172. I'm scared of getting older

always break down the psychology of our twenties. Today we're going to have a bit more of a chit chat. She'll sit down and discuss episode, more of a casual episode, more of a personal episode today. I like to do these every now and again. This podcast is kind of also a bit of a diary and a journal for

me through my twenties. As much as I love the research and I love of thinking about all the science, I also like to be able to look back on the episodes that I've done in the past and kind of see where I was at in that moment, and this episode is one of those. It's kind of a nice time I think to do a little check in. The reason being is because I just turned twenty four. I am sure there are a lot of people listening to this, who are like, oh my gosh, you are

such a baby. Twenty four years old. What are you talking about? That is so young? But in my eyes,

obviously it's the oldest I've ever been, duh. But it's also really interesting because I view birthdays with such fear and just such anxiety, and I think that that is a very common experience, this fear of getting older, this fear of having additional responsibilities, of realizing that time is finite and that you're kind of churning through the amount of years that you might have available on this earth. I know it's sounds very existential because it is. And

I remember being maybe like sixteen. I have this very distinct memory of being around that age and thinking, oh my gosh, twenty four that is so old. That is so old. People at that age must have everything together, like I'm going to have a house at that age, I'm gonna have children, I'm gonna have my little pet dog or whatever it was. And here I am at that age now looking back at the vision that my younger self had, and I'm just in a completely different

place than I thought I would be. And I don't know if it's just me but I always find that birthdays are such a point of like reflection but also anxiety, because it really puts into perspective really how finite we have, much finite time we actually have on the earth, and how much there is to do, how much there is to achieve, how much love there is to give, and the ways in which we might be wasting that time or not taking complete advantage of that. So, yes, that

is a long ramble, but it was my birthday. It was amazing. I had a great time. My boyfriend took me out for dinner, and then I went out to dinner with a bunch of my friends. And it's really nice to be around friends who have known you for a while and also new friends. You know, people that I've known since high school and since literally my first day of union, then people I only met last year, and my partner, and it's just a very beautiful experience. I always try to make a big deal out of

my birthday. If you know me personally, you're probably laughing at that statement because you know how true that is. For my twenty first birthday, I think I tried to like distract myself from my fear of aging by just going all out I had. It was literally the Festival

of Gemma. I had three birthday parties. It was a bit overkill, but I think in my mind, I was like, if I can make this exciting, maybe I can suppress some of the anxiety I have around my finite existence on this planet and around the fact that I am getting older and I may not have achieved everything that I wanted to at this age. It's also inevitable that on every birthday I have, I always end up crying. This year, I am proud to say I cried from

a happy place, from a positive place. I felt so loved, so surrounded by good people. I think this is also one of the first times in my life that I've just felt true peace, peace with who I am peace with, where I'm at peace with the people around me once again.

Birthdays are such a point of reflection, and I think back to where I was last year and the year before when I first moved to Sydney and I didn't have any friends, and the year before that when I was celebrating my first birthday after being through like a horrific breakup and not having this person that I'd been around for two year years and every point. Every year is just kind of a further opportunity to really see how far I've come, but then also how much is

left in the future. So let's talk about this fear of aging. If you can relate, I'm sure there are many of you. Why does it feel so oppressive and scary sometimes to acknowledge that we're getting older? For me, I think it's that birthdays symbolize being closer to death, and it is very innate and natural as a human, as a mammal, as a species to fear death, to fear what that brings the unknown. Of course, there are many people who have different conceptions and different ideas of

what comes afterwards. For me, I don't think I really have one, and so thinking about how each year represents less time to be alive, it also represents less time before the unknown, and that's seriously what I'm probably most scared of. It's not that I'm scared of the added responsibility. I think it's not that I'm scared of growing up in the sense of giving up the younger versions of myself.

There's a whole syndrome around that called Peter Pan syndrome, which basically talks about people who are like fight against growing older because they're scared of what it means to be an adult. Specifically, they're scared of losing joy and wonder and a lack of responsibility and a lack of accountability. That's a whole different episode, a whole different conversation. I don't think I necessarily have that. I think I recognize how much of a privilege it is to get older,

and what a privilege it is to age. And I've always said that. I think about all my friends who are in their thirties, and they genuinely just get their lives just seem to get better. They get hotter, they get more successful, they have more money, they have more fun, they have more freedom. It seems to me they really know themselves more. So I'm excited for that. I'm excited for my thirties. I'm excited for my forties and my fifties. My mom seems like she's having an amazing time. Those

new chapters are thrilling to me. And I think that there used to be such a sense of like, your twenties are the best years of your life. When those are done, what everything else is a wasteland, Like there's nothing left afterwards. That is a massive misconception. Obviously, I've I talk about our twenties twice a week, all the time, everywhere I go, But I really don't think that your

life ends the moment you turn thirty. There is a recognition that there is a lot of beauty and grace and excitement in aging, But it's that catch twenty two of realizing that the more you grow into yourself, the more versions you have to say goodbye to, and the

less time you have in front of you. I think it's that mortality alarm, that inbuilt mortality alarm that we all have, that we all that we have as mamma, as a species that realizes how fragile life is, that starts to really sound off and blare every birthday because it's a significant kind of triggering event or like anniversary of acknowledgment of birth and death and how they're very like interlinked. I know that sounds very deeply philosophical, but

I have honestly thought about this so much. I also think that another factor around this fear of aging thing is that birthdays make us very conscious of time passing. When I was a kid, even a teenager, that used to really really scare me because it felt like something I could not control. Time, this like weird entity that none of us can really visualize. It was just slipping away from me and I wasn't able to do anything about it. And I would sit and I would spial

and I would think about it. And I remember distinctly watching this bird at my window when I was in university, fluttering, and every time it flooded from one side to the other, I was like, that's a second gone. That's another second gone. That's a second gone. Like time is just rolling on and on and on, and it feels like this freight train that's just going to destroy everything in its path, and eventually it's going to destroy me. There's a lot

of fear there. There's a lot of fear there, I think from when I was a child and not feeling in control. That still feels really relevant now. And it is very claustrophobic in a sense to not feel like there is this big thing in your life that dictates so much about your future, so much about what you can achieve that you have no control over. Time is just existing and you just operate within it. If you get to kind of meta about it, it does get

genuinely quite scary. It's also the sense of, like, every year I feel further and further detached from them memories and the periods in my life that I really cherish, specifically that feeling of being a child, and also the feeling of being a teenager and in my early twenties when I felt so chaotic and unbridled and free, and just how absolutely amazing that was, even if at the

time it probably didn't feel that great. It's this idea of like the rose tinted lenses, right, like, we tend to look back at our memories more fondly than they actually were on the moment. Because I know as a child, I really wanted to get older. I couldn't wait to have responsibility and freedom. I know that I was going through a lot of hard things. I was being bullied. I know that when I was in my late teens early twenties, I was heartbroken and unsure of who I was.

But there is something about that time that I miss that I really miss, and it is really overwhelming to realize that you're probably, you're not probably you're never going to get that back, You're never going to be a kid again. That time is past, that chapter is closed, and it brings on a massive nostalgia wave for me

around this time. I don't know if you guys can relate every time, like I know that we've said birthdays are a time of reflection that's pretty obvious, but it's also a really deep time of nostalgia for me, thinking about all the things that I did as a child and how joyous and free I was, and whether I've given those things up. The older I get, whether this younger version of me would be happy with where I am.

If it's not obvious, I'm very much stuck in like the romantic parts of the past rather than the reality

of it. So that is like a massive component for me feeling like I feel less attached to previous versions of me and recognizing that I can't go back, but then also recognizing that, like what I'm doing right now, like these years of my life are also going to be my golden years, and I really need to take advantage of them, because in five years time, I'm going to be looking at what I'm doing right now and feeling the same way that I felt about my twenty

year old self, nineteen year old self, whatever she was doing. She was a mess, but she was also having a great time. And like, sometimes I think that I've kind of grown up too quickly in a sense, and that I've forced myself into becoming like a real adult too soon.

And I think that's because for many years of my life, like it was always like how I'm very mature for my age, and people being like, we're very wise, wise beyond your years, and I take that as like a massive compliment, Like I really appreciate when people say that, but I'm like, yeah, but some of my friends are still doing things that just seem so fun, Like they're still learning those lessons through mistakes that I feel like I haven't gotten to make, or they're still going out

and partying and just like geting being obliterated, and like I'm not really down for that anymore. But when I turn thirty five, am I gonna be like, geez, it's been ten years since I last like went clubbing, Like gosh, I'm such a granny and I'm like not even halfway

through life yet. It's this constantly contemplation of like the what ifs, and wanting to avoid regret in every sense of the word regret in my friendship's regret in my career, regret in my life experiences, because every year I'm more conscious that you don't get that time back. So it feels so much more valuable to me, so much more precious, something to be coveted, something to really really ensure you

take advantage of. I think we did speak about this before, but it is I think what drives our fear of aging is the fear of the unknown, not just in terms of death, because fear of death, I think, is a complete different subject. I think everyone in some sense has a fear of death and what comes afterwards, but the fear of the unknow more so in terms of the fear of the future. I have built my like entire career at this stage of my life off of

being twenty or in my twenties. Like this podcast is called the Psychology of your twenties, and people always ask me, oh, like, so when you turn thirty, you're gonna do the Psychology of your thirties, And I'm like, I don't fucking know. Oh my gosh, Like I'm so, I'm just trying to get through this, Like should I do that? Will I be like ready for something different? By them? Like is

it any different? People always message me in or like, I'm not in my twenties anymore, but this is like still the exact same kind of stuff that I'm going through. But yeah, really it puts into perspective that, like, I realistically only have like six more years to take advantage of these experiences before I turn thirty, And is my whole life going to be like the girl who talks

about her twenties even when she's not in them. I don't know whether that's what I want, But I also know that I'm just borrowing fear from the future, right, Like I always think about this. When we worry about the future, we're just borrowing anxiety from that chapter in our life that we're still going to fear feel. Then you're just feeling that same like pattern of fear and those same emotions twice, Like you don't need to worry as much about what's going to happen, because it will

just happen. Like part of anxiety is really just feeling like you can change things and feeling like you can almost anxieties are motivated to do something about what you're scared about. But the thing that I want to do something about is not something necessarily in my control right, like some factors are, but it's the future. It's this like big cloud, big storm of factors and things in events and just complete curve balls that like we can't

necessarily interpret or predict. So whilst I'm also facing that sense of like what does my fear future hold? Like what am I going to be doing in ten years? What should I be doing now to prepare for that future that I want, prepare for the life that I want, it also feels like time is equally running out to achieve some of the big things that I wanted to do by this age. I always think about the Silvia Plath fig tree analogy. So if you've heard of it before,

I'm sorry you're gonna hear it again. But I think it's one of the most beautiful things anybody has ever said. So hopefully that's not too much of a disappointment. But in her very famous book with the Belgia, I feel like every girl in their twenties has read this book

or should read this book. She talks about this analogy, or this vision of herself sitting underneath a fig tree and above her is this brilliant, beautiful magnificent tree with sprawling branches, and it goes on for meters and meters, and at the end of every branch, every little tip is a fig. Is this big, rich fig And the

figs represent our futures. They represent the future versions of us that we could have if we choose a certain path, and so like in her mind, one figure is like marriage and a family and children are being a stay at home mother. Another figure is being a professor at

a big, famous university. Another one is being like a nomad, a traveler, and then another one is being becoming really fit in being an athlete, someone who runs Travelon's like, there are so many different futures that we can choose from, but every every year, every month, every week that we don't choose one of those futures, they die out. There are some things that unfortunately, like you can't like you

have a like a prime time to do them. In a sense, I think about it a lot in terms of like sport, but also as we get older, like having children is a big one. Well, it's the reality of being a woman is that there is a natural time limit to your ability to be a mom or to be a parent. And she talks about how each year it feels like more and more of these figs are falling and there are less and less options available

to her, but she just cannot choose. She cannot see from the outside of the fig which one is going to taste the best. She wants to taste them all, but she can only climb one branch at a time. And I think that's really really relevant here when we talk about our fear of growing older, and our fear of time passing, and our fear of birth taste, and more generally, is that they represent to us the figs dying off. They represent to us certain doors that we

feel are closing with age. Now I have this battle in my brain because I don't necessarily think that that's true. Obviously, for some things it is like, I'm sorry, you're not going to be like an Olympic gymnast if you start at thirty. I'm sorry sorry to say that. Hopefully you already knew that. But in some senses, like it is true. But for very minor, minor choices, most things I don't think have an age limit on them. Most things are available.

You have so much capacity for change, so much capacity and agency to get to a point where you're like, I actually don't like how this looks. I don't like how my life feels, how I feel in it, and in the timelines and the stories and the plot and the relationships that define my life. I'm gonna change. That is something that I think we lose sight of the older we get because we get more stuck in our ways.

We get more comfortable with the reality that we've created, that we forget that if we are unhappy, we can actually do something about it, but we maintain that irrational sense of like feeling stuck in the lives we've created for ourselves. That is why each year we just feel more scared. And each year as the time passes, you're like, oh my God, like this so much to do because I've let myself feel uncomfortable in my life for too long. I don't know. Maybe that is just an experience for me.

Maybe you listening to that and you're like, what is she talking about? That makes absolutely no sense? Totally get it. That's fine, It doesn't have my feelings. It's just me rambling on about what I'm thinking about. But the final factor that I think really comes into play, especially when we talk about this from a more like psychological and social point of view, is that our society doesn't like old people. It just doesn't. It doesn't like signs of aging.

It doesn't like the idea of getting old, of being elderly. If you think about it, there are so many ways in which we are taught that to be young and youthful is like the secret ingredient to being happy and

being successful. The amount of ads I started getting when I turned twenty four, like, I'm not even that old, but when I turn twenty four, botox ads everywhere absolutely not for me at least, Like it was almost like these apps knew that this was like a turning point where people start thinking about how they're going to look when they're older and wanting to prevent some of the signs of aging that we find unattractive and unappealing, when really it's such a privilege and a beautiful thing to

be able to grow older. So many people don't get other opportunity, but we really don't have such a positive culture around respecting the older members of our society. There's so many tropes about older people being lonely and older people being sad, and older people losing all their cognitive ability and their physical health is declining, and their mental health and their emotional health and their cognitive capacities are

all going downhill. It's like, you reach this point in your fifties, and then after that point, you're suddenly an old person and society doesn't care about you anymore, not as much as it cares about young people. And so you have this like innate sense of prejudice towards a future version of yourself, towards the elderly version of yourself, because you realize how people in our society who are that age and who are older are treated. There is

just so much stigma around it. And then alongside that, there's this fear of like what does old age bring in terms of my health? That's something that I've been thinking about a lot. Posted on Instagram the other day about this documentary I watched on Netflix, Life Changing, Amazing, wonderful. It was called You Are What You Eat, a twin experiment. I love anything that's a twin experiment because it's so

like experimentally rigorous and like scientifically rigorous. Besides the point, this documentary basically looked at how different diets affect people's health outcomes, things like their what's it called, like they're by logical age and cardiovascular health, so many different things. And the reason I was so fascinated by it is because I think when I was in my early twenties and late teens, when I was at UNI, and then the first few years I lived in Sydney as well,

I really treated my body like absolute crap. I was also in like a dietary sense, like I wasn't eating junk food all the time, but I certainly wasn't thinking about how much sleep I needed. I wasn't thinking about how much calcium I should be consuming. That it's probably good to stretch after going for a ten k roun so you don't get like long term muscle damage. Like we are so blessed in our twenties and when we're

young to just like take our health for granted. And it's something that I'm starting to realize is like, Okay, yeah, I am gonna get older and time isn't promised, and people do die from things in which they haven't taken care of their health. And in this doockumventory, they talk about a lot about how like a plant plant based ad why is that such a tongue twister. A plant based diet is so much better for you. And I was like, okay, I'm twenty four, now I better become

a vegetarian. Like, I've got to do it. I've got to start taking my vitamins and my minerals. I've got to start, you know, really taking care of myself so that I can ensure I'm here for as long as possible. And something that really triggered it was actually going away with my parents and my sisters and my boyfriend to

Japan over the summer slash winter. If you're up north, yeah, up north, was that I was just like, I really love these people and I want to be around them for as long as possible, and I don't want something to happen. I don't want to reach a point where I realized that I could have changed how my body aged and I could have changed how my body grew up so that it gave me more time with them and more years to be someone's sister, to be someone's mother,

to be someone's wife, to be someone's friend. Once again, it's this very existential, dark understanding that like time on this planet, time alive is not promised, is finite and you kind of have to fight for it at some stage, Like as you get older, health complications are going to come up. And that's really scary to me as someone

who has always firstly, always had health anxiety. If you've listened to our health anxiety episode, I don't think it's going to come as a surprise that I'm worrying about this, but always had health anxiety and always actually been in relatively good health, Like I've taken it for granted, and so it's just like this year, I've really been like, oh, it's time to take that seriously. It's time to really

take my life seriously. I don't know. I'm hoping that someone out there can relate to this sense like getting older and getting frustrated by the fact that you don't have control over time, Scared of the things that you might be missing, Scared of the things that you might be forgetting to do, the opportunities that you're giving up, the lives that you said no to to live a different one. It's just like very much on my mind. And yeah, I keep reminding myself that twenty four really

isn't that old. And I'm very lucky because I have a lot of friends who are older. A lot of friends who are like in their thirties, even in their forties.

Like one of my best friends, Erica, is in her thirties, and I get along with her so well, and I love the kind of life that she leads, like all those myths that people have around, like your twenties being the best years of your life, and like you need to go traveling in your twenties, you need to like try as many different careers in your twenties, like don't

settle down on your twenties. She has just like done everything to the opposite of that, and it looks frickin' amazing, like she's having so much fun and she has just like done the things that she knows are going to make her happy, even if they're a little bit hard

in the moment. And I think it's those examples of people who make you not scared to be their age that are really like helpful in those times when you're like paralyzed by the fact that you are getting older and there is nothing that you can do about it. So hopefully if you're listening to this, you have like somewhat related I will say it. I want to end this episode and this ramble really by just saying twenty three was one of the best years of my life,

and I'm so excited for twenty four. I'm excited for twenty five. I'm excited for the rest of my twenties and the different chapters contained in them. But honestly, I cannot think you guys enough, the listeners of this podcast from how amazing the last year was. There was just so many milestones, so many things to celebrate, so many new members of this community, and so much just love.

I just sometimes when when I'm making this podcast, I'm alone in a room talking to myself, and I forget that there are other people listening to this right now, like on the other side who I don't know, but who listen to my voice and who really learn something from me or take something from these episodes. And it's so nice to hear that from you guys, and it really assures me that I'm doing something that has purpose

and that is useful and that helps people. And I don't know if, even if everything else in my twenties goes to shit, at least I can say that, like I have the opportunity to do this, so I know this conversation has been quite pessimistic. I want to end from a place of gratitude and from a place of just like absolute acknowledgment of how privileged and happy and lucky and amazing my life is. And a lot of

that is thanks to the support for this show. I'm so glad that I'm one year further in my twentieth There's I'm sure so many more experiences left to talk about, and I'm so excited to learn from them. I'm so excited to see what happens. If you've also had this feeling of like being scared of growing older, of aging, shoot me a message. I would like to hear from your experience what you kind of did to counteract that, or what you think some of the triggers were, Like

why that was the case. There's so much other research on this that I didn't get to go through. So maybe next year we'll do a replay and I'll talk to you about being twenty five when I'm actually having a very serious called a life crisis. But until that time comes, I want to thank you for listening. If there's someone who you think would enjoy this episode, make sure you share it with them. Thank you. For all

the love and support. If you have an episode, suggestion, feedback, questions, whatever it is, feel free to message me over on Instagram at that Psychology Podcast. I'm another year older and feeling very lucky. Thank you for following me on this journey. We will be back next week with another episode.