The therapy of your thirties
I no longer care what other people think, I'm just getting on with my silly, messy glimmering life.
I recently spoke with a friend who is nearing the end of their twenties and has some trepidations about the next decade. “Thirties are great! In fact they feel like my best decade yet.” I told them, and realised I meant it. I am a third of the way through this age bracket of my life, so time will tell if the trend continues, but I really do feel that my 30s are the best time I have yet to live through. But why should this be? What makes this era different?
Gone are the peer pressure challenges of teenage-hood, and the expectations to make something happen and figure out what you want to do with your life that dominate your twenties have lessened. By your thirties, everyone expects you to have it all figured out and settled, so, even if you haven’t and you’re still making it up as you go along (let’s admit it, we all are!) everyone assumes you do so do not notice.
“It is not my responsibility to regulate the expectations and emotions or others”.
I don’t do the whole mantra or affirmation thing…. But some lessons are worth saying out loud.
“It’s your life, you make the rules. No-one can say you’re doing it wrong.”
In all likelihood, they’re too wrapped up in their own dramas to notice – no-one is actually watching you, you know.
Sometimes, especially in todays age of social media and high visibility and oversharing, it can be worth remembering that cameras and judgements don’t work unless you switch them on; in your own home, in your own life, no body is watching over your shoulder. Nobody can see you unless you show them, unless you invite them.
I was born in the early 1990s, and came of age in the 2000s – a schooling in pop-punk-princess girl power, ‘gifted and talented’ registers, and value placed in productivity. We were taught as girls, to be good, to smile. Our clothing had bunny rabbits and unicorns and sugary slogans on, when we really wanted rockets and dinosaurs and pirates too (and pockets). Reminders were everywhere to be not too fat but not too thin, to not be dramatic, but to damn well make sure your voice was heard. That girls could be/do Anything… which soon translated unsaid into you better be/do Something, or you’re letting the side down.
By the time I entered senior school, I was told I was listed on the ‘gifted and talented’ group – the top sector of students expected to achieve good grades and high performance. I’m not sure in practice what this actually provided by way of opportunity, except a summer science club where I spent extra time at school during the holidays, and a lingering tendency toward perfection based procrastination. “I don’t feel gifted. Or talented” I wanted to shout. I felt disconnected and different from the generation I was supposed to be part of. I didn’t ‘get’ the latest trends. I tried to join in but seemed to be always too slow, or too loud, or miss timed. Laughing in the wrong places or not seeing the joke. An active imagination but one that seemed to imagine the wrong things at the wrong time.
All this expectation and disconnection resulted in a deep anger that boiled somewhere deep down from a version of myself I didn’t recognise and didn’t want to know. It scared me, and scorched my stomach, tasting of sick acid in my throat. I listened to ‘Behind Blue Eyes’ by The Who on repeat on my walkman on the walk to school, then took to heart our head teachers suggestion of ‘act enthusiastic and you will become enthusiastic’ or basically ‘fake it till you make it’, internalising this and distilling it down into a fair imitation of imposter syndrome triggering anxiety hidden behind a confidence mask.
Many of these things and the longing to be accepted, a need for connection, are probably elements in the myriad of choices that led to 17 year old me getting involved with a man nearly twice my age, and a resulting six-and-a-half-year relationship of delusion, coercion, and critical self-judgement/denial.
I don’t believe that before my thirties, I would have had the insight to recognise or admit all this. I am no longer a 17 year old feeling the need to prove herself. There are still sores I am healing, growth is not a linear thing, but after nearly a decade of learning, self reflection, and starling realisations, I feel more like authentic rooted self in my thirties than at any other time.
These are some personal truths that I am learning to embrace in my thirties:
- Find your peace. protect your peace. Nothing is more important.
- Slow down, productivity is not the only goal and does not define your worth.
- Spread that peanut butter as thick as you like you your morning toast, have a moment to cry before leaving the house if you need to... no-one is watching.
- Many of your thoughts are not your own, listen to their voice, is is a repeat of something you’ve been told and taught, or your own belief?
- It is not your responsibility to regulate the expectations and emotions of others.
- It is not your responsibility to regulate the expectations and emotions of others.
- It is not your responsibility to regulate the expectations and emotions of others.
