Age and maturity can sometimes have a strange effect on people (and yourself). In particular, the “impression that their character asserts itself, that they become more” hard “or that they can no longer support anyone. But do we like less” people “with the years? Our psychologist tells us more about this natural change than many live without knowing it.
Youth requires more flexibility
According to a recent study, social interactions (calls, contacts, etc.) are becoming rarer and this, from their thirties. The sign that we turn away from others? Not really. A change of course takes place more.
“When you are young, you overflow with energy. We test, you adapt, we take more on yourself. We bear because we want to please, because we are afraid of excluding or being excluded” Recalls Amélie Boukhobza clinical psychologist. In short, we accept outings or links, to leave a good impression. Then over time, it changes and this concern is alleged. We know its limits, we know what tires us and what nourishes us. We gradually become more selective.
“So it can sometimes give the impression that you can endure the others less. Less patience, less tolerance, less desire to pretend. Do you become harder? Or just more lucid? No doubt a bit of both”.
The passing time, a powerful sorting factor
Another effect of years: awareness that time is not infinite. “”In general, we wonder: what am I going to devote my energy, my days, my life? This lucidity pushes us to go to the point, to eliminate the superfluous and to cut short to what sounds hollow “. Hollow … like certain relationships that do not bring much.
From the outside, it can give the impression of rigidity, but it is actually rather a refocusing. “”That is to say, we are no longer cluttered with forced conversations, bank relations, social obligations which empty us rather than they fill us. “
Some troubles evaporate, neuroses remain
The people who age therefore like no less or do not become “nasty” or “embittered” (well, not all). But they are consciously shedding consciously from what weighs on them.
“On the psychic level, there are two things happening. On the one hand, what is called the superego is relaxed: this inner instance which pushes us to meet expectations, rules, prohibitions. With age, it weighs a little less: we dare to be more. And so much the better!” develops our shrink.
But on the other, our “interior corner” – what are classically called neuroses – do not disappear over time. “On the contrary, they tend to increase, to become more rigid, more visible.”
“Result: we get rid of what does not really count, but we can also be more vulnerable to our own weaknesses. It is not that we love others less, or that we are more selfish: but we sort, between what distracts us and what matters”.
We therefore not become more embittered with age, but these phenomena explain your reactions …