I am worried about whether I will find a good job when I graduate. I want to pay my parents back the money they spent on the expensive tuition fees. Given the current and the future situation of the global economy, I am concerned that I will not be able to find a good job that pays well, and, as a result, will have to rely on my parents for longer than planned. I’ve already seen people lose offers or opportunities due to the crisis.
I still need to pay the remaining tuition fees, even though teaching and exams have changed or been cancelled, and this had already happened once earlier in the year as a result of the strikes which took place. I can’t help feeling angry at the university, and as though I’ve been robbed of some opportunities. This has resulted in me feeling even more anxious about the impact the financial pressure will have on my family.
Question:
Throughout my life, my parents have attributed to me the financial pressure they are in – I know that it isn’t going to continue permanently, and I can give back to them in the future, but I can’t shrug off my insecurity associated with it. How can I let go of it?
Many thanks,
A Student
Reply from Professor Peter Fonagy, Head of the Division of Psychology and Language Sciences at UCL and Chief Executive of the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families
Thank you for your email, which I think captures very thoughtfully and articulately your worries.
You describe in a very coherent and persuasive way the combination of feelings you have towards your parents’ support for you – a very natural combination of gratitude, remorse and perhaps some understandable resentment of the way in which your parents appear to have made you feel responsible for the financial burdens they face.
The stage of life you are in is one in which, as a young adult, you are feeling an increasing sense of agency – you appropriately feel the need to begin to take on the responsibilities of adulthood. Despite your sensitivity and awareness of the need to make these steps, you – along with very many young people of your generation – feel trapped by circumstances, such as the scale of the cost of university, that make it almost impossible to become financially independent in the way you would like. Unfortunately, the Covid-19 crisis and its economic fallout have made things even tougher.
The widespread, almost universal, generational nature of these problems shows that you cannot hold yourself personally to blame for the position that you and your parents are in. I am fully aware that hearing and even agreeing with that does not make you feel any better. So why does one feel guilt or anxiety about something that one knows one is actually not responsible for? The answer is that (believe it or not) feeling guilty makes one feel a little bit more agentive than one is. It kinds of leaves you feeling as if there was something that you could do (could have done) about all that has happened. It makes you feel as if you had even a slight amount of control over the situation. So even though you know full well that this situation is not at all of your doing and feeling bad about it does not help anyone (least of all you or your parents who now have a miserable child in addition to having an expensive one). Not very helpful, is it? Well, maybe it is a little helpful. While you are thinking about whether you should be feeling guilty or not you do not have to face the very real anxiety of how you make your way in a competitive world with so much fewer opportunities than your parents had.
So what can you do? You have to face up to and mourn the disappointment. You had hopes and plans and they were cruelly taken away. Being angry about that can be helpful. Bottling up the frustration rarely does very much good. But once you expressed (at least to yourself) the anger and resentment you have, you can turn to more productive activities. Set aside the issues of debt and repayment and think more about how to make the best of the situation you are facing at the moment. Put all the mental energy you have into making the best of your studies right now and being the most effective student you can be. Deal with the immediate things that you do have control over: the essays, the practicals and yes, the evenings with your friends (social distancing is a must). Make yourself feel that you can change things by changing the (relatively) small things that you can change. The more you do that, you will find that the unwanted and irrelevant guilt feelings will disappear.
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