my millennial children. Brava Caitlin! And congrats on your reach on this post! 🙂 ❤
Another not-old-but-not-young guy here, thx for your perspective. It definitely offers an alternative point of view that I hadn’t really considered. (I do think the stupidly high student loan thing is bordering on criminal but thats a different post). Will need to stew on the article and absorb it.
The idea of lumping together everyone from 1980 to 1999 is ridiculous and, by experience, makes absolutely no sense. That means that adults who are 19 years old before the start of the millenium are in the same generation as babies born that year?
Not buying it.
I was born in ’92 (24) and my friends and I maintain that there is a HUGE difference between us and even people two-three years younger than us. And older than us, because they have clear memories of the Clinton presidency. We, however, came of age during the Bush administration’s awful policies- I was eight when Bush entered office, meaning all my formative years turning from kid to teen to adult were spent under Bush. Completely different from a kid who was a toddler when 9/11 happened and literally has no memory of it. As opposed to someone my age, who remembers it happening but was too young to fully grasp it, and those older (say were 16+ at the time) who could begin to grasp the complex implications of what happened.
People who work on generations need to get their shit together and accept that technology is going to develop at a much faster rate than before, which means the generational divides will be closer together than they may have been in the past. 1980-1999 is ridiculous. If I have nothing in common with people 3-7 years young than me, people born in the 80s definitely don’t have anything in common with those same babies. Being 19 right now is very different than being 27.
Totally agree. I was surprised by the date range when I looked it up for my research. There’s a big gap between those years.
I’m 29 (born 1987), and to be honest I can tell you this: you *think* there is a big difference between someone 2-3 years younger than you, because, superficially, there is. But I can promise you there is not. I see it every year older I get. I’m more mature, grounded, goal oriented, yada yada, than those silly 24 or 25 year olds, bah! But, I think about it, when *I* was 24 and 25 that’s almost *exactly* the kind of person I was. Of course there is a difference between someone 21 and 24 and 29. But the idea is that when all people in the millennial age bracket were at the same developmental stage, they reacted to, experienced, and absorbed the world in the same manner. And, thus, as the develop further into adulthood they face the same struggles in the same way.
I’m 36 year old a “millennial” by this definition who works on a college campus with other millennials. I agree that this age range is crazy to lump one group! There really should be at least 2 more generations in this range if not for all of the technological advances during that time, as well as world/society changes like how differently these ages experienced 9-11…I was 21. Also, love every minute working with and teaching “millennials”. They will change the world!
I’m in grad school, and we use these generational cohorts for very specific purposes. Basically, they need to be about the same size in length of time so we can compare milestones on an apples-to-apples basis and to make sure that demographic changes are changes, not just blips. Your generation doesn’t define the way you feel or your experiences. It analyzes an aggregate of societal beliefs and behaviors.
FYI – ‘ Gaslighted” Not ‘gas lit “comes from a movie title…
FYI- learn to close your quotation marks and use ” and ‘ correctly.
Correcting people’s grammar in a very unnecessary way on the Internet is the fastest way to bring out someone’s antagonistic side.
Concerning BOTH of your preoccupation with grammar (as you are doing the same thing you are correcting, Charlie): “When the wise man points at the Moon, the idiot looks at the finger.” – Confucius
Who said “gas lit” instead of “gaslight/gaslighted or gaslighting?” Gaslit is the adjective. Of course, it is helpful to know that the term comes from a play and 2 movies in which the villain attempts to drive his wife mad by — questioning her sanity. While he searchs their home for missing jewels, the gas fixtures used to illuminate the house dim and flicker as he turns on lights in the attic.BTW, great movie … but it is based on the idea that there is a specific intent to cause insanity by creating incidents and making allegations, including kleptomania. Catchy essay title, well written essay. Malevolent intent? Lots to argue here.
This is the first year where the people entering college are for the most part too young to remember 9/11. I was in third grade at the time, and it’s kind of nice to have memories predating the entire “war on terror” decade+…
I’d agree with Amanda below. I know when I was 24 I felt that gulf of a difference because, at that age, it really is real. If you went to college you spent 4 years with a huge group of people your own age range developing and forming in a an atmosphere that you won’t come across ever again. It’s a giant social experiment that turns nearly everyone who participates into some version of what they wanted to become, and who they really are. In reality though it’s not that everyone else is so different, you realize that the person who was the most different is you and those around you, from who you saw yourself to be even just a few years before. When you’re development time is so short and intense like that, the rest of the world, even those 2 or 3 years away from you, seem like aliens.
After college and your early twenties, you start to feel even more different than everyone else and turn to your friends to help remind each other of who you wanted to be and who you actually are. There’s no more all night parties but instead late night work or early to bed Thursday and Saturday nights, and it rattles you the post college glow starts to fade to the darkness of the “real” world. Many friends move away, people go out less, and just general growing up starts and for a lot of people (myself included) you have the jokingly termed (but also real) “quarter life crisis” where you find yourself freaking out about how you got to where you are and where everyone went. You’ll probably move too, or maybe change careers, or break up with your long term SO, or any of a million other things that eventually become normal, but at the time just throw more weight onto the feeling of “o shit is this my life!?”. There’s another side of it though, the good side, and you don’t realize the good side of it until you’re well past it looking back. You move past that life from before when you and everyone else was in the selfish college student all-about-me bubble. It’s exactly what college is for, to be selfish and discover who you are, what you want to do with your life (at least at that point), what you will and won’t tolerate from friends and lovers, and anything else that can only be discovered in a consequence free playground of self discovery . Even my good friends that didn’t go to college went through the same thing, they just in different ways and in different places, but now their stories are very much the same.
After a little while when you start to hit later 20’s you realize how everyone you saw as different has many of the same problems you do, regardless of age, orientation, etc. By this time the feeling of the immediate years post graduation, like trying to find land all over again with half the same crew on a different boat in foreign waters, has almost totally faded away and you welcome more of these changes. Your friend circles get smaller but tighter, you see friends get married and go from kids to having kids themselves, maybe you do it yourself or maybe you don’t. You’re happy for others changes and success, even if you don’t have it yourself. You’ll meet up with your friends at your 10 year and tell embarrassing stories about each other and yourself, laughing at how sure of the world you all were then, and sort of terrified you’ll find yourself saying the same thing in another 10 years time.
Everything that seemed like major differences are hard to remember, and you’ll be the most happy that all the pretense and pretend of those years is gone, replaced by genuine affection from those that really care because no one has the time to pretend anymore. You’ll realize there never was that big of a difference to begin with, and in reality you just didn’t want to give in and hand over that perfect moment in time that became your identify just to become another nameless adult, at least not without a fight. You never wanted to go home at the end of the night after an amazing party and his is no different, because you’re terrified there’s no way what lies outside these walls could be better than *this*. The differences you created, or at least what you saw as differences then, become harder to remember and you’ll be more glad of that over time, because as much as you would give to go back there for one more day, you wouldn’t trade what you have now for anything because you know more about yourself and those around you than you ever did before, and all the differences you noticed in the past become harder to recall because you’re more focused on how lucky you’ve been to know and develop into the person you’ve become because of all the people you were fortunate enough to share the experience with over the years.
Reblogged this on PrecariLeaks.
To extend the metaphor: If the millennials are in an emotionally abusive relationship (being “gaslighted” (gaslit?)) then they will have a collective delayed awakening- they’ll get to a point in the relationship where it will have gone well beyond what is acceptable and they will break. They will say, “enough”, and then they will assume power to themselves. In an emotionally abusive relationship this happens at about age 30-40, so we should be seeing some “millennial fireworks” in about the next 5 years. Personally, I can’t wait. When you’re told how entitled you all are that’s coming squarely from Boomers. I’m GenX and I look at the positivity of Millennials as a breath of fresh air. They are the ONLY ones who can shake off the shackles of our inherited broken systems, which can really be summed up as a tyranny of dead ideas. This is so GenX of me, but… the real truth is that we are headed into MAJOR global transition from what we know life to be right now to one that will most likely be quite uncomfortable and it will be the GenXers and Millennials who will survive that forced adaptation. The Boomers will not. They will most likely choke on their privilege, while the rest of us come to understand just how much we are ALL entitled to a fair and decent society.
This. So much this. A little under two years till 30, and I am JUST acknowledging and accepting that my grandmother was emotionally abusive. I do want to improve the world, so younger and future gens won’t get it from all sides like this. I am tired of never being good enough, and yet, supposedly being entitled. Enough.
What MATBRADY said!
– Another Gen-Xer
Do you consider yourself an anarchist? Your message has a very “we put in work because community consensus matters” tone. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cv1okXCsYDA
The intro might benefit from a description of the actually history of the term, which helps many people understand the subtle meaning of the phrase. All power to the communes.
Hey Owen, thanks for the link. I am not quite sure what I consider myself when it comes to my politics, but anarchism has crossed my path and given me much pause. I would DEFINITELY be open to commune-style living if nothing else 🙂
“Generations before us completely drove the bus into a lake and it’s somehow our fault everybody’s drowning”
Excuse me (early Gen-X-er here), but *I* didn’t drive any bus into a lake. I didn’t raise college costs. I didn’t eliminate no-degree jobs. These things may have happened “on my watch”, but my hands were never on the wheel and my foot was never on the gas. I was just another passenger, and I’m stuck in the same sinking bus (but with the added burden of age discrimination preventing me from even *getting* those crappy minimum-wage jobs). So saying that it’s somehow *my* fault is just more generational scapegoating. That doesn’t help. What we need are solutions, not finger-pointing.
She’s not saying Gen X drove the bus, but “generations before us”, which is true – primarily, but not only, Baby Boomers. I would add the WWII generation as well, as many were still alive to vote for Reagan.
Aren’t those your parents and your grandparents?
If it truly offends you that badly then perhaps you did do something to help push this along. Guilty parties tend to lash out and claim they aren’t to blame.
As they often tell us “grow a thicker skin” dude.
Defending a lack of involvement is not equivalent to guilt. If it were, then nobody would be innocent, which would mean you are just as much to blame, Tristan.
Tristan, fuck off, you little twerp! You’re obviously gaslighting the Gen-X guy. His point is valid.
and generalizations tend to not be true…
I have to agree with this sentiment to an extent. Everyone lumps “everyone older than millennials” together, and forgets about Gen X’ers. We remember 9/11. We remember the first Clinton administration and how it wasn’t the Golden Age that it’s sometimes portrayed at (hint, more than just Monica Lewinski happened). Lots of us saw the boom of tech, but only a few lucky ones got to profit from it. Most of us were in the same boat as millennials today — shitty, hard-to-find jobs, etc. College wasn’t AS insane as it is for y’all, but it wasn’t exactly CHEAP.
I’m not trying to cry for sympathy, but I think we’re best off if we just stop pointing fingers. It wasn’t all Baby Boomer’s fault — for instance, the voracious appetite for tech gadgets pushes tech companies to outsource to third world countries for labor, constricting the job pool and creating mountains of e-waste. Constantly voting for LOTE and demagogues and not paying attention to the only thing that matters — POLICY — gives us a string of bad politicians. We’re all too blame. We’ve all driven the bus off the cliff. Pointing finger — at millennials, or at boomers, or even at my own much-ignored Gen X — doesn’t really help.
So, while it’s good to get people to quit picking on “kids today,” it doesn’t make it better to try to shift the blame onto the Boomers (or whatever). It’s trivially true that the social/political problems of today are caused by previous generations — who else COULD have caused it? FUTURE generations? This tells us nothing and just keeps us at each other’s throats.
So how about this, instead of the “bad Boomers! No donut!” bits, why don’t we focus on the mistakes we ALL made are are STILL making, and figure out TOGETHER — young, old, and middle-aged, white and black, women and men — how to fix them.
True that! We “boomers” are helping many of our children – not to mention grandchildren – navigate a system that is getting rickety and ready to break. We are paying of parent plus loans and providing childcare during our children’s schooling after work and/or second jobs. There are statistics showing that many Millennials move back home at some point and live there until their early thirties. They are living in our houses. And we may, or may not, be charging rent and sharing groceries. We are the top of demographic sandwich that is helping to clean up the mess that our government – that seems to be in a hell-bent rush to outspend and defend everything – created in the first place. Goodbye social security, hello socialism. We need our Millennials to have the both the angst and sass to transform what isn’t working. They will have to work overtime to get it done, and I see them picking up the slack – good job guys. p.s. side note from your parents, “this is breaking our hearts, but we’re hopeful.”
This was, for lack of a better word, inspiring. I’m currently in a situation with my job that I could potentially be fired because I contracted pneumonia and have been told not to work. That aside, I am constantly having to put my job or need for money ahead of my physical and mental health. I have had depression for many years, but in the last year it became severe enough to have me medicated. My mental health declined drastically whith my current job. With the depression and anxiety, I have to work through panic attacks because the work environment became so hostile. I’m too mentally and emotionally exhausted to work more than one job. I argue about this a lot with my mother (who was born on the tail-end of the Baby Boomers). I’m trying to protect the shattered remains of my mental health, but all I hear is that I’m not motivated enough or not trying or that I don’t care. It’s a blessing to read this and see that my priorities are valid. Thank you.
You are enough and you are doing a great job.
I was born in 88′, and I also am frequently arguing with my parents about stuff like this. There are all these “overnight success” stories for young people doing start-ups or whatever, and my mom thinks that it’s easy to just become a success and that you can just work like crazy. So she has this expectation that I should just become some crazy success through sheer will. But everyone is different, and these success stories are rarer than people think. Sometimes, I find myself trying to pretend that things aren’t terrible. It’s so competitive in the job market! The only places I have been able to get full time work have been hostile environments and only made my depression worse. So, I am going to graduate school to work on becoming skilled.
I feel like this article hits on a good point, which is that “millenials” (though I do think they made the generation span way too big) are very about helping each other. I feel like a good solution to our generation’s mental health issues could be in finding support with each other, helping us feel a sense of belonging by connecting, and making that easier.
Yeah…for every instant success story there are probably 100’s of failures. Hard word doesn’t guarantee success. You won’t be successful without hard work…that is true…but there are no guarantees. I think the guarantees were all pipedreams.
This comment is inspiring. I am lucky enough to not face those battles but am TERRIFIED of how I would respond if I did – I don’t think I would show as much courage and strength as you are. I agree with Caitlin, it sounds like you are doing a great job!
You will make it.
“Your Entitled” is the coating of amnesia from the parenting styles “Gone Wild” from preceding generations. One fact is the rise of ACEs. Adverse Childhood Experiences are responsible for half of everything. Mental health, autoimmune disease, any addictions and even cancer, I might bore you with more facts, but you can get more information http://www.acetoohigh.com. The CDC published this land mark study in 1998. Here is a narrative I use as part of my efforts in ACEs awareness.
” Here are samples of negative cognitions. If you’re telling yourself any of these, you can reframe them so that they’re the opposite. The experiences happened during your childhood and left impressions into your adulthood. When you’re a kid, you think what happens to you is your fault, and that somehow you deserve it. That’s just the way that kids’ brains work. But here’s the most important thing you may learn today: What happened to you when you were a child is not your fault. You have no responsibility for what happened to you as a child — you are not to blame for what happened.
But if you’re not told otherwise, believing these thoughts could be likened to “Taking career advise from a child”. In the struggle to find one’s true self, a layer of amnesia persist and interferes with the realization of your own awakening. The awakening from your own trauma. You have the right to feel and question what was imposed upon you. You have the right to reject what confuses you and then seek what you need. You need to see the truth so to be able to live the life you were meant to live.
Example of negative cognitions;
I don’t deserve love
I am a bad person
I am terrible
I am worthless /inadequate
I am shameful
I am not lovable
I am not good enough
I deserve only bad things….
THANK YOU for this important comment – I have long wanted to do a post on ACEs as well but I get so overwhelmed because I experienced quite a few of them and have all the subsequent low self-worth inner commentary.
Thank you for your article. As a millennial I go through everything that you have talked about. I struggle with college, raising a family, and a full time job. I make the most out of all my freinds and I make $15.30 an hour, my husband makes $12. I hate it when people think and say that we just being “entitled.” I have saved and worked hard. I have a house, bought a new car a few years ago, and I’m married. My husband and I waited to have a child till we felt a little more secure. When people say that we don’t work hard it’s very aggravating as I have done everything i can but it’s not enough. Medical costs have gotten so high over the last few years that there’s no way to have a second child without risking everything I’ve worked so hard for. I pray everyday that nothing major happens because there no way to afford the medical costs if one of us ends up in the hospital. This isn’t entitlement, it’s wanting change and change for the better. Nothing will survive if we stay stagnant. We have to push forward and make things work. That’s how our society works, we change things and advance. There is nothing wrong with this, and there is nothing wrong with us trying to make things the best that they can be.
The millennial generation should’ve had refused to have children in protest against inequality and overpopulation but we haven’t and it has only further endangered our generation.
When someone tells you you’re not working hard enough, just do what I do, and tell them “nobody fucking asked you!”
As background, I’m an over-educated, Gen X, blue-collar “crew chief”-style supervisor who has been lucky enough over the last 11 years (in current position) to work with five generations (Silent, Baby Boomer, Gen X, Millennial, and Homeland) of workers…and, at one point, all five at once. Reading up on what shapes each generation and how it TENDS to play itself out in their behaviors and beliefs is extremely helpful.
However (and there’s ALWAYS a “however”, isn’t there?), the main problem that I have with these articles is that they’re either told from the perspective of the Baby Boomer manager/executive, and it’s all about the problems, challenges, and negatives of dealing with a particular generation (particularly Millennials at the moment)…or it’s told from the perspective of a Millennial who is downplaying the negatives of their generation, over-exaggerating the positives, and blaming the previous generations for all of the world’s problems (which all of us were able to say in our twenties and early thirties, by the way). Also, these articles are almost always from a “professional” point-of-view…the blue-collar people are, as usual, lost in the shuffle.
The truth is that EVERY generation…yes, even (gasp) MY generation…has their strengths and their challenges. What people don’t seem to realize is that generational theory isn’t meant to pigeonhole people into negative stereotypes or to criticize past generations for mistakes that they made. The idea is to give executives, managers, supervisors, and crew chiefs an additional tool to maximize the strengths and minimize the challenges of the people working for them, to learn how to motivate them and keep their interest and (hopefully) loyalty, and to better handle conflicts that arise from the interaction of the various generations. To do all of that, you have to acknowledge and understand both the good and the bad.
Love your comment, you expressed my over-educated, gen X, underpaid educator sentiments exactly. I helped to cofound a charter school about 7 years ago and one thing I did a lot of research on was inter-generational collaboration while I was coaching outside of the classroom and how to be successful at it to prevent miscommunication and foster the growth of positive working environments. Unfortunately, administration used it as a way to place people in a box, complain about their differences, and justify their own “superior” categories. Just like any categorizing tool, the generational identification tool gets used in ways that pigeon-hole and prevent moving forward when utilized in a biased or divisive way. I’ve seen it done with Meyer’s Briggs, personality inventories, generational identifiers, etc. Hopefully as more leaders and managers become more savvy and focused on their mission and vision, they’ll utilize the strengths of their employees to foster growth in other areas rather than focus on the “shortcomings” that they feel make their organization less efficient and cohesive. Ultimately, these tools are supposed to help us create a listening for one another and bring us together. Sometimes that view is difficult to come around to.
I agree with you, Carrisa. We need change so everyone has a chance for a good life. That change can happen if everyone works toward a solution. I am disappointed by so many young people hiding out through drugs and other tools of escapism. I am a boomer, by the way.
As the oldest of the Gen Xers I can tell you I saw a huge difference in our attitudes than those a year or two older. And yes, we did get berated and belittled. We also came into adulthood during a recession where work was hard to find and salaries were lowered for new hires. Does any of this sound familiar? What Boomers and Xers had to learn about Millennials is that you do see the world differently, you approach work and life differently, you’re not trapped in the patterns that were laid out by the Boomers’ parents (Seniors). As sick as you are of hearing the older people complain, what it really means is that you ARE actually changing our culture (which the hippies failed to do) and we are having to learn how to live and think and socialize the way you do. Complaints signify change. Be proud when you hear it.
Thanks, this is a good article that helps me understand the “younger generation” but what you’re experiencing isn’t new. I’m now 47 years old myself and actually my “generation x” was first to be saddled with huge student loan debts, with diminishing prospects for a decent secure job at the end. In the late 80’s and early 90’s I remember older people (by which I mean, people older than myself, not necessarily as old as my parents but the “yuppie” generation in between) saying that young people my age had the mentality that “the world owes us a living” and this was said as if it were a flaw in character that explained why so many of us were facing unemployment in those times.
What exactly did that mean, that we thought “the world owes us a living”? That we wanted jobs? Was that supposed to be a bad thing, to want a job, to support yourself and not be dependent on others, and to be frustrated when you tried hard and did everything you were supposed to do, and then all you could get was a temporary job at a fast food outlet for six dollars an hour, even with college degree?
Being told it was the fault of an entire generation because of some mythical attitude problem, I guess that was a good example of gaslighting, but we didn’t call it that back then. I think this gaslighting is a form of social manipulation designed to shift attention and blame away from the real causes of economic inequality. Although it has always been normal for young people to have to start out in lower paying jobs, it has not always been normal for so many to face such diminishing prospects of enjoying the quality of life of previous generations.
That said, all of the stress of underemployment, student loans ect. did not shorten my generation’s life expectancy. Despite the fact that people smoked and drank more back then, and we were exposed to second hand smoke all the time. The reason why millennials are, statistically speaking, facing a shortened life expectancy is because of poor eating habits and less physical activity. The only reason I why mention that is to point out that this is a problem you definitely can do something about.
In reply to your comment on poor eating habits and how that is something Millennials can change is a little short sighted. For years I have not been able to be choosy about my diet. If it has calories, I eat it. Exercising means you have to eat even more, and when you’re already lacking nutrition you have no extra energy for unnecessary movement. Usually the 2-3 jobs tire us out too much for that. My physical health has plummeted and is dragging down my mental health and they have perpetuated to the point that I am on disability and cannot work. I used to work 70 hours a week, and here I am at 25 with no assets, no vehicle, no savings, and now no ability to work enough to support myself. If my parents hadn’t intervened when I became homeless when I left my abusive fiancée, I would probably be dead right now. I can’t imagine if I lived in the states, because this is my situation in Canada, and I’m not having to pay for my healthcare expenses (seeing my doctor 5 times in the last 2 weeks for example, 230 prescribed pills a month, extensive therapy of many kinds). If I didn’t have these covered by healthcare and good health insurance, I would bet against my existence today. It really sucks because there was a time where I could have handled a normal life if I hadn’t had to deal with such extreme stressors. I sometimes wonder how things could have been different. This is not me complaining and blaming others for my position, I am illustrating how many fewer options we have as a generation, and it does not stop outside of the US. Right now I have one option, and it’s being supported by my parents, and I know that this is a very common thing millennials are being forced to do. Believe me, we want to get out on our own just as much as everyone else wants us to.
This article makes me so happy, your amazing. I’m 25 turning 26 and since I 15 I have been working non stop and once I turned 18 I worked even more. Because I wanted to try to get a better job I got a loan to get into school, but once I graduated in could not find a job in my field because they wanted more experience as well as a degree. So since I could find a job in the field I went back to working 2 jobs about 18 hours a day, 5 to 6 days on my feet to just to handle the loans but with minimum wage that was hard. But do to me working so long on my feet, which I have vary bad flat feet My left foot just gave up and I had to have surgery but I waited as long as I could to have it because I had no chose because of my low wage I had to handle my bills from school. Bottom line is the older generation thinks were lazy but I’m the prime example of our generation having to work are self through pain and anxiety just to have a tiny bit of a living.
You article is amazing.
I was working 2 jobs 18 hours a day 4 to 6 days a week just to pay of a loan for school in exercise science. And having to deal with being in alot of pain due to having bad flat feet, but I just had to deal with it because I needed the money for bills and to have a tiny bit of a living which was little due to minnuim wage being in humanly small. But it got to the point were I could no longer walk so after years of dealing with it I had surgery on my left foot. So the older generation needs a reality check and open their eyes and see that generation X has to suffer through physical and mental pains just to stay a float..
Being part of “the struggle”, I am trying to combat the mental health issues by simplifying my lifestyle. For me, though, that means moving toward a more “off the grid” mentality, by trying to cut off internet, cable, and taking more time to read and write. To an outside observer, this may look like I am “disengaged”, “unmotivated”, even though all I am trying to do is live simply.
Hi Keith, thank you for your comment. I agree, simplifying life seems to help a lot. It’s why I started a blog in the first place, as I was learning to re-prioritize and not be so overwhelmed.
As a millenial who is also facing exorbitant amounts of pressure and debt as well as mental illness, and who also has a fondness for perfentages, I really appreciate this article and all its statistics and straightforwardness. However, there was something in the beginning that, while I may be misinterpreting it, left a bad taste in my mouth: it seems like you might be implying that nnarcissis breeds emotional abuse, and that narcissists are frequent gaslighters, and it sort of surprises me that you would say this considering how conscious of different mental illnesses you are later in the article? Is this what you were trying to say, or am i misinterpreting your phrasing to be stating a correlation when that’s not actually what you’re doing?
Hi weseethefuture, thank you for your comment! My first experiences learning about gaslighting came about when I began learning more about narcissism and emotional abuse (which I have experienced in the past, and was trying to understand better what had happened to me). They don’t necessarily go hand in hand, but for me they did. I apologize that I lumped them together!
Narcissists, by definition, can and often do breed emotional abuse, though. By the definition of gaslighting provided, narcissists also engage and perpetuate gaslighting as well. Narcissistic personality disorder is characterized by a perfect storm, if you will, of deep-set insecurity and self-loathing covered up by layers and layers of grandiose behavior, holier-than-thou attitude, posturing, and “playing the victim.” So narcissism in its “purest” form can lead to a significant amount of gaslighting. And if a person ends up in a relationship with a person with narcissistic personality disorder, they usually end up being emotionally abused because a relationship is about two people where a person with this personality disorder wants it to be about one.
Granted, correlation does not equal causality, and it would be highly unethical to experiment with something like this (probably illegal, too, but I don’t know much about that part).
This is in response to Jessica’s comment below: you are still correlating narcissism and abuse and through extension of that calling narcissists, people suffering from a personality disorder, inherent abusers. Not all people with NPD gaslight people. Articles across the internet constantly demonize people with NPD and other cluster b disorders and make them out to be overwhelming, domineering, malicious people and you are buying into that idea wrongfully. It’s ableism, and it’s harmful. I mentioned this in another reply but abusers cause abuse, not narcissists. I have experienced so many loving and supportive relationships with people with NPD.
I know what NPD involves, I have it. Its not an easy thing to live with even on it’s own. You acknowledge that it has its roots in self-loathing but you still say that relationships with people who have NPD “usually” end with the other party or parties being abused, and hearing such things is emotionally devastating to someone like me. You are flat out wrong: lack of commitment to communicate needs and treat other people gently is what starts abuse, and the ideas you’re spreading around are cruel, heartbreaking, and ableist. It is not fair to throw a group of people who are already suffering under a bus they arent driving.
I had exactly the same feeling honestly. IDK if my comment went through or not but it was similar..
“People with ‘narcissistic personality disorder’ have a somewhat serious mental condition, according to psychologists, but the rest of us are free to call anyone who seems vain and self-centered a narcissist.” Merriam-Webster Dictionary
I understood this as abuse. Unsure it needs another name.
It’s a very specific kind of abuse with a specific kind of effect. All abuse cannot be grouped under one umbrella because it requires different solutions. Gaslighting specifically refers to the action where people are being blamed for their own abuse and made to believe it is their fault, and it is verbal.
Gaslighting is simply a form of abuse, and with recent studies, it looks like it might be one of the more powerful types of abuse, as it seems to have lasting effects, but not ones that can be easily REMEMBERED. Gaslighting, for example, can rewrite people’s memory – or even erase it. People who have been gaslighted all their lives can often remember hugely mundane things, but not EVENTS. They often find themselves avoiding situations, topics, objects, without knowing why. There’s many times I’ll be doing something, and catch the SMELL of something, and I’ll blank. I don’t know why – but my brain tries to reference the memory, but it isn’t there – it’s been overwritten through the gaslighting I’ve endured.
For instance fresh green walnuts. The smell of them brings back memories…but also a lot, a LOT of fear. And I can trace back the idea to when we had them around our property, but not what it was that went wrong with them. Did I throw one? Did someone else throw one? Did I get blamed? Did someone else? Did someone get hurt? Was it me? I don’t remember. But they make me sad and scared.
Most people who experience a trauma that gives them an aborrant feeling towards an object remember KEENLY what went wrong.
Gaslighted people only remember the fear. And it’s REALLY upsetting.
GenX-er, here. I loved this piece. I was actually reading the other day about people complaining that millennials work too many hours, don’t take paid vacation time and generally make older workers look bad, and how it’s all a scam anyway and they only do it because they’re too disorganized and can’t manage time properly. All I could think was younger workers are so often made to feel like they’ll be the first out if things get tight, and they’re trying to be as productive as they can so they can keep their jobs.
I was aghast. Honestly, what is appealing about targeting an entire generation for everything they do? Meanwhile boomers price people out of the housing market and then blamed them for leaving it too late to buy. Buy with what?
Every generation gets picked on for something, but most don’t get picked on for everything.
If it makes you feel any better, it’s not really that people are gaslighting “Millennials” so much as every new generation gets flack from previous generations. Babyboomers shat on Gen X, then they shat on Gen Y, now they all target Millennials, and once a new label is given to the generation below Millennials they will become the new target. Really it is a form of ageism. However, it is important to note that not all people choose to buy into the labels and prejudice. In every generation there are some who do and some who don’t. Some people are conservative, some are progressive. Some are tech-savvy, some are not. While some generations are have a higher percent of an attribute than another, it does not mean that every individual within that grouping displays the trait. Just remember the outrage you feel now for being gaslit as a Millennial, and make sure you don’t turn around and do the exact same thing to someone else because of the generation they belong to.
LOVE this comment – and I couldn’t agree more. I think every generation has its challenges and strengths. It’s really easy to point at those younger than us and say that they’re lazy and entitled, and to point back at those older than us and complain how they had it easier and ruined it for us. Of course, none of that is terribly helpful.
While I would totally agree that the economic decisions made by certain administrations have left much to be desired, and that Millennials, as a group, are facing enormous amounts of student loan debt, it’s also true that, as a group, they have had educational opportunities far beyond what all previous generations enjoyed, they have unprecedented access to information and technology, young women have infinitely more opportunities than they ever did before, and Millennials have never really had to worry about nuclear bombs falling from the sky or being drafted into the military and shipped off to die in some foreign war.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that Millennials are “ungrateful” – I just think that our society as a whole has a bit of a martyr complex – we’re all really good at pointing at our own struggles and claiming “it’s not fair” while simultaneously minimizing the challenges that others have faced. Perhaps we’d be better off if we spent less time looking for scapegoats and more time working together to make a better world for all of us.
We’re not looking for scapegoats by acknowledging that things have been progressively getting worse. Millennials have it worse than Gen X because there has been a decline for a long time. I fear for the generation that follows us, because they are going to have it worse than us. We’re fighting for social systems and a living wage, while they’re probably going to be fighting to survive as a species. They are going to have to deal with the ultimate issues that all of this things have been compounding on. I won’t have children because I refuse to bring any into a world where their chances are worse than my own, and I know this sentiment is shared by many.
Reblogged this on MsAbbyKay.
Good read. But please don’t say this: “The generations before us HAD a living wage, affordable college, and adequate healthcare.” Especially the “adequate healthcare” part. Not true. Only for the privileged. To vet the rest one would have to look at percentages of people owning cars, homes etc. on minimum wage etc and I am not up to that challenge. But healthcare…I started a clinic in the early 1970s because there were no sources of healthcare in a “good” middle-class community for women and families who worked regular jobs. It was exceedingly rare for most full-time workers and even rarer for part-time workers to have any health care insurance. Well-researched article except for this. I will be quoting you! Linda Bennett, born in 1949, retired midwife.
You were able to start a clinic?! Wowww. What a pipe dream. How fortunate you were to be able to do that. Here we are, 45 years later with even more inaccessible healthcare ($50,000 hospital bills were NOT a thing) but this time around we can’t even help ourselves. A shortage of healthcare is not worse than having healthcare that you cannot afford. People even now are choosing to forgo treatment and just die rather than saddle their families with debt. Things are not improved, they are absolutely worsened, and even in the face of technological advances.
I’m a boomer (1961) and have two millenial kids (1986 & 1989), I run a bookkeeping company for entrepreneurs (with my millenial daughter!) and most of our clients are millenials. I have seen first-hand the how highly educated and hardworking your generation is and I always shut down boomers who like to rag on you! It’s total crap.
As another poster above said… the generation before mine liked to get on our case because we never experienced war and I would always say – “Yes, and isn’t that what the soldiers fighting the wars WANTED for us? For us to NEVER know what it was like to live through another war?”
Great article.
Before going the medication route, and just for disclosure, I am a baby-boomer. You should listen to CBC IDEAS – Rethinking Depression, Parts 1, 2, 3
And I think people should seek help from healthcare professionals instead of turning to self help garbage like “thinking your depression away”. I have two permanent mental disorders that were triggered by trauma and stress (bipolar disorder and borderline), and three additional, hopefully temporary mental disorders. I have been pushed to hysteria and had a complete breakdown of reality (by being trapped in abusive situations and having to forgo many of my needs to scrape by). I haven’t been able to afford a healthy diet, and being concerningly underweight for years is undoubtedly contributing to my poor mental health. The last thing we need is people telling us that our health problems are imagined, because they are very fucking real and they are absolutely being triggered at a far greater rate and exacerbated by our circumstances. I can no longer control my own mind by free will alone, and never will again. I will take hundreds of pills a month for the rest of my life, and will probably be on disability for that length of time as well. It’s really depressing to watch your career goals crumble before your eyes and wondering if you’ll ever be anything more than a helpless piece of shit, and I don’t know how we’re supposed to rethink that. We need solutions, not bandaids or pep talks.
I am a baby boomer (born 1954) and I am working for a trade union. I bargain union contracts and have for the last 25 years I have to remark that you are spot on about millennials being gaslighted. I attended a state university from a lower middle class family and the entire cost over four years was covered by my earnings at a minimum wage summer job and my own borrowing which totaled $10k in student loans. The rest was all grants in aid. My parents never borrowed or sent money. It wasn’t necessary. It’s not my imagination. What millennial are facing isn’t the same.
Today’s families and students simply don’t have that option. They are expected to borrow and borrow and borrow. And not any garden variety debt. No, only special unforgivable and undischargable debt the like of which exists nowhere else. And in exchange they get told to work in unpaid internships which they are expected to be grateful for in the hope of gaining the favor needed to obtain an elusive salaried position later.
My generation is the most entitled to ever walk the planet. And we expect those that follow us to not merely fix it but to do it on our terms. Sort of like telling you Elvis has left the building but don’t forget he set the playlist and you aren’t to deviate from it. There is little you can do when confronting that sort of hubris but to shove it aside and do what you need to to care for yourselves and make the world right. There will be howls of righteous indignation. There will be snarls and threats from the powerful. And they won’t be hollow threats. But your sanity and justice belong to you. You fail to wrest them from others at your peril.
Reblogged this on Bubblechog's Blog and commented:
As I was born in 1978 I’m just outside being a millennial but I feel a lot of this
Reblogged this on Karen Arango's Blog and commented:
” As a society, we now romanticize struggle, busy-ness, and “the hustle.” If you’re not losing sleep and working two or three jobs, you must not want it enough.” This is soon true, now I don’t feel alone in this world feeling like this … Thank you for this post @Born Again Minimalis
It breaks my heart when I see millennials described as lazy. Not because I am one, and I take it personally, but because my peers are some of the hardest working people I know. My girlfriend is a grad student, and the two days she isn’t at her internship or class, she is working. I have seen friends drag themselves to work/class while coping with death because they ‘can’t miss a day.’ It takes a lot to just ‘be’ in 2016, and it wears you down.
Really great article- you put it right in the pocket. I’m actually a TAD too old to be considered a “millennial” but I totally feel your pain! For myself I hate these generational groupings. Many people born in the late ’70s feel like they don’t fit into any particular generation. When they first came up with the term millennial we were actually included in that but later the dates were switched. I actually wrote my own article about it a couple years ago:
http://www.agathahiggins.com/president-carter-the-missing-link-between-gen-x-millennial-but-stop-grouping-humans-by-generation-before-we-puke/
While I largely agree, the millenial generation and younger, *are* also the social justice warriors who de-platform people they should be supporting (For example: http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/08/10/liberals-and-the-new-mccarthyism), such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Richard Dawkins.
The millenial generation is big, as you point out, so there are plenty of people like you describe, but there are also negative influences, and those are often easier to spot and more likely to be in the news.
Millennial born in 1986 here. I used to work at a firm, for an average of 70+ hours a week. After all the work-related stress I ended up having to sleep with a retainer because I would grind my teeth at night and kept breaking pieces off. After a particular night, in which I was asked to stay up all night drafting a lawsuit, I ended up quitting at around 3 AM and walking out of the office.
I immediately received criticism from my Generation X and Boomer relatives, who pegged me down as “entitled” and told me working my arse off was what I was supposed to do in the first place. What really got to me though is that two of these people were just housewives, and thus didn’t work, and the rest of them I remember coming back home at 5 or 6 pm.
I seriously don’t understand these sort of people, who have lived a life of privilege and constantly act like they got to where they are by merit of their hard work.
Currently working for another firm, and my boss and colleagues are the best people ever.
I agree that people should look for other employment if they work in an unhealthy environment. I’m a young gen-x-er and loyal to a fault. Despite my loyalty, I quit a job, because I could see it was negatively impacting my mental state. The job I have now is a much healthier environment. Congratulations on getting a better job. 🙂
This is a fantastic article! I, as a blogger myself, wrote my first post on a topic almost identical to this. I received a decent amount of backlash along with support which I’m sure you can relate to as well. I actually used a few of the same sources as you did while writing my post. Thanks for writing this, well done!
Bravo! My son passed this article on to me, he’s 27. I’m a tailend boomer and seeing what struggles my son and others have gone through my heart goes out to those who have not been so lucky as to be in the right place at the right time to land just the right job that sets them on their way for the rest of their adult lives. That rarely happens. We as an older generation need to to take a closer look at ourselves in the mirror and speak truth to ourselves and admit that we are in some ways not any better, and in some ways worse off in a moral sense than the “Millennials”. We forget that less than 1% of the country controls a vast majority of the nations wealth. Guess what, its not ALL the boomers and everybody in-between. Something else to ponder……we as an electorate are no longer being represented by people who are actually “of us”. They are politicians and lawyers. They have nothing to do with common folks. Much like it was before Andrew Jackson was elected the 7th President. (This is another completely different topic, but one that dovetails to yours rather nicely in that who is going to truly represent the interests of the Millennial in the political arena without exploiting them for political gain?
Again Bravo Caitlin!!!
I am a Boomer, but I see the Millennials as strong, confidant leaders that have compassion for the earth and for fellow man, they are awesome in my book!!!!
Brilliant! Congrats on the reach of this article. I’m a younger Millennial and still identify with everything you’ve pointed out here. Curious though, what do you think are some of the main difference between us and the newer ‘free thinking’ gen Y’ers – or is there major overlap? I’ve read a lot about how we grew up in the age of innovation vs how they have forgotten what innovation is but I’m curious what you think.
Hi KG – Due to the completely unexpected response to this article, I am working on a LOT more research and hope to dive into the overlap and similar experiences between generations. Thank you for reading.
As a Boomer I personally find the Millennials, refreshing, honest, compassionate to their fellow man and to the earth, they are tremendously conscientious leaders……..Go forward and let not the slings and arrows of narrow minded naysayers deter you from you imminent success to lead the world in a new and positive way!!!!!
Baby Boomers were 78.3 million. The similarities do not end there, and our trials have been similar.
As they say with PTSD, you are having a normal response to abnormal circumstances. Your response would be abnormal only if the circumstances of the 60s and 70s and part of the 80s even into the 90s still held. However, you live in a different world than your parents did. Few can grasp that, and fewer are willing to give up what they’ve got to ameliorate your pllght. It’s easier just to blame you. I’m an Xer with two graduate degrees and no prospects. By the time Millennials gain ascendancy, I’ll be kicked to the curb from ageism. Many, many millennials hate older generations across the board. It doesn’t matter that I’ve had their same struggle. But I so hate what I’ve witnessed happening, the ceiling getting higher, the ladders getting narrower and sometimes pulled up altogether, that I’d understand that anger.
Seriously? I’m a millennial born in 1991 and I consider myself of below-average intelligence, but I don’t feel like I’ve had a hard life at all. Then again, I chose to leave the nest right AFTER I graduated college, not before. I feel that’s where a lot of people go wrong. Housing adds up, even campus housing, and the financial consequence of that is simply not worth the “freedom” it gives you, no matter how overbearing your parents might be. Also, college is not optional anymore. It is, but it isn’t. That said, I do realize that not everybody has the privilege of leaving their parents’ home by choice, so please don’t think I’m being inconsiderate on that front. I understand that everybody’s circumstances are different.
I paid my college tuition with loans, yes, and I’m still in debt, but I did secure a post-college position in my field without much trouble. I also graduated in one of the so-called “useless” degrees out there: English (English-Tech. Writing, but still English), so I don’t think degree choice matters all that much as long as it fits your aptitudes. Just don’t be lazy and actually build up your portfolio DURING your college career, not after. Fill it with tangible experience, not volunteering fluff (those do nothing for you).
I don’t make enough money to buy a house yet, but I can at least make a fairly comfortable living and indulge in all my habits, which are rather expensive (i.e. video gaming). I was even able to buy my own first (new) vehicle last year; on loans also, but such is life. Despite that, I’ve never felt that I’m drowning in debt or that I’m extremely short on money, and I’ve never been straight up unable to pay a bill. In fact, I’m a generous spender by nature to the point that you could could consider me borderline incompetent when it comes to finances. If I can make it in life on those grounds, then pretty much anyone can if they set their mind to it. I also work hard and sometimes go home stressed, but I’ve never felt that I work too much (I work an avg of 40-45 hours a week and no more).
In regards to the snowflake comment, I think it’s actually true. I’m Hispanic. In fact, I’m an immigrant, and I just don’t see any truth or logic in any of those easily-triggered SJWs that flood social media and college campuses…just warped half-truths and agenda-pushing data manipulation that falls apart when you actually investigate it 9 out of 10 times. In my experience, a fairly large portion of my fellow millennials ARE whiny and ARE entitled (though a lot of my experience on this topic is admittedly anecdotal).
In regards to minimum wage, I think it’s entirely realistic to increase it to $15 in metropolitan areas whose prices and costs of living are truly and hopelessly inflated. Everywhere else, though, I feel that anything outside of a 1-2 dollar increase would be total overkill for low-skill positions.
The only point I agree with in this article is healthcare. Having asthma (even mild asthma) is not fun for your wallet unless your doctor gives you coupons.
It’s a system fail indeed. Let’s set up a better one and claim our lives and mental health back:
http://www.freeworldcharter.org
http://www.thezeitgeistmovement.com
http://www.thevenusproject.com
Why the world is as it is and a feasible solution:
I have only one problem with millennials…even though I don’t know any personally. The problem I have with them is that all the articles I have read, which were written by a millennial, have all made the false claim that previous generations of ordinary people cause all the problems that millennials are facing now. I am a boomer, and I can tell you, that we ordinary people–regardless of race or the year we were born…did not cause any of this shit. We of the 99% regardless of race or the year we were born, are all victims too. Yes, inflation has been a gradual process and it is much worse now, than it was when I was younger. Yes, college cost a whole lot less than it does now…everything cost a whole lot less than it does now. But, we did not cause any of this. The aristocrats, the ruling class, the rich, the politicians who have always served the rich, the Federal Reserve, the so called elite, and so on…they were the sole cause of all of this. The inflation began in 1913…and was caused exclusively by the bankers and the Federal Reserve…not by any of the regular or common people. If you want sympathy from people from previous generations—stop blaming us for what only 1% can truly be blamed for. Stop making this a generational thing, and recognize that it is a class thing…and the rest of us, regardless of race or the year we were born…has never had any say about any of it.
First of all, the term “gaslighting” comes from the ’40’s movie “Gaslight”, starring Ingrid Bergman. A good movie.
I cannot totally agree with all the conclusions the author arrived at. I think of the generation of people coming of age during the depression. Those people, in old age, still hoarded food.
The problem of course, is labeling an entire generation. There are many hard working, team oriented, millennial, and there are certainly some self centered “me first” ones as well. But, in general, millennial have less siblings than previous generations, resulting in more attention from their parents, lots more parental involvement, and lots more praise. They expect praise.
The mental health issues? I certainly hope no one is developing mental illness because they hear criticisms of their generation. Too feeble. I think the increase in mental illness is environmental. Something we’re breathing in or ingesting. Plastic? There was less mental illness when food came in tin and glass.
This was excellently said. The gap narrows as we age but as an almost 30 year old who just finished college I can tell you the difference is drastic. I find many students entering college are less prepared than I have ever seen since I began 12 years ago. It isn’t that they are entitled, it is that the world their parents described to them for so long is no longer the reality of it and the reality is damn hard to come to terms with.
I was working 5 jobs and going to school full time to finish out the last 2 years of a college degree I had to defer finishing for six years due to the rising cost. When I wanted time off for a vacation, three days to celebrate graduating, I was told my request was outrageous. My manager scoffed at me saying I was being a demanding when I tried explaining that my family wanted to take me somewhere and had made plans, expecting my request for time off would be honored, since it was submitted 5 months in advance.
Since then I have managed to wrangle it down to three jobs just to keep me and my two cats fed and a roof over our heads and gas in the car. I never have money left over and barely break even. I work around 16-18 hours a day weekdays and 12 on weekends and am tired all the time. People tell me I need to sleep more and drink less and stop screwing around. I’m not doing any of those things, it is just how it is perceived at each job, when you aren’t here, you aren’t working. When in reality I’m just at work at another job.
The only time in recent memory I had one job I had to work an 86+ hour week, just to almost break even each month.
I am making strides, I own my own home, I have a car that runs, and less than $20,000 in student loans. But I never have the time to stop and enjoy those nice things I do have or I’ll lose them. Wanting 4-5 hours to myself a day to clean the house and cook meals for myself is not unreasonable, but it sure gets skewed that way.
A “childish, dramatic, entitled” millinial thanks you. You got this spot on. So tired of the shit we get smeared with. As if it’s even our shit at all. All we here is “take responsibility”, yet, those saying so do NOT take their own responsibility. Enough.
This problem, I believe, originated before the current generation having to bear the weight of its predecessors during the Reagan years. I remember seeing R. Reagan on TV years ago stating that he gladly left any problems his administration was creating for future generations to deal with. It is an optimism modern conservatives still seem to have. I’ve been in discussions with more people than I can count who about problems created by their quick solutions that ended with them saying that the next generation can fix it when it becomes a problem. Never how they are going to fix things or how they are going to deal with the long lasting effects of the fastest, cheapest action. This goes back so far, it boggles the mind and makes at least on friend exclaim how we’re doomed because no one thinks past the next decade, much less 30 or 50 years.
I worked in advertising for multiple real estate companies that removed 30-year flood plains from all of their site plans on subdivisions and built by construction standards that were designed to last 15 years for buildings on 30-year mortgages, saying by the time they broke down it would not be their problem. They promoted nuclear energy with no regard to what would happen to the tons of waste they produce every year, once again saying the future generation would figure out what to do with nuclear waste.
Ugh!
Reblogged this on Thoughts and Whispers of the Mind.