Most people feel their age or younger than they are. People then cheerfully brag about eternal adolescence, but not everyone feels that way. There are also people who feel older than they are. If you regularly think, "I feel older than I am," then you are one of them. The strange thing is that Danish research shows that people younger than 25 often feel older than they are, but people older than 25 feel younger than they are.
In this blog, I discuss what it means if you feel older than you are and what you can do if you have a problem with that.
Why do some people feel older than they are?
Even after you turn 25, you can still feel older than you are, but it's not something that happens often. When it does happen, there are often several causes for it(1).
Tough times during childhood are often a predictor of feeling older than you actually are. Especially in young adults and people in their late twenties, this is a predictor of feeling older(2).
Tough times like this deal with unsafe feelings at school or in the neighborhood and also:
- Having divorced parents.
- Coming from an alternative family.
- Poverty while growing up.
These tough times growing up make you feel like a parent in 3 ways. Normally as a child you have absolutely no responsibilities, but if you come from a family of poverty or if your parents are divorced you may be more likely to take on a responsible role in the family than in a family with married parents or in a high-income family.
For example, you may be required to add the money you earn from a side job to the household pot. As a result, you may not "enjoy" your side job as much as friends and girlfriends do at the same age. This difference may already make you feel older than classmates or people the same age around you.
If you have a household where 1 of the parents is not present and you also have a sibling, you may also be required to play some sort of parenting role in the household.
These are responsibilities that usually don't fall on a person's shoulders until later in adult life. If you are assigned them in childhood due to circumstances, this can make you feel older than you are.
A death within the family while growing up can also infringe greatly on your sense of age. When someone close to you dies young, your belief that death is still far away is at once dashed. As a result, you may also expect yourself to die at a younger age. These kinds of expectations also make you feel older.
If you have had a near death experience as a child, this can also cause you to think that you will die prematurely. This, too, often makes many people feel older than they are.
Even decades after tough times, you can still keep the belief that you will die sooner than average.
Age and your self-image
Your age is an important part of your identity. Therefore, if you feel older than peers, this can cause problems in your social circle. You probably make different choices that make it difficult to connect with peers.
Many roles people take on are also based on the age they are. If you feel older than you are and yet you find yourself assuming a younger role, this can create internal conflict and also reinforce the feeling that you are older than you actually are.
Thereby, age and self-image is also subject to beliefs you have about what a certain age means for your behavior. In some cultures it is unheard of not to be married after the age of 23, but in the Netherlands we are much more individualistic.
Because of this individualism, we really only have a clear image of what childhood should be like - fun and carefree. This also explains why some young people feel older than they are if their childhood was not so carefree.
On the other hand, individualization in Dutch society means that when you're older, you may do things that younger people do right, or that older people do right. For example, if you have a child who has a child at a young age you may become a grandparent at a young age. This can create a conflict in how you feel because being a grandparent is something that "belongs" to older people.
This sense of doing things the way they should be done is actually the sense of doing things that belong to how you look at the world.
Are there disadvantages to feeling older than you are?
Unfortunately, though. Research shows that if you feel older than you are this causes your body to age faster as well than if you feel your age or if you actually feel younger than you are.
A study of people over the age of 50 also found that feeling older than you are can have detrimental effects on your well-being.
Indeed, as a woman, you may become more pessimistic about how your brain ages. For example, you fear becoming forgetful. This is probably because women are confronted with their age more than men. For example, due to stereotyping that older women are more passive and have lesser cognitive skills. As a woman who already feels older, you obviously don't want to conform to that stereotype. It's a stereotype that makes no sense anyway.
You are also more likely to get sick or suffer from conditions such as high blood pressure.
Just by creating a positive self-image as you age, you can improve your health and ensure that you live longer and happier lives.
What to do if you feel older than you are
First, you can look at the cause of why you feel older than you are. For example, did you have a nasty childhood, high risk or some other unprocessed trauma?
In that case, it's wise to give that unpleasant time a place so you don't over-identify yourself with it.
Tip 1: Process unprocessed trauma
Especially a violent experience where your life was at stake can make you feel older than you are more quickly. By giving that experience a place, you can already feel a lot younger again.
Tip 2: Find out what beliefs about age make you feel older
Do you have clear ideas about how things should be done? If so, those beliefs can make you feel older than you are. By identifying your beliefs, you can check to see if they make sense. If they don't, you can let them go and put new beliefs in their place.
If you find it difficult to figure out your beliefs, a hypnotherapist can help you with that, such as through regression therapy or with a socratic conversation.
Tip 3: Release fears
Fears can cause stress, which in turn can make you feel older than you are. Fear of income, fear of your family, fear of little things. It's actually not good for you and most fears don't make sense either. Try to let go of your worries.
One way to stop yourself from worrying is to stay in the here and now with your attention. Mindfulness is a great way to do that. It brings your focus to the moment and to the input that senses give you. Then you don't have to think about the past or tomorrow.
Tip 4: Look at the positive sides of life
Focusing on the negative aspects of life, such as being responsible for income, risk and negative news can inadvertently make you look at life more negatively than necessary. Therefore, try to avoid negative stimuli. Limit your news intake to half an hour a day to avoid being overexposed to the suffering in the world and focus on the good aspects of your day.
You can do this, for example, by keeping a positive journal. You then write down 3-5 nice things about the day every day. This requires you to look at your day with rose-colored glasses, otherwise you may not even find those positives.
Tip 5: Learn something new
So you're already so old that you know everything about life? Challenge yourself by learning or doing something new every day, or at least every week. By doing so, you will keep yourself young and confront the belief that you are older, than you are.
After all, wisdom comes with age, so as long as you are not omniscient, you have some time.
Want to learn more about mental techniques to make the most of life? Then come to a seminar and check out Hypnosis Institute Netherlands' training programs.
Come to the free online master class for an introduction.
Also pin this handy infographic as a reminder:
Sources:
1. https://link. springer.com/article/10.3758%2FBF03193996?LI=true
2. http://journals. sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/019027250907200105?journalCode=spqc
