Why the ‘sandwich generation’ secretly longs to escape

Nat van Zee, 48, reached a breaking point in 2019, quitting her job in London as a lecturer in fashion and make-up. She says: “I was secure with a regular income and pension – that’s supposed to be the holy grail. But what was demanded of me got more and more unreasonable, doing unpaid work with no prospect of that changing. I could feel the stress from the expectations and the workload was something I couldn’t sustain.

“You reach a tipping point where you leave or go under. When I quit I didn’t really know what to do next and it was like being in a void. There was a relief and freedom, but also there was a sense of the unknown.

“It was the same with my relationship where I was pouring everything into it and not getting the same back. I’d been raised to put others before and to care for people – ‘people pleasing’ – and I was raised to meet those high expectations in my career. It was reflected in all my relationships. It was better for me to be on my own than to be around people that lower my energy. I’ve cut out friendships of 20 years because they were so unhealthy.”

‘Pure escapism’

Gen X has commonly been investing in other people for years by the time they reach mid-life: in partners, children, parents, colleagues and friends. They have often not invested time or effort in themselves for a decade or more. When you are in your twenties you are always thinking about what you want. That usually disappears in middle-age.

“We see overwhelm constantly in our work,” says consultant psychologist Dr Bijal Chheda-Varma of Nos Curare clinic. “People are always saying ‘I wish I could just take off and live in the middle of nowhere and paint mountains’. Things like that.”

The attraction of escaping or disappearing is often caused by a lack of connection with others. Gen Xers, and older Millennials, have lived through huge change, especially in technology, and they adapted well, but with that comes the questions: “Who have I become? I have accommodated all the changes in my life and all the people in my life and what do I do now?”

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For James Eder, 40, the urgent need to escape was caused by a health scare rather than an existential crisis (although that followed). He started his own business in north London at just 22, but in 2016 he had shingles, and was told to stop working to recover.

“It was the first sign that my body was telling me to slow down.” In 2017 he fainted at a theme park in the Netherlands, then went from his GP to the Royal Free for check-ups where he was diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy [a thickening of the heart muscles]. At first, he wanted to carry on as normal. “I was so driven to build the business and felt an overwhelming pressure. I was holding myself to too high a standard. In September I was told I might need a heart transplant.”

In April 2018 he was told to come back for more checks in six months’ time. “That sense of waiting was overwhelming,” he admits. “Then I was told I’d need a defibrillator [ICD]. I knew the risks but I decided to disappear to Mykonos by myself.”

He drove around the Greek island for a week and was in a bar when he says he had the “crazy” idea to stay and work there. “It was pure escapism – I didn’t want to worry about next week or next year. I wanted to work there and be in the moment – each day would be a fresh start with new guests and new situations.”

He was taken to another bar and small hotel run by an English woman who agreed to employ him for the summer. “I was cleaning the bedrooms and toilets, but I was also connecting with strangers. To get away and reevaluate everything. I didn’t discuss it with anyone. I just told my family. My partner had to accept it. Why do we wait for something bad to happen before we make the right decisions for ourselves? That experience meant I was ready to have the ICD fitted.”

‘Serenity prayer’

Even for the most successful, financially secure individuals, with seemingly happy relationships and family lives, the secret desire to escape persists.

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“Escaping might be about wanting to leave a job or a relationship or place,” says Vrech. “But it’s really about the desperate need to find yourself again. The fantasy of escaping can be a protest against a life that is over-defined by responsibility.”

Some people surrender to overwhelm and accept their lives as they are, suffering in silence. Others use avoidance methods such as drinking or binge-eating. Some push even harder in the hope that achieving more will bring them happiness. Others run away, although that is the hardest and rarest option, especially when children are involved.

“Life is like a pie chart and each piece is important and you need to examine the pie chart as often as possible to see how it’s changed,” says Chheda-Varma. “Assessing if the changes are damaging you is a way to identify things you can do to improve your particular situation.”

Something that keeps coming up in these discussions is the so-called “serenity prayer” attributed to the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and often used in addiction recovery. I first encountered it in Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse-Five. That version of it goes “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

“We can overwhelm ourselves by trying to control the uncontrollable,” says Vrech. “It’s healthy to distinguish between what we can control, what we cannot control and what we can influence.”

We are all “functioning adults”, and under stress the child will often come to the surface and a child will want to run away from what it can no longer bear. The more exposed the child is the more likely it is to behave dramatically.

What is curious is that so many of the people I spoke to about their problems went on to become life coaches and therapists themselves.

“When you have a crisis some people just disappear,” says Eder. “Some friends you thought were friends just don’t show up. People are resistant to the idea of overwhelm because they often assume they can push through it. If you described what you are going through to yourself as if you were someone else you would say ‘this is not OK’ – not sleeping or eating properly, feeling sick and crying at work is not OK.”

Escape is just not practical for most people, even during a major crisis. In an ideal world we would have the facility to adopt the principles of the serenity prayer and guide ourselves back to a better life without having to run away. It is also very easy to forget what is truly good and valuable in our lives – those things that would ground us had we not taken them for granted.

“A crisis that involves burnout, breakups or health problems gives us the opportunity to reflect on why we behave a certain way and if we want to make changes,” says Van Zee. “It forces us to analyse what we want from life and make difficult decisions we’d rather avoid.”

In the film Shrek Forever After, Shrek becomes so exasperated with his life that he pleads for just one day when he could be as he was before he had any responsibilities. Then it takes him the entire film to restore the life he so wanted to abandon, having realised what he has lost. If you are thinking of running away, be careful what you wish for.

The Telegraph, London

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