Gerascophobia: the fear of aging

Every time Javiera gets up and sees her natural face in front of the mirror, without makeup or Instagram filters, she says she doesn’t recognize herself. Or rather, she decides not to recognize herself like that, with those spots and expression lines that have appeared around her eyes over the past decade. He is no longer the one he was at 20; Today, she is 38 years old and when she looks at herself naked and notices the incipient aging of her body, added to a pregnancy and the weight changes she has had, what she feels is not only nostalgia. It’s guilt and worry, it’s angst and anguish, and it’s also denial of the inevitable progress that is getting old. “I think a lot about how I’m going to look at 50 and it worries me. It’s a recurring thought during the day, inevitably it affects my self-esteem and therefore my quality of life”.

“The drama of old age does not consist in being old, but in having been young”, said one of the characters in The Picture of Dorian Gray Dorian, the man obsessed with maintaining his youthful image at all costs in Oscar Wilde’s famous novel. It happens in the classic novels of the 19th century and continues to happen until today: something as natural and inevitable as the vestiges of passing time, for some, can become a martyrdom and the greatest obsession of control. It’s true, we are all moved by the soil of how much our youth is fading, but in some this resentment can come with a toxic and lingering component. They call it “gerascophobia” or the extreme fear of aging, something that can cause us to obsessively control every change in the body associated with the loss of beauty and youth. . Considered another form of “ageism”, gerascophobia can manifest itself with the first wrinkles, the first gray hairs or the first signs of change in our physical form, a common reaction that can directly and negatively influence our quality of life.

For the psychologist specializing in adult therapy Catherine Celsi, this fear of aging may be linked to a number of psychological and emotional factors that are worth exploring. “In our current society, there is a tendency, more or less conscious, to think of old age with a certain level of devaluation, and there can be something pejorative when we refer to it. Aging is then scary because it is linked to a series of factors that are linked to losses. Some of them, such as loss of vitality, physical and/or sexual attractiveness, loss of autonomy, naturally make it a stage of complex challenges. We associate old age with loneliness, fading, and loss, and while that’s true, it’s not all. In this sense, old age is not without obstacles, like any other earlier stage of life. The problem is that we are not able to appreciate or save all that the passing of the years gives us”.

Having a culturally negative image of old age is a scenario that does not help to worry about the passage of time. In a society that associates or equates old age with decadence, loss of beauty, loneliness, uselessness or dependence, it is difficult not to fall into this fear of growing old. The values ​​that society places on youth, beauty, speed, efficiency and novelty as something associated with success and happiness make reconciliation with the passage of time an odyssey. “We cannot ignore that the social and cultural context has changed, and with it, the place we give to this stage of life”, reaffirms Catalina. “Contrary to what happened in past civilizations where the passage of years had a value and the elderly occupied a place in the social organization, today’s elderly people tend to be marginalized. Old age has become a stage that we do not want to reach, and the aging process is not only undesirable, it is also often avoided and devalued”. This is why, says Catalina, we are often ready to do anything so that the passage of time is not seen.

From the psychologist’s experience Catherine Celsi, In consultation, unfortunately yes. Women are under brutal social pressure to be thin, beautiful and above all young , said. “I use the term brutal because, in addition to being an impossible competition, it is unfair. If we stopped to think, it would go against nature itself, time and the human condition. While the older woman is immediately stripped of her sexiness and flirtatious qualities, the older man may enjoy being seen as attractive simply because he is experienced. , and said experience, reflected in gray hair and wrinkles, adds up. Gray hair ends up favoring men, while women will go out of their way not to be noticed. It is common to undergo surgical procedures to improve physical appearance, although this “enhancement” is often linked to maintaining youth at all costs. We cannot accept the passage of years naturally, and old age consists precisely in respecting what is natural, and in giving a legitimate place to what we have experienced”.

Something like this happens to businesswoman Andrea Puig, a few months after her 40th birthday. “There’s nothing that traumatizes me so much at the moment, but it’s not something that goes unnoticed either.” The feeling Andrea is beginning to have with the changes in her body matches the worry Javiera is already feeling. “When I laugh in the mirror or see myself in photos, I see the amount of wrinkles I have around my eyes and I don’t recognize myself. I feel young, but the photos show that I’m not so young anymore. The same thing happens to me with the gray hair coming out, I take it all out because I want to delay this process that shows my age”. But for Andrea, the fault for this is above all due to something gender, to this pressure which is exerted above all on the physique and the youth of women. “The passage of time for women is super different than for men. If they get more wrinkled and gray, they even look good, but on the other hand, women don’t. We cannot age serenely, those who are very gray or very wrinkled, as if they were already aging and basically not so sexy. Obviously we feel more and more confident with the years, and it shows, it makes pretty, but inevitably the ‘shell’ is more demanding for women and that affects us”.

From time to time there is a filter in our cameras that becomes fashionable and makes us test all the users of social networks how we would be younger and more “beautiful”, or on the contrary older and wrinkled. And each time these filters go viral, we are faced with different personal reactions seeing ourselves with gray hair, crow’s feet, drooping cheeks and overgrown noses, or, conversely, realizing how much our image would change if we no longer had these characteristics that we adopt with age. . There will be those who take it with humor and affection, who can even recognize their own parents, grandparents or ancestors in this old age, and many others for whom the return of that wrinkled face is a slap in the face, a bucket of colds water.

“These apps that generate an aged or rejuvenated self-image are likely to awaken defensive control mechanisms in some people, such as an obsession with maintaining the ideal image, which in our society refers to youth between adolescence and childhood. adulthood”, testifies the psychologist specializing in young people and adolescents Helga Delgado, of Associated group “In our society today, there is an exacerbation of the imagination on other aspects of existence, for example, the search for the ideal of perfection through the body or the image that s exteriorizes towards the social other. The search for this ideal leaves out the imperfections that do not meet this ideal or this social image, and it is these aspects of the self that are considered negative, that are rejected or that one tries to hide or modify. , in filters, surgeries, makeup, ideal photos etc as if on a social level we resist the elaboration of the passage of time, imperfection, boredom or the reality of existence. A manifestation associated with this and very present today is the hyper-concern and control of the image and the body and the gerascophobia or fear of aging, which generate states of discontent and discomfort in different areas in which people operate”.

“Our culture fosters a sort of Benjamin Button-type ideal in which the prize goes to whoever ages the least,” Catalina explains, referring to important personalities such as Shakira, Jennifer López or the Kardashian sisters. “They become ideals that possess the ‘gift’ of eternal youth. Seeing them rejuvenate over time causes an effect that not only takes us away from reality, but also makes us deny it. They maintain such a gap between expectations and reality itself that it ends up undermining self-image and self-esteem.

Rather, patterns that show us old age as part of natural evolution can help reconcile and soften ideals, Catalina says. “Actress Meryl Streep, who wears her natural hair showing off her gray hair, portrays it wonderfully: ‘Let no one erase the wrinkles from my forehead, obtained through wonder at the beauty of life; Or those of my mouth, which show how much I laughed and how much I kissed; And the bags under my eyes either: in them is the memory of all that I cried. They are mine and they are beautiful.

“We have a responsibility as a society to naturalize and value the experience of life, not only as something normal, but also as something precious” concludes Catalina Celsi. “If the value of our women and men is based on physical appearance and physical power, it is not surprising that aging becomes a traumatic process that would mean losing the support of self-esteem. This is a problem when we put aside the cultivation of our intellect and inner world, and focus on maintaining an ideal of physical appearance at all costs. In time, when we lose our youth, we will have nothing left to sustain ourselves.