[Adult Children] Being concerned about what others think is not a weakness, but a "learned response"

*This article was revised and updated on July 2, 2026.

Saturday morning. Even though I have the day off from work, I can't get up.

A terrible headache and a heaviness that makes me feel like I'm dragging my body. It felt as if the balance between my mind and body had suddenly snapped.

The cause is clear. Stress from work. But I also felt it wasn't just that. A certain term I had known for a long time suddenly felt like it applied to me, starting from this morning.

What I had always thought was because "I am weak" might actually have a different name.

That one week where I worked until my memory faded

During the week after the Obon holiday, my memory was spotty. A series of difficult tasks I had never done before. Working from morning until night, and inevitably getting tension headaches on the weekend.

I clearly thought to myself while in bed, "Maybe I'm not cut out for this job." But at the time, I held back just a little.

What I wanted to know, before deciding whether to quit, was "why do I get so exhausted?"

I had always thought I had an "overthinking personality"

The term "Adult Children" came to mind. I had known the word itself for a long time, but it felt like someone else's problem.

When I looked at it as something that applied to me, I was startled by how much it overlapped with my long-standing struggle of "being concerned about what others think."

The rehearsal in my head before speaking in a meeting. The nights spent dwelling on a slight change in someone's expression.

When I was a child, I was always gauging my mother's mood. I would anticipate whether she was angry from the tone of her voice. Like trying to force a round rubber balloon into a square box, I would change my own shape to fit into the situation—.

Maybe that habit from back then is just continuing to run on its own at work now that I'm an adult. Thinking that, I felt like one of my long-standing mysteries had been solved.

It's not a "weak personality that overthinks," but a response I learned in order to survive as a child. If that's the case, I think it's also the flip side of the ability to notice things faster than others.

Knowing the name was the first step

Just because I know the name doesn't mean everything will change starting tomorrow.

Even so, being able to think that this exhaustion might be a "learned response" rather than "my own weakness" made my breathing a little easier.

What I can do is probably simple. Put my guilt aside for a moment and try saying "NO" to small requests. Write down on paper and confirm not "what the other person wants," but "what I want to do."

Searching for the cause is not for blaming yourself, but for protecting yourself. This difficulty in living won't last forever. I'm not entirely sure yet, but I feel that recovery begins the moment you start to think that way.

"Maybe I'm not cut out for this job"—when was the last time you whispered that to yourself? It doesn't have to be about work; even a minor sense of unease is fine. Please feel free to leave a brief comment below.

Recommended reading

This is a record of when I first faced the term "adult children" head-on, shortly before writing this article. For those who can't get the thought "maybe I'm one too" out of their heads.

The flip side of "worrying too much" is being able to notice things faster than others. For those who want to re-examine the "use" of the parts they've always considered weaknesses.

How to deal with the habit of trying too hard to meet expectations eventually became a book. For those who want to take a slow walk through the continuation of this article.

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