We bend over to pick up a bag, the back protests and the phrase falls, it’s age. Many interpret their pain or fatigue as the obvious sign of a body in decline. However, psychologists observe an unexpected phenomenon: some people say they feel lighter at 70 than at 50.
For some, the body ailments have receded even as the years have advanced. Their body has not mysteriously become younger: it has become lighter by emotional burden made of sorrow, accumulated duties and suppressed anger. What looks like
aging could sometimes tell a different story.
Body ailments, emotions and aging
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Therapist Mark Travers speaks of “externalized regulation”: “When a person pours out their emotional burden without any limits, your nervous system goes into alert and leaves you mentally and physically exhausted,” he explains in Forbes, cited by Psychologies.com. The brain would then treat other people’s emotions almost as its own, which promotes contagion and an emotional hangover.
From this perspective, the body absorbs each stress. The author of a story published on Geediting summarizes, “The body keeps a record. It charges interest.” Psychologists point out that high cortisol linked to chronic stress promotes inflammation, muscle tension, weight gain and sleep disorders. “Any variation affects our biological clock and can impact, in winter, our psychological health, by also disrupting our energy and our sleep,” recalls psychologist Suzanne Filion in Femme Actuelle.
Aging lighter: the emotional weight
In this same text, this retired professor describes having blocked her back at 64, when she was managing a difficult marriage of her son, a full-time job, a home and a latent family conflict. Years later, after yoga, swimming and some relationship tuning, she wrote, “I wasn’t getting any younger. I was becoming depleted.”
She then discovers herself more mobile and more energetic at 73 than at 65. Her interpretation speaks not of an anti-aging miracle but of an emotional biography: “The body was never really in decline at the rate I assumed. It struggled under a burden that I had stopped noticing because I had carried it so long that it seemed to be a part of me. The heaviness was not aging. It was accumulated sadness, decades of unquestioned duties, and resentment whom I was too ashamed to name.”
More energy as you age: psychological benchmarks
For psychologists, certain signs argue for a
emotional burden rather than for a worn body. “It’s normal to feel mentally and emotionally exhausted after positive experiences… It may have been fun, but you’ve spent a lot of emotional energy between social interactions and a stimulating environment,” therapist Gabrielle Sanderson tells VeryWellMind. When pain closely follows conflicts, recedes after setting limits, or improves with light and listening, psychologists invite us to also explore the emotional track, without ever going without medical advice.
