Millennials were raised with inflated expectations, making the gap between ambition and reality painful.

Millennials set to be the first generation worse off than their parents, fuelling disillusionment at midlife.

Self-compassion, less social media, and gratitude can break the spiral of unmet expectations and resentment.

Where were you when you realised life wasn't going to work out exactly as planned? For me it was graduating with a degree in journalism at the height of the great recession and realising I probably wasn't going to be setting the world on fire with my writing prowess. The rude awakening of entering the workplace doesn't seem to be a purely millennial experience. Recent reports suggest Gen Z are equally unprepared for the onslaught of a 9-5, with a recent report finding that six in ten employers say they have already sacked some of the Gen Z workers they hired fresh out of college in recent months.

But it was the millennials who pioneered the trend of entering the workplace only to discover it wasn't going to live up to their dreams. The oft-quoted statistic is that millennials are on track to become the first generation to be less well off than their parents. Born between 1981 and 1996, millennials are now aged between 30 and 45 — approaching middle age, and arriving at exactly the point in life when people begin to seriously question how their careers and lives have turned out. This comes as an added shock to a generation who were tipped to become masters of the universe. The irony of being told you could do or become anything you wanted, only to end up faring worse than your forebears, seems to add insult to an already injured generation.

I know this territory intimately — not just from personal experience, but from my research into the careers and life experiences of women with ADHD. The women I interview are often in their late thirties, early forties, and beyond, as that is the trend for when women are most often diagnosed. They are,........

© Psychology Today