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Why do older individuals have greater control of their feelings?

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: Why do older individuals have greater control of their feelings?

#71

Post by 8fGTBjZxBcHq »

cj wrote: post #51
8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't call this abuse either but there is a huge huge gulf between "that was the best time of my life" and "this is the best time of your life. It's at best just extremely rude to tell someone about their own life and how they should feel about it.

> It's at best just extremely rude to tell someone about their own life and how they should feel about it. I have to disagree. My grandparents often have great perspectives on life situations that they readily share when relevant to the people around them. No one sees it as rude, and if they do, it’s usually because the advice hits a little too close to home. Like “when I went through my divorce…”

Yes, I am not disputing that. I am talking about the difference between giving someone advice about a situation they're in, and telling them how to feel about it.

"When I was your age, I didn't appreciate certain things so I'm pointing them out to you" is really different from "this is the best time of your life" which is a statement an external observer is just not equipped to make about someone else's life.

Re: Why do older individuals have greater control of their feelings?

#72

Post by 8fGTBjZxBcHq »

darkerside wrote: post #60
8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who might say that and what would we have to do for them to commit to it? Are you saying it? Because I don't think it's true at all! But I want to wait until someone actually say it before I get into that.

Thanks for the invitation but I'm not looking to argue about it. Peace!

Yes this is one of the great advantages of the "some might say" move, love that shit.

Re: Why do older individuals have greater control of their feelings?

#73

Post by randompwd »

ggambetta wrote: post #49
hnlmorg wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what you're describing is more down to desensitisation through exposure to stressful environments. When you're younger smaller problems seem larger because you've not been desensitised to larger problems. As you progress through life you generally experience greater stress and thus the smaller problems feel smaller. You could look at it like desensitisation to capsicum, salt, violence or pornography.

That's preposterous! I'm sticking to my "fucks are finite and biologically limited" theory. I'll use the TED talk to promote my upcoming self-help book around this mind-blowing new theory.

Be careful, Malcolm Gladwell may steal your comment for a book and then blame you when science debunks it.

Re: Why do older individuals have greater control of their feelings?

#74

Post by quesera »

Hitton wrote: post #9

> When older people say, “This is the best time of your life, enjoy it while you can,” that’s a form of abuse. I guess that these days anything can be called "abuse".

"Abuse" now means "offensiveness". Literally.

Watering down the language a bit, I can see how a reasonable person would be mildly offended if another person told them: "you're living your life improperly".

Which is, ultimately, the received message. Yes you can't get a job in your field and your relationship is trashed, but your 20s are objectively the height of many metrics in your life. So are your 30s. (Unspoken: "I wish I still had the things you do, which you do not see/value. I also want all the things I have accumulated in the time since I was your age.")

So having some other person, typically older and who fancies themselves wiser, who knows not-nearly-enough about your life, opine that you should "enjoy" your current state...can be offensive in many cases!

And of course, as the star of our own autobiographies, we tend to inflate the importance of whatever drama-du-jour we're going through, and fail to take a longer view of things. This is generally the intended message of the speaker, but we often don't hear it that way, and anyway we don't want to be told.

Some messages can only be heard when they are explicitly sought.

Re: Why do older individuals have greater control of their feelings?

#75

Post by silicon2401 »

Hitton wrote: post #9

> When older people say, “This is the best time of your life, enjoy it while you can,” that’s a form of abuse. I guess that these days anything can be called "abuse".

This is just like that article yesterday that called Discord UI colors "harmful". People today love demonizing anything they don't like so that they can lambast it without having to give a well-founded reason why they feel how they do. Nowadays people change language to suit their agenda, thinking that if enough people believe hard enough then changing language can change reality.

Re: Why do older individuals have greater control of their feelings?

#76

Post by jerf »

One of the interesting results from psychology is that emotions are a complicated feedback loop from stimulus, around through the body, back to the feeling, but critically involving bodily response, not just states of the brain. I've personally experienced "feeling anxious" simply because my heart was beating too quickly for purely physiological reasons. (I've had some heart troubles.) Once I addressed those reasons, the anxiety faded with it. This is a handwave in the direction of this research and ideas, not an explanation of it; consult the web if you're interested in more.

I propose something that neither the article nor anyone else is in the comments so far, which is that we age, our bodies simply get less physical about the emotions. It makes it easier to be more level if your body is literally being more level, and the aforementioned feedback loop is literally weaker. Everything else gets weaker in old age, why not the physiological strength of emotions, too?

Re: Why do older individuals have greater control of their feelings?

#77

Post by kulig »

Kye wrote: post #57
amarant wrote: post #44

Natural selection. At a young age, some people know how to control their feelings, others don't. The ones who can't then die from road rage or similar, leaving only the ones with at least a modicum of self control in the older age groups. Basically, it's survivor bias, but literally.

All the older people who go on tantrums at retail and food service workers throw a monkey into this theory.

In my experience, a tendency to lash out at others also comes with an exagerated sense of self preservation.

Re: Why do older individuals have greater control of their feelings?

#78

Post by jollybean »

ggambetta wrote: post #15

My entirely unscientific theory is that like other cells, we're born with a limited number of fucks in our body. When we're young, we (instinctively, subconsciously) feel like our fucks reserves are plentiful, so we give a fuck about a lot of stuff. As we get older, our reservoir of fucks gets progressively depleted. The fucks are rarer, so we give a fuck less and less often. I've recently turned 40 and I can definit…

No doubt there's some of that.

Perspective is another other thing.

Once you start to see how the world works, and how complicated things are, you're a lot less likely to fire off about some specific issue.

Radicalism is the posture of those who want to externalize all the side effects of their utopianism, and when you're older it gets harder to not see second-order effects for what they are.

Re: Why do older individuals have greater control of their feelings?

#79

Post by seriousquestion »

ggambetta wrote: post #15

My entirely unscientific theory is that like other cells, we're born with a limited number of fucks in our body. When we're young, we (instinctively, subconsciously) feel like our fucks reserves are plentiful, so we give a fuck about a lot of stuff. As we get older, our reservoir of fucks gets progressively depleted. The fucks are rarer, so we give a fuck less and less often. I've recently turned 40 and I can definit…

That, combined with the wisdom one gains from having spent many fucks on the wrong things. When you examine the fucks you gave 10 or 20 years ago, you realize how clueless you were.

Re: Why do older individuals have greater control of their feelings?

#80

Post by [deleted] »

marcusverus wrote: post #70
8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't call this abuse either but there is a huge huge gulf between "that was the best time of my life" and "this is the best time of your life. It's at best just extremely rude to tell someone about their own life and how they should feel about it.

> but there is a huge huge gulf between "that was the best time of my life" and "this is the best time of your life. Not really. It's notional advice, offered in a spirit of kindness. You don't have to like it, but labeling it 'extremely rude at best' is absolutely infantile.

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