The concept of ageing is something that everyone is aware of. It surrounds you on a daily basis, in the nature that you walk through, and the old people that you see in the street, but it’s easy to put it out of your mind and think that you’ll never be in this situation. It can be an uncomfortable thing to think about, and the idea of getting to that point, or people you love getting older, can be incredibly upsetting to some people.
However, it doesn’t have to be this way, and developing a healthy relationship with the concept of ageing can have you seeing it as the natural process that it has always been.
Getting some idea of what you can expect it to look like can take away some of the mystery around it, and with those uncertainties might go some of the fear that comes with that. Of course, you can never know what the future is going to look like, so it’s difficult to get an exact image of what it’ll be like when you or your loved ones get older.
However, becoming familiar with the kinds of things that often happen might give you a broader understanding of the steps involved, such as health changes that are natural in older years and what can be done about them, or typing ‘assisted living near me’ into an online search engine can show you the kinds of homes that older people often find themselves in, which won’t likely fit with the grim idea that you had in your head.
The biggest hurdle that you might face in coming to terms with this concept could be the anxiety that often accompanies any thought of ageing or death. Dealing with anxiety in general is difficult, and something that different people tend to approach in their own way. However, techniques such as meditation, or calming breathing techniques can help you to focus and ground yourself when you feel as though everything is getting slightly overwhelming.
It’s natural to become frightened at the thought of the unstoppable passing of time but understanding it as being something natural and ultimately healthy can help to alter your perceptions that it’s something unfair or ill-willed.
A lot of the fear that people might have about ageing can be linked back to a fear of death, as the two ideas often go hand in hand. Learning to overcome your anxieties of death is likely a pretty similar process. It’s difficult to ever let go of that fear completely, as it’s a natural instinct to want to avoid death at every turn but developing a more balanced perspective of how instrumental death is to life in the first place might help you to start finding it more approachable.
When you’re afraid of something, it’s tempting to simply hide from it and ignore it at every turn, but when it’s something unavoidable and inevitable, accepting its presence can help you to start developing a healthier relationship with it.