Emotional Aging

“Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions.”
                                                                                       ― Oliver Wendell

As we age our consciousness ages with us.  Our genetics may have something to do with it as I see some commonalities with my birth siblings and mother that have me believe some is.  But, it is us that makes conscious choices to evolve or not, emotionally.  I think it depends, as well, on our emotional experiences, emotional patterns and challenges, that we have gone through in life.  I think part of our defensive mechanisms and our ability to heal may have some of this as well.  When I think of commonalities of siblings, I see that we also have to consider perspectives.  For instance, my being a given away child had me experience the giving away differently than my older siblings who knew or experienced it happen.  There are commonalities but each of us had our own choices of emotions to develop and then manage or not manage.  At our core might be some genetics but in our living and aging there are new experiences that pile up day by day on to these core beliefs and inheritances.  I think we begin, early, to regulate the emotions we express and those emotions are supposed to mature as we age; at least, ideally, and, at least, hopefully.  I think we learn to regulate them.

I am thinking, as well, that we learn how to manipulate with emotions when we are tiny and are equipped with crying to express those emotions.  As we age, and grow more independent, we refine our emotional responses.  We learn to take note of emotional things, we learn to remember those emotions to those things we experience, and those emotions become guides that we refine; our response to experiences, I mean.  I am wondering if the fear of spiders, moths, and, yes, clowns, and those things that are not life or death that we hold fear of, might come from those earliest times in our lives.  Not sure; but thinking such.  Perhaps the most things we emotionally react to might all have had earliest childhood triggers. Then, we refine those emotional activating things as we age and gain maturity and logical reasoning's for that which we react too, or not.  I think as our intelligence grows and is filled, we drop some of our emotional reactions to many things.  That is not to say we do not pick up some new ones, but I think an emotional child does become an emotional adult.  It does not mean we throw ourselves on the ground and wail and flail, but we may have learned a way to block the irrational emotional outbreaks by using such things as denial, minimalizing, etc.  We begin to self-regulate, or should.

As we age, and later on into aging, I think we tend to deal with more immediate, Present, emotional things.  I think, perhaps, we adjust to stop crises-thinking and fear/flight from absolutely overwhelming us, because, it could.  Perhaps we sense a nearness to the end of our time and perhaps we select those things to emotionally act/react on.  Perhaps we want peace and serenity and grace so much that we choose to minimize the negatives as much as we can.  

Life will always have ups and downs and our own lives will have the same.  It is a given.  Some of our reactions that have been unconscious, will sort themselves out for themselves, some we have to sort out for ourselves.  Emotional behavior is lifelong learned as a skill or a hindrance.  I think our illogical/logical emotional reactions go hand in hand with our self-confidence.  We learn strategies to deal with our emotional responses.  

Perhaps we know what is worthy, finally, of our deeply rooted attention and that which is worthy of our responses, and at what level of response is wisest to attach to it all.  Exposure to stress simply demands some kind of reaction.  We know what makes us feel whatever we choose to feel. We have grown up with our emotions as our oldest thought and those beliefs and actions and reactions make us the unique people we are.  We begin to monitor who and what we might be exposed to, for we know ourselves well.   We try to find positive reinforce-rs and try to minimize the negative ones. 

I have this fear that my negative responses to life might end up being the one that shows up the most as I lose more and more of my faculties.  I am doing some crash courses in knowing myself well enough to know how to change some of my reactions to some of my stressors.  One of my negative emotional defenses is to feel defensive.  Lord, have mercy; will I never feel 'Enough'?  I work on this every time I sense a response coming from within.  I have to ask myself if it is worth it.  Usually it is not!  Some day, when I grow up, I hope to have this emotional aging thing sorted out, for others' sake, if not my own.

©Carol Desjarlais 5.28.19