Fear of Falling Behind
The fear of falling behind in college evolved into a pervasive mental health challenge not just on-campus, but off for those who are eager to return. The pressure to “get back” and trudge ahead working towards a degree is like watching a car crash in slow motion: it’s so obvious what’s happening, and you want to look away but can’t take your eyes off the scene. Because of social media and being able to “see” what their peers are doing 24/7, there’s more internalized pressure to return. No matter a parent’s boundary to say “no, I won’t pay for your tuition” or clinical professionals saying “continue to focus on your mental health, without the stress of college” - it’s like these messages fall on deaf ears.
This psychological pressure frequently triggers not just the fierce intensity to return, but it also creates the perfect storm for cognitive dissonance of the situation. It’s like witnessing the most wildly ungrounded sense of reality. The students become overwhelmed by the belief that they are already too far behind to catch up, which then triggers this obsession to return. They tune out any messaging around them that doesn’t support this timely return. We’re not even getting to the point of where anxiety them becomes the baseline for their operating. Students are motivated to be back, but the sheer fact of being back creates a tsunami of inadequacy and imposter syndrome. The destructive feedback loop of avoidance, which then leads to being further behind, which creates a flooded nervous system from stress, and then they go to self-medicating (i.e. marijuana, gaming, doom scrolling, alcohol, etc.) as a means to cope. It gets ugly quick, especially if there is a history of mania or depression. The worst part of this situation is that the student is the one who self-initiated this. It could have been deferred.
Overcoming the terror of falling behind requires shifting from external comparison to an internal timeline. Success in young adulthood is rarely linear, and the narrative of the "perfect four-year track" is not accurate to date. In fact, it does not account for the steep learning curve of developing executive functioning skills, mental health challenges, and navigating college with accommodations. By normalizing the messy, uneven nature of the college transition, students can learn to view small setbacks not as permanent failures, but as standard, navigable adjustments on the road to independence. No two roads look the same. And, college isn’t going anywhere.
For questions or comments contact Joanna.
