Dealing With Mixed Feelings About Getting Older
It’s normal to have both good and bad feelings about the process of growing older. Most likely, you feel good about the fact that you are alive and well. But alongside the feelings of satisfaction, you may have a sense of disappointment, futility, or sadness. You may feel angry or disappointed about how your life has turned out, even though most aspects of your life are positive.
Many people with feelings like these ignore them, hoping they will pass. Sometimes the feelings do pass. But there is an opportunity in facing the feelings and exploring them. Taking the time to assess how your life is going during your middle years can result in a variety of benefits.
For example:
- Exploring your feelings can help you identify and intensify your inner strengths.
- You can find your own voice and express it your own way.
- You can accept your changing physical self.
- It is an opportunity to forgive those you have been angry with.
- "Taking the time to assess how your life is going during your middle years can result in a variety of benefits."
- It can help you find ways to reduce stress.
- You can learn to simplify your life.
- You can re-energize yourself in preparation for the second half of your life.
WHAT ARE TYPICAL MIDLIFE FEELINGS?
According to Rocking the Ages authors J. Walker Smith and Ann Clurman (researchers at Yankelovich Partners) and other authors such as Gail Sheehy, people passing through middle age typically experience the following kinds of feelings.
Great expectations:
Most people in middle age begin to recognize their own limitations. As children and young adults, many people learned to expect unlimited growth and endless possibilities. They believed their good luck would never end. Now that they are entering middle age, many are shocked to discover that there are limits to life’s possibilities.
Regret:
As people reach midlife, they must face up to the loss of some of their dreams and regret the mistakes they have made. It is not easy for anyone to face the person he or she will never be. "As people reach midlife, they must face up to the loss of some of their dreams and regret the mistakes they have made."
Loss:
Our society values beauty and youth. At midlife, everyone has to face its loss. In her book New Passages, author Gail Sheehy calls this experience "the Body Blues" or "the Vanity Crisis."
Meaning:
According to Sheehy, the "universal preoccupation" of the middle years is "the search for meaning in whatever we do." As they face the fact that time is limited, many in middle age become even more intent on this need to analyze and search for significance.
Change:
The midlife years can be a time of radical change for many people. This is the result of endless questioning and evaluation of how they have lived their lives thus far. Many midlife crises become midlife meltdowns, according to Sheehy, because some people react to feelings of emptiness or disillusionment by destroying everything they have built.
For most people, life at age 45 or 50 doesn’t match the dreams they had at age 20 or 30. When people reach age 45 or 50 and are even slightly disappointed by their achievements and experiences, their feelings are likely to be compounded by these factors of self-absorption, a sense of entitlement, and a need for control. But there is also a positive side to this. The tendency to reflect and explore can help one look for new possibilities instead of staying stuck in feelings of disappointment.
HOW CAN I RESOLVE STUCK FEELINGS AND MOVE AHEAD?
If you want to move beyond the things in the past that are keeping you stuck—your unfinished business—you need to acknowledge them and tell the truth about them. You don’t necessarily have to take any action; sometimes just writing or talking about something is enough to lessen its impact. You can write about it in a private journal or talk about it with a trusted friend or counselor. Here are some things to examine when looking for your unfinished business:
- Risks you think you should have taken
- People you treated badly
- People who treated you badly
- Not doing something you should have done
- Messes you need to clean up (literally and metaphorically)
- Things you should throw away
- Things you need but haven’t allowed yourself to have
- Projects you’ve started but have not finished
- Projects that you want to start
- Things you want to change
- Things you want to stop doing
- Experiences you want to have
- Things you want to say to someone
- Feelings you have not expressed
- Secrets you don’t want to keep any longer
WHAT IF MY FEELINGS ARE ACTUALLY DEPRESSION?
It is important to distinguish between the normal feelings of regret and sadness that may come with growing older and leaving your youth behind. If you are experiencing feelings like those on the list that follows, you may be suffering from depression, which can be extremely serious.
People who are diagnosed with clinical depression have a combination of some or all of these symptoms:
- Feelings of hopelessness, even when there is reason to be hopeful
- Fatigue or low energy
- Much less interest or pleasure in most regular activities
- Low self-esteem
- Feelings of worthlessness
- Excessive or inappropriate guilt
- Lessened ability to think or concentrate
- Indecisiveness
- Distorted thoughts; an unrealistic view of life
- Weight gain or loss without dieting
- Change in appetite
- Change in sleeping patterns
- Recurrent thoughts of death
- Suicidal thoughts
- A specific plan for committing suicide
- A suicide attempt
- Feelings of restlessness or being slowed down
When a person is suffering from depression, these symptoms cause significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning. This means that the person’s family and social relationships and work life are impaired.
GRIEF, SADNESS, AND DEPRESSION
Depression may include feelings of sadness, but it is not the same as sadness. Depression lasts much longer than sadness. While depression involves a loss of self-esteem, grief, disappointment, and sadness do not. People who are depressed function less productively. People who are sad or disappointed continue to function.
HOW CAN I RESOLVE MY NEGATIVE FEELINGS AND MOVE ON?
Getting through a period of self-doubt and second guessing is possible. Here are some proactive steps you can take to emerge from this period with renewed enthusiasm and a positive outlook:
- Learn to manage stress. You can learn proven techniques for calming and relaxing yourself. Consider taking a stress management class or buying a set of relaxation tapes.
- Learn problem-solving skills. Many people who struggle with depressed feelings never learned problem-solving skills. They need to develop the ability to view problems from many viewpoints and look for a variety of solutions.
- Build your life around things you can control.
- Learn to recognize what you can control and what you can’t. Avoid spending much effort on situations that won’t pay off for you.
- Learn self-acceptance. Instead of rejecting the parts of yourself that you don’t like, learn to manage them more productively.
- Become aware of selective perception. Observe how you generate ideas and opinions about people and events. Remember that these are just your views, not necessarily objective facts.
- Focus on the future, not the past. Depressed people tend to be focused on the past. People who set goals and focus on the future tend to be more positive about life.
- Develop a sense of purpose. Many people who feel sad or down lack a sense of purpose or meaning. This means they have no goals and nothing in the future drawing them forward. To ward off gloominess, develop a stronger sense of purpose and meaning.
- Strengthen your emotional boundaries and set limits. Boundaries define your role in a social situation. They determine how you will and will not behave in a given situation. Having clear, strong boundaries is empowering, while boundary violations make you feel victimized and helpless. Setting limits means having and enforcing rules for the kind of behavior you expect in a relationship.
- Build positive and healthy relationships. Think about what you need from others in relationships.
- Learn to read people and trust your instincts about whether they are good for you.
- Avoid isolation. Talk to people about what’s going on with you. If you keep your thoughts to yourself, you may be unaware that they are distorted. If you share them with another person, you can become more objective.
WHERE CAN I GO FOR MORE INFORMATION?
Burns, David D. Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy. New York: Avon Books, 1980.
Sheehy, Gail. New Passages: Mapping Your Life Across Time. New York: Random House, 1995.
Smith, J. Walker, and Clurman, Ann. Rocking the Ages: The Yankelovich Report on Generational Marketing. New York: HarperCollins, 1997.
Yapko, Michael. Breaking the Patterns of Depression. New York: Doubleday, 1997.