Here’s an interesting question that I came across quite by accident the other day. How do fears change with age? My initial reaction was that they don’t, although I feel that was just the quickest answer I could come up with at the time. I’ve been wrangling with this one since then and it will be really interesting to get some feedback and answers to this question from others.
The coach and self-improvement junkie in me really wants to say that fears increase or decrease only through our thoughts and feelings about them. People have considerably different approaches to their fears and although there are not many people who you’ll find who can genuinely say they do not fear anything, there are a good many who are able to overcome their fears. I guess the question of age relates to our fears changing as we approach the mid to late stages of our life. Is it possible then that this can be linked to our aging body and perhaps a perceived frailty that that brings?
An answer to this question “how do fears change with age” is not truly complete without looking at the whole of the life-cycle. When we are born, our fears and concerns are around milk, warmth, close contact with people etc. As we grow, our fears evolve as we are subjected to the fears of our parents, carers, teachers and other people who have responsibility for our welfare. These childhood fears are further enhanced by the media around us and our relative lack of ability to understand the world around us (compared to the adult mind).
Next, for most of us, our fears surround work, money, relationships, children, family etc. Then they swiftly move onto growing old and this issue of frailty and being cared for in our twilight years. I suppose for most of us, there is a fear of death throughout our lives, which may increase as we get older and it becomes more imminent.
I genuinely believe that the majority of our fears can be understood and overcome and although I am not yet old enough to know, my hope is that my own experience of fear will continue to lessen as I get older and understand myself better. To me, fear becomes a major issue when it is not understood, or it is not faced or challenged in anyway. I really am looking forward to your thoughts on this, please feel free to comment.
I have allways feared death but getting older I am almost welcoming it. So it seems @50 I am getting sad as days go on. Maybe more accoustomed to the shit this world has to offer. Am i cynical?, yes according to this worlds values.
I can see why Our God turned his back on us.
Dan O’Neil says… There are lots of people who feel this way – I’d suggest it’s the vast majority of people. Of course it doesn’t have to be this way…
Thanks for your comment.
Great post. Could I translate this to german.?
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Dan O’Neil says… Hi Peter, Thanks for the question – I’m happy for you to translate this, provided you make reference and link to the original post.
I think people also have more fears as the get older. They see things that they never looked at before. When your young most people have the idea it never could happen to me and after years of life you see it happen to people around you or even you.
Dan O’Neil says… It certainly appears that way. It doesn’t have to be though!
I think there’s definitely two stages in life. One is the stage where you have to overcome struggle and fight for survival and another part is where you preserve what you have accomplished.
Exactly where that barrier lies is different for each person but we all know when that shift occurrs in our lives where we start self-preserving ourselves and look back on the “good older days” (even if they weren’t good).
Dan O’Neil says… It doesn’t have to be that way! One of my goals is to live in the moment – where there is no need for analysis or reflection on the past or indeed the future.
I agree with Ken, based on experience I’ve got lots of friends that really worried a lot as they get older. I have a question, can fear lead to lost of memory when you’re old?
Dan O’Neil says… There are some fields of thought that think that dementia is a way for a person to detach from themselves in order to ready themselves for death. I’m pretty sure that it’s a tough thing to prove, but it seems to make some sense. Just as when we start life, we aren’t aware of our surroundings or even ourselves to any degree and we slowly “arrive” in our bodies as we grow. If death weren’t seen as such a “bad” thing, we’d probably celebrate it in a similar way to birth!
I agree with Ken. We get more fears when we get older. This is because we get to be exposed to a lot mire of circumstances and experiences. But, as we grow older our most common fear is death.
Dan O’Neil says… Thanks Susan
And here I was hoping I would have less fears as I get older.
Do many people really fear death as they get older? I don’t want to die, but it’s not like I think about it very often or feel afraid when I think about it.
Fear like everything else in our lives change. Since the only thing constant is change. I do believe that as long as they’re changing its a good sign that we too have grown.
Good point Lynne, but it might be nicer to think that change in fear means a lessening of it!
I think my greastest fear is getting older and being absolutely alone. Alone in the sense if my spouse pass away before me or living through a traumatic historic era. Like how my grandparents through like war and famine. Maybe the biggest fear we have to get over is being fearful of life.
Interesting thought Leslie, thanks.
i think my biggest fear is facing my father’s death . maybe its because he’s the only person i have left . will this fear ever change ???????????
There’s a bigger fear than that… “How will I cope once my father is gone?” That’s the one to tackle! If you can get good with your self and connect with your inner strength and other resources to the point where you know that you can handle anything that happens in your life… then your fears will not hold sway. They will still be there as they are a natural part of us all.
I need some serious guidance. My partner is only 57, but is terrified he will end up like both of his parents; with Dementia and Alzheimers. He is a brilliant man and runs on his brain power. Although a blessing, I think it is also a curse for him. He struggles with lack of success in his life (but has a thriving business) and that his only daughter doesn’t like him; and who will care for him (in-home). I know this is a lot of worries, and there is more professional need required here, but can you suggest other chat rooms or books that may help him? Myself, I am a christian woman and live one day at a time with plenty of faith; I wish this could rub off on him because I truly believe that faith in your maker takes the worry away.
Thanks Hope,
It is really hard to watch someone you love have to deal with fear and other feelings that they aren’t dealing very well with. The main role of support is to avoid saying “you shouldn’t worry…” or “you don’t need to be frightened about that…”, because all you really say in doing that is… “Your feelings are wrong and you can’t trust them”.
Interestingly, the issue is most likely to be that your partner is not really feeling his feelings at all – it’s likely that he is suppressing, ignoring or trying to avoid feeling them. If you swallow down fear long enough, it mutates into terror and neuroses.
To best support him, make sure he understands that you are ok with his fears – encourage him to explore them and don’t try to fix him, allow him the space and time to work through them on his own, in his own way.
I think that as you mature, you realize more of the world’s problems, you are less protected by you parents and much more aware, not as naive so you are scared of more however as you get older you learn to deal with more problems from experiences so this is not always true. It also may not be true because children tend to believe everything they hear for example if you said that the monsters from their fairy tales were real they would actually believe it and grow up with a constant fear of make-believe things. Children are like clay everything around them really impacts them, even with their parents protecting them they are in a way even more unprotected because of how gullible they are.
I think that the time that you fear the most in you life is around your middle years because you don’t have as much protecting you. you have both categories of people young (your children) and older (your parents for example) that you fear for. Almost all fears are related to death or pain in one way or another, either you fear for yourself or you fear for others close to you, In your middle years you have many people to care for and your on your own without the guidance of your parents. I believe that fears do change and rather mature or get more serious as you get older. Age is not the only thing that affects fear but your intelligence levels, its a fact that people with higher intelligence levels are scared of more serious things for ex. A person with less intelligence is scared of spiders or heights where as more intelligent people are scared of deeper things for example failing as a parent or losing someone they love.
Fear is a tricky subject because you can;t always assume things, sometimes people have a bad experience and that fear sticks with them for a long time or even eternity. You constantly fear, whether it’s a more mature fear or a child’s fear it is very serious to them at the time even when you get over it. The most recent fear always seems the greatest, but fear is changing as you said, it does constantly change. Not always because of age, but that is a important factor.
Wow! Thanks for your comment. It’s like a mental commentary – if that’s going on inside your head all the time, then there’s not much peace and quiet to be found.
Fear is something that we forget to embrace. I’ve learned a great deal about it since I first wrote this article a few years ago. Fear can be the catalyst for change – it produces courage and energy for us to move our lives forward. If we suppress, deny, blame or make excuses for ourselves because of our fears, then life is a very unpleasant place to be. However if we embrace our fears, we get access to so much more freedom, joy and happiness – through our journey of change.
With children, they need to know that it’s ok to be frightened of things, that they are “ok” and loved – otherwise they think that their feelings are not “right” and that’s a very tough place to emerge from. All feelings are “right” – they are a reaction to what is going on around us and inform us of what we like and do not like. If you think they are “wrong”, then you become a victim to them and it’s really hard to do anything constructive or meaningful with your life.