February 23, 2024 • 30 mins
It's my birthday. Let's talk about my fear of growing older.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.
(00:27):
Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners. Wherever
you are in the world, it is so great to
have you here. Back for another episode as we as
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,
(00:47):
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
(01:09):
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,
(01:30):
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
(01:53):
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
(02:17):
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
(02:38):
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
(03:02):
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
(03:22):
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.
(03:45):
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
(04:09):
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
(04:29):
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
(04:51):
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
(05:11):
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,
(05:33):
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
(05:54):
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
(06:18):
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,
(06:41):
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
(07:03):
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
(07:27):
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
(07:47):
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
(08:11):
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
(08:32):
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
(08:53):
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
(09:13):
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
(09:37):
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
(10:00):
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
(10:22):
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
(10:44):
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
(11:06):
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
(11:28):
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
(11:50):
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
(12:12):
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,
(12:34):
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
(12:55):
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
(13:18):
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,
(13:40):
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
(14:01):
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.
(14:22):
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
(14:42):
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,
(15:04):
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
(15:24):
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
(15:47):
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,
(16:10):
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
(16:33):
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
(16:54):
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
(17:17):
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,
(17:38):
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
(18:01):
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
(18:21):
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
(18:43):
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
(19:05):
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
(19:26):
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
(19:46):
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.
(20:06):
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
(20:28):
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
(20:49):
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
(21:11):
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
(21:34):
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
(21:56):
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
(22:17):
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.
(22:40):
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.
(23:06):
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
(23:26):
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
(23:48):
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
(24:10):
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
(24:31):
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
(24:52):
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
(25:18):
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,
(25:40):
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
(26:01):
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.
(26:22):
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
(26:45):
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
(27:06):
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.
(27:27):
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
(27:50):
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
(28:11):
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
(28:31):
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
(28:56):
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
(29:17):
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
(29:38):
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,
(29:59):
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.
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.
(00:27):
Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners. Wherever
you are in the world, it is so great to
have you here. Back for another episode as we as
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,
(00:47):
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
(01:09):
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,
(01:30):
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
(01:53):
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
(02:17):
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
(02:38):
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
(03:02):
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
(03:22):
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.
(03:45):
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
(04:09):
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
(04:29):
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
(04:51):
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
(05:11):
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,
(05:33):
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
(05:54):
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
(06:18):
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,
(06:41):
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
(07:03):
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
(07:27):
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
(07:47):
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
(08:11):
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
(08:32):
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
(08:53):
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
(09:13):
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
(09:37):
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
(10:00):
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
(10:22):
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
(10:44):
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
(11:06):
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
(11:28):
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
(11:50):
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
(12:12):
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,
(12:34):
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
(12:55):
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
(13:18):
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,
(13:40):
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
(14:01):
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.
(14:22):
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
(14:42):
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,
(15:04):
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
(15:24):
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
(15:47):
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,
(16:10):
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
(16:33):
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
(16:54):
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
(17:17):
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,
(17:38):
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
(18:01):
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
(18:21):
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
(18:43):
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
(19:05):
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
(19:26):
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
(19:46):
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.
(20:06):
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
(20:28):
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
(20:49):
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
(21:11):
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
(21:34):
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
(21:56):
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
(22:17):
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.
(22:40):
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.
(23:06):
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
(23:26):
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
(23:48):
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
(24:10):
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
(24:31):
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
(24:52):
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
(25:18):
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,
(25:40):
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
(26:01):
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.
(26:22):
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
(26:45):
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
(27:06):
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.
(27:27):
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
(27:50):
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
(28:11):
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
(28:31):
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
(28:56):
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
(29:17):
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
(29:38):
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,
(29:59):
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.
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