February 21, 2025 • 31 mins
I'm turning 25! Here are all my thoughts and feelings about ageing, dealing with expectations around birthdays, loneliness, the pressure to have fun and a much needed mindset shift towards growing older. I also discuss my GO TO birthday routine that brings me peace, growth and clarity every year! Listen now and thank you for another wonderful year with the podcast :)
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, everybody, Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to
the podcast, new listeners, old listeners, Wherever you are in
the world, it is so great to have you here,
back for another episode as we, of course talk about
the psychology of our twenties. All right, We're going to
talk about birthday anxiety today because it is my birthday
(00:21):
the day that this comes out, I am turning twenty five,
twenty five years old. We are halfway through the Psychology
of your twenties, and the biggest question I always get
is whether I'm going to do a psychology of your thirties.
I have five more years to think about it, so
I will answer that question a little bit closer to
the date. But yeah, it's my birthday and it's bringing
(00:44):
up a lot of feelings, but it's also probably the
most peaceful, serene birthday I have had. I have never
felt more comfortable with aging, and more comfortable with the
age that I'm at, and more comfortable with what I'm
choosing to do today than ever before. And it's made
(01:07):
me really, really reflective, and it's made me want to
talk about this experience of birthday anxiety that I've had
for so long and all the stress that usually comes
with gaining another year, gaining another year of life, getting
another year of experiences. And I want you to note
that I did not say getting older. I'd like to
position it as something that we are given, something that
(01:27):
we are gifted. So this year, I'm in New York City.
I've been in the US for like two and a
half weeks for work, for work being this podcast and
for Mantra of course, doing some amazing recordings with some
incredible guests that are coming out soon. And by being
in New York, I know a few people, but honestly,
(01:47):
like I don't have a huge, broad wide group of
friends here. My boyfriend's back in Australia. All my close friends,
my family are back in Australia. So I couldn't do
like a big thing this year. I could do like
a big party, I couldn't like celebrate with my closest
loved ones. And you know what, I think that's part
of why I feel so serene about it. Like, my
(02:09):
plan is to go to a diner tonight and I'm
gonna get breakfast for dinner, and I'm gonna do my
little birthday routine, which I'll talk about later in the
episode that I do every single year, and I have
never felt more excited about it. Like I said before,
this experience has not always been the case, and I
(02:30):
am sure for many of you who are listening you
don't find that this is the common theme that defines
your birthday. It's normally quite an intense experience. Birthdays are
really really reflective by nature, you know, they demand pause,
much like a new year. You know, they feel like
(02:52):
this very specific point in time where everything from the
past feels very present, and you're ruminating on who you are,
what you've learned, and also who you want to become.
Like you're very focused on the future. We're getting older.
What if things don't work out the way I want,
I have less time. I feel like my body is aging,
(03:14):
even though if you're in your twenties, like you're still
really at the peak of your youth. But all of
these feelings and this contemplation is naturally very paralyzing, and
that combined with a very sensitive social element as well,
you know, the pressure to be around friends, the pressure
to do a big thing, the pressure to have fun,
all of that can create a real cocktail of complicated
(03:36):
emotions and surprise surprise. A lot about this does come
down to our psychology as humans, as very deep thinking
creatures and creatures who nonetheless love celebrations but also feel
overwhelmed by them at times. You know, we're full of
oxymorons and contradictions, it seems. But today we are going
(03:59):
to hope all together feel a little bit better about birthdays.
I want to talk about what makes them so difficult
at times, specifically the three main reasons that we struggle
with gaining another year, and then I also want to
talk about why and how to rethink this process of
(04:19):
aging and to rethink birthdays in general, so that they
are something that you look forward to, that you're excited about,
that is not stressful, and that, if anything, can actually
bring you a lot of knowledge about yourself and a
really important space to reflect and grow into this next
(04:40):
year of who you're becoming and who you're going to be. So,
I know birthdays in our twenties are a big topic,
and so many of you have asked me for this,
so I'm going to stop rambling and without further ado,
let's talk about the psychology of birthday anxiety. So I
think the reason that birthdays can be so psychologically, mentally, emotionally,
(05:03):
sometimes socially. Taxing comes down to three specific reasons. The
first is very existential reasons to do with aging, to
do with progress, to do with milestones. The second comes
down to expectations and the pressure to seemingly have this
perfect event or this perfect experience to mark another year.
(05:26):
And the third series of reasons, I think are quite
social reasons that have to do with loneliness, perhaps a
great deal of comparison as well. So I want to
talk about each of these individually, starting with very existential reasons.
So I think, for the longest time, the reason birthdays
felt so troublesome to me was that it was a
(05:47):
sign that I was getting older, and that is something
that was very, very scary. My perspective on aging, though,
has changed, and I used to be really scared of it.
I used to joke with my friends that I would
be for aever twenty two. The reason that we are
scared of aging, and if you can relate to this,
I'm sure you've already come to this conclusion. The reason
(06:07):
that we are scared of aging is because we are
scared of the unknown. We are naturally, as humans, always
going to feel a little bit anxious and a little
bit uncomfortable with somewhere in some place that we have
never been before. You have never been in this next
year of your life. You have never been twenty seven,
(06:29):
you have never been thirty five, you have never been
sixty six. And so because of that, it feels very unknown,
very uncertain, very unstable. And with that empty space and
with that uncertainty, our brain likes to fill that with fear.
It likes to feel that with catastrophic ideas and imaginations
(06:51):
of what it's going to be like, and they're not
always positive. The other reason that we are scared of aging,
other than the fear of the unknown, is a similar
fear of the unknown, and it's a fear of death.
It feels like each year we are, you know, closer
to the end of this journey than the beginning. I
used to be very, very scared of this, and I
(07:13):
can openly admit that and talk about it now because
of how much time I have spent thinking about it
and overthinking it and intellectualizing it till the cows came in,
Like it was an obsessive thought of me for me
for so long, of what happens after we die and
aging is just this is just this terrible thing that's
bringing me closer. Then I realized that aging is actually
(07:38):
absolutely necessary, because the alternative to not getting older is
that you would always stay the same and that you
would always stay in the same place as this same
past version of you. You would never be able to grow,
and you would never be able to experience new chapters.
Turning twenty five, twenty seven, twenty eight. Yes, it's a privilege.
(08:00):
I know a lot of people talk about how there
are so many people who don't make it to that
age and you should live for them and realize that
it's an opportunity. Yes, that's one way of seeing it.
But I also think that time holds experiences, and so
if this world was perfectly designed or however you want
to think about it, aging is an important part of
(08:21):
that because aging is what brings you into the future.
Aging is what brings you excitement, brings new surprises. If
you were to stay seventeen for your whole life, if
you were to stay twenty five for your whole life,
you would never get to experience what it's like to
be a grandparent, what it's like to be a senior
in your career, what it's like to you know, own
(08:44):
a home that you love, what it's like to gain
maturity and perspective, what it's like to feel your frontal
lobe develop. That is really how I started to see it.
Another way I started to see it in my brain
that felt more comfortable, is that age is really just
a number. And it's so oh cliche, I know, but
it is so true. It is so true, And I
(09:06):
see this philosophy reflected in so many people that I
love and that I know in my life. So a
couple of weeks ago, I celebrated my grandfather's ninetieth birthday.
Now that man turned ninety. He drank more than me.
He drank more than any twenty one year old. He
pulled out like this really nice bottle of port. He
(09:28):
had this big birthday cake. All of his friends, my
sisters who are literally like eighteen and I don't know,
seventeen at this point, genuinely like they left before the
night was even over, Like my grandparents were the last
to go. We walked home with them all tipsy and drunk.
And not only was my grandfather still this like had
(09:50):
this youthful exuberance and really wasn't showing his age, but
he also had, you know, the blessing of so many
stories that we got to hear. And it made me realize, like,
you can take your age as a sign of who
you need to be, and you need to be this
person who becomes more grouchy, You need to be this
person who, according to society, becomes less happy and exudes
(10:14):
less joy and finds less pleasure and things. But you
also have the choice to take your age, you know,
keep it as something that's just on your birth certificate
or just on your driver's license, and embody the age
that you feel and all the positive parts of that
age that you want to bring forward with you. Another
reason that birthdays can bring up some negative feelings and
(10:37):
some specifically existential feelings comes down to feeling behind when
it comes to your life plans, feeling like you should
be further ahead, feeling like you should be more accomplished,
and yet here you are, and you look around, everyone
else seems to be doing these amazing things, and you're lost,
(10:58):
and you're behind. And now as you get older, all
it's going to be is this game of catchup. If
you can relate to that, I think what you're experiencing
is not so much birthday anxiety, but milestone anxiety anxiety
to do with feeling like you are not hitting specific
socially approved targets when you should be. Now, this is
(11:24):
a real conundrum for a lot of us in our twenties.
I saw this quote the other day that it feels
like between the ages of eighteen and thirty five, we're
all in some imaginary race, and we're not sure what
the race is, but we know that we're behind. That
is really what this period in our life feels like,
and a lot of it does come down to comparison
(11:45):
against our peers, but also comparison against this weird, indoctrinated
blueprint that we all seem to understand. We all seem
to have this weird sense that by thirty, you know,
we probably should have should be married, By twenty five,
we should be knowing what we want to do with
our career. By twenty eight, we should have met our
(12:06):
best friends, We should have bought a home. There are
all these seemingly important milestones to hit before you reach
your thirties, and the thing is all of those milestones
are external. We do not compare important measures like happiness.
We do not compare important things like growth, like self knowledge, authenticity.
(12:31):
We don't think about how far how far advanced we
are in terms of our emotions and how we internally feel.
We are really focused on the external, how our life
appears to other people, and that is a huge source
of disappointment and sadness and frustration. Birthdays, I think, just
(12:51):
really naturally bring that out. I will also say we
also are very, very focused, to our fault at comparing
ourselves to people who are doing better than us. We
often engage in what we call upward social comparison, knowing
that it's going to make us feel bad, knowing that
it's going to hurt our self concept and our self esteem,
(13:14):
but we just can't help ourselves. It's like we almost
convince ourselves subconsciously mentally that if I feel bad enough
about where I am, maybe that will force me to
work harder. If I look at someone that I'm envious
of or that makes me feel less accomplished, maybe that's
this weird sense of self punishment that's going to motivate me.
(13:35):
And that is absolutely not the case. There is no
big finish line that we are all working towards like,
not one single person on this planet has the exact
same goals and the exact same vision of what their
life looks like. It's all different, and even people who
get to the point, or even people who you admire
(13:56):
for getting to the point that you want to be,
they are still looking at their life and feeling some
sense of dissatisfaction. I can absolutely tell you that it
may even be the case that they are looking at
you and thinking, God, I really wish I had as
much peace as this person has. I really wish I
had as much time and space for growth. I really
wish that I was still at the beginning so I
(14:18):
could make different choices. There is something to be compared
against or with for every single person. So as you're
comparing yourself to someone else, they're comparing themselves to someone
else who's probably comparing themselves to you. So I know
that can be a really, really hard part about birthdays
is feeling behind and feeling lost in your twenties. I
(14:39):
always remind myself when I'm at that point, because I
think as humans, we all end up in that comparison spiral.
I always remind myself to think about what I've achieved
in terms of personal growth and reflection in the last year.
So as I'm turning twenty five, I feel like this
twenty fourth year of my life, I became so much
(14:59):
better at f feeling less pressure around social media. I
became so much better in managing my overthinking. I became
so much better in feeling satisfied with the friends that
I have, rather than feeling like I constantly needed more
of that. I was constantly on the precipice of loneliness.
(15:19):
That means more to me, and that impacts me positively
more on the daily than any kind of achievement that
I've had publicly, that sense of inner growth and homeostasis
and progress is really really important. Okay, we are going
to take a short break, but when we return, I
want to talk about two of the final reasons that
(15:41):
we feel a lot of stress anxiety, maybe sadness around
our birthdays, and my perfect routine for combating that. Stay
with us. Let's talk about the second reason that birthdays
can be so hard, and it's expectations. It's there's pressure
to have this perfect, perfect day, this perfect party, these
(16:06):
perfect friends who are all going to wish us happy birthday,
and often we are let down. I would say ninety
nine percent of the time. When you have grand aspirations
for a big birthday blowout, and you know how you
expect everyone to treat you, you're often disappointed. I think
anytime we say that we are supposed to do something,
(16:29):
we're supposed to be happy, we're supposed to be loved,
we're supposed to have all this fun, we're supposed to
you know, just ease through this. You are setting yourself
up for disappointment. You know, when we put should or
supposed to before anything, often it's not going to look
the way that we have imagined it now. I think
this also comes down to comparison. Right. We see people
(16:52):
having these huge birthdays with lots of lots of friends,
and it looks so fun and they look celebrated and loved.
Of course, we want that amazing, and so we go
about trying to make that happen. The thing that we
don't see in those photos, in those pictures is all
the stress that usually comes with having those kinds of
(17:12):
huge events and huge expectations. Now, if you are someone
who specifically struggles with control, the idea of like a
big birthday party, that might seem really impressive and fun
from the outside is probably going to cause you a
lot of internal chaos. For the starters, you're going to
want every single thing to go perfectly. You're going to
(17:33):
want it to perhaps look exactly as you imagined it,
and you are going to feel responsible for other people's fun.
Tell me if you relate to this. But I have
often found whenever I've thrown big birthday parties, I always
spend about fifty percent of the night looking around me
and making sure that people are chatting, making sure that
(17:53):
people are enjoying themselves. I most certainly spend the first
hour wondering if people are going to show up, wondering
if people are going to go away and say that
was fun, or they're going to leave early. Now for
a day that should be focused on you, and should
be focused on this incredible achievement of growing up and
experiencing more. I find that big events like that take
(18:17):
all of the attention you should be showing yourself off
of you and onto managing other people's feelings and other
people's perceptions. It often creates this experience where you can
only feel happy In hindsight, you can only feel happy
with rose tinted glasses on. So throughout the day you've
(18:37):
probably felt very on edge, very overwhelmed, very rushed. Then
during the event, maybe you get like a couple of
hours of a bit of bliss, but you're still worried
about other people's feelings. And then the next morning sometimes
you even have like a bit of an emotional and
social hangover. And then it still may not have met
your expectations. And you've put money into this party, and
(18:59):
you've put your hopes and dreams into it. That can
lead us to feel very, very let down. You may
also have the experience of not telling people what you want,
not wanting to be a burden, not wanting to like
outwardly say hey, please make a big deal about me,
please make a fuss, And because you haven't communicated it,
everyone thinks you want some small thing. You're left disappointed
(19:23):
because you wish that someone had read your mind, and
the sad thing is that they couldn't. And you know,
it's like you can't go out and say, like, I
want a surprise birthday party, because then you're not surprised,
But some part of you is like, I just wish
these people would be able to see into my brain
and know what I want, which even for our closest,
most nearest and dearest friends, is sometimes impossible. On the
(19:47):
flip side, I've also spoken to people who have said
to me, I have these big expectations, but I also
know that I'm going to feel very awkward being the
center of attention, and I know I'm going to feel
very strange about it because I have this fear of
(20:07):
being perceived. But I can't help that feel like that.
If I don't do this, I'm also going to be
very lonely and I'm going to feel very socially isolated.
So it does become a bit of a catch twenty two.
And if you know, for some reason you don't have
friends around you, you're feeling a little bit socially isolated
(20:29):
or alienating at the moment. The experience of like having
a birthday pop up can really put those deeper emotions
into perspective. I feel like a birthday is a great
way to put a big, shining spotlight on what you're
feeling insecure about. Are you feeling insecure about not having
(20:50):
enough friends? Are you feeling insecure about not making the
most of your twenties? Are you feeling insecure about being behind.
Are you feeling insecure about your looks or your age?
A birthday is going to bring all of that to
the surface. It's going to bring your loneliness, your dissatisfaction,
your insecurity straight to the top of your mind. So
I want to talk about how we can do this better,
(21:13):
how can we have better birthdays now? As someone, as
I said, who used to have these big birthday parties
and always end up feeling somewhat disappointed and let down,
I have come to realize that I am not someone
who wants to have a big, all out celebration, even
if that's something that I really thought that I've wanted
for the past I don't know, fifteen odd years. Like
(21:36):
for my twenty first I remember doing three different kind
of events, Like I did a birthday dinner with my family,
I went away with some of my friends, and I
went to the pub for like for my actual day
of my birthday. And yeah, it was fun, but it
was more stress than it's worth. So my new thing
is to choose some activity that I've really wanted to
(21:57):
do and that I've put off for the past year,
and to do it, even if it means doing it solo.
Now for this year. It did happen to mean that
I'm solo traveling, and that's something that I really wanted
to do. But like just before I recorded this episode,
I went to the Tenement Museum in New York City,
that is my favorite museum in the world, and I
(22:18):
booked two back to back tours and I went solo
and I felt completely content. Maybe for you, that involves
going out and getting your nails done and getting a
massage and putting the money you would have spent on
a fancy dinner or a party into yourself. What is
something that you really wanted to do this year that
(22:41):
you haven't had the opportunity to do. Do that on
your birthday. Maybe it's the zoo, Maybe it's a karaoke night.
That is how to make yourself feel less pressure, to
be happy and to have fun in the presence of others,
and to almost like have fun by yourself. I also
do this thing every year, and regardless of whether I'm
(23:02):
doing a big thing or a small thing or a
completely solo thing, I make sure that around the time
of my birthday, I take myself out on a date,
just me and my notebook, and I will go out
to a restaurant. Often I will literally not have anywhere
in mind. I will take myself for a walk in
a part of the city that I know will have
(23:23):
places to go. I will find a restaurant, I will
get a tablewhere myself, I will bring my journal, and
I will ask myself four questions. And I've done this
every single birthday for the past five years. The questions are,
what is the most important thing that I have learnt
in the past year. What is the thing that I
am most grateful for from the past year, what is
(23:47):
the most important thing that I have done in the
past year. And what is one thing that I really
want to achieve in this next year or that I
really want to experience or see. And then I just
let myself also do some general journaling. I just let
myself spill out onto the page. That's obviously what I'm
going to do tonight when I go get my little
(24:10):
breakfast for dinner situation, and I use Actually I should
have said this, I have a specific journal that I
only use for this, so it's like my birthday journal,
and so I'll often read back on all of my
other entries. Obviously, now I have so many that I
kind of well, not that many, but enough that I
kind of forget what I've said and what I've been
reflecting on. So it's actually a really beautiful, serene experience
(24:34):
to really sink into the life that I was living
when I was twenty three, and the life that I
was living when I was twenty two, and the problems
I was having when I was eighteen, and I feel
like I'm right there with her, and yet I'm also growing,
and I'm also experiencing a whole different life in some
aspects of it, So that routine is really really important
(24:57):
to me. More generally, if you're with birthday anxiety, my
tip is just to do less and to be totally
okay with doing some things alone and making it a
little bit smaller. That is always going to lead to
a more happy experience in my opinion. I also think
(25:19):
that instead of feeling like you need to be silent
around your fears of aging or your sense of loneliness
when it comes to a birthday, whatever it is, please
like talk about it with someone. Every single time I've
brought up this specific feeling of stress and worry when
it comes to my birthday, the person I've spoken to
(25:41):
has said yeah, me too. I completely get where you're
coming from. I'm very lucky that my best friend's birthday
is three days after mine, so I feel like we
always share these parallel experiences, and every year we kind
of have the same conversation where we're like, oh my god,
another year older, ah, like freaking out together, but we
also feel this real sense of parallelness and camaraderie, and
(26:05):
we feel like it's quite a unique bond and experience
to be going through a lot of these emotions and
this process of aging together. The other thing I really
like to reflect on and that I think might be
useful is I reflect on all the people I know
who are five ten years older than me. I think
(26:25):
it's really important to have friends who are at different
stages of their life than you. So I have friends
who are fifty, I have friends who are thirty five.
I've friends who are nineteen, and it's really valuable to
kind of get the lived experience and the opinions from them.
And around the time of my birthday, I always think
about a few of my friends who are exactly a
(26:46):
decade older than me, specifically my friend Alisha and my
friend Lindsey. They at thirty five are the most successful, hottest, poised,
richest versions of themselves that I've ever seen, and they
are also the happiest. And I remember as they were
turning thirty, I did talk to Alisha about this. I
(27:09):
was twenty, she was thirty. I think I asked some
naive question around like how do you feel about turning thirty,
and she was like, I'm terrified. I'm absolutely terrified. Five
years later, she's like, I'm this is the age I
want to be forever. I thought that twenty five was amazing.
I thought the twenty one was amazing. Thirty five is
the best, like it's you feel so confident, you feel
(27:30):
so much like yourself. And she also said to me,
you know, my birthday is not as important as the
experiences that I'm having, Like this is less mentally straining
and less mentally exhausting, and there's a lot less pressure
on it the older I get, and I'm just able
to have fun with it. I'm just able to prioritize
(27:50):
what I want to do. And it shows like she
just looks amazing and she has this like shine coming
out of her soul that just says present, I know
who I am and I'm really deeply satisfied and happy.
Whenever I feel scared about entering a new chapter in
a new phase of my life, I look to people
(28:11):
like her and I say, if they've done it, I
can do it. And look at how amazing it's turning
out for them, and it brings me a great sense
of peace. My two final, perhaps a little bit alternative
tips for dealing with birthday anxiety is to actually celebrate
your birthday a week afterwards, so that you get over
the emotional hangarover of your birthday and you feel like
(28:34):
there's less expectations. It's just a more general celebration. And
I also really hope that you engage in this mindset
shift that I've been taking part in the last few
months a few years, which is to see my life
as seasons rather than as just a bunch of years.
And I've spoken about this on the podcast. Before. I
found that life felt a lot more stressful when it
(28:57):
felt like there was just this huge chunk of years
in front of me with nothing really delineating them, nothing
really setting them apart, and I was just going to
speed right through them to the end. Instead, what I
now see and I think of my life as is
the seasons of a TV show, And you know, I'm
still in season two. Like, if every season last ten years,
and that's still a huge number of years, I'm still
(29:19):
in season two. If every season last five years, I'm
in season five, but I have perhaps another fifteen seasons
to go. My math might not be right with that,
but probably isn't. Yeah, but maybe if I live to
one hundred, Like, it's better to see yourself as existing
in these two, three, four or five year periods where
(29:41):
you're learning something new and you're experiencing a new part
of your life, and every five years you celebrate that
milestone and you push yourself to move or to do
something new instead of just thinking, Okay, a year is gone,
a year is gone, a year is gone. Really helps
me put it into perspective. Don't feel like you're behind, Please,
I promise you there is someone looking at your life
(30:02):
wishing for it. Know that if you're experiencing a ton
of loneliness at this point you feel like there's no
one to celebrate you, that's just this moment. There are amazing, great,
fabulous relationships coming your way, and this experience of loneliness
is an important one. But it's going to motivate you
to reach out, It's going to motivate you to be connected,
(30:25):
and I just hope this can be a more positive experience.
Forew I also want to thank you deeply, deeply, deeply
for being with me for this past year, from twenty
four to twenty five. I know I've gained so many new, loyal,
wonderful listeners. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to
talk about my twenties in as much depth as I want.
I feel like I gain so much more from this
(30:48):
than you guys can even imagine. This is like a
personal diary for me and this episode specifically. You know,
of course I have my journal exercise, but I'm thinking
about thirty five year old Gemma or forty five year
old General, fifty five year old German who's going to
listen to this episode and be like Wow. We were
recording that in a hotel room in New York City
and we felt so much peace and being able to
(31:08):
reflect on this moment. So thank you for giving me
the opportunity to make that come true and bring the
thoughts in my head alive in the form of this podcast.
As always, if you have an episode suggestion. If you
have further comments, questions, queries, thoughts about this episode and
the topic of birthday anxiety in general, feel free to
(31:29):
reach out to me at that Psychology podcast on Instagram.
If you loved this episode, leave a comment, leave a
five star review. Make sure you're following along so that
you get notified when we have more episodes coming out
and coming your way. But until next time, stay safe,
be kind, please be gentle to yourself, and we will
(31:52):
talk very very soon.
Hello, everybody, Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to
the podcast, new listeners, old listeners, Wherever you are in
the world, it is so great to have you here,
back for another episode as we, of course talk about
the psychology of our twenties. All right, We're going to
talk about birthday anxiety today because it is my birthday
(00:21):
the day that this comes out, I am turning twenty five,
twenty five years old. We are halfway through the Psychology
of your twenties, and the biggest question I always get
is whether I'm going to do a psychology of your thirties.
I have five more years to think about it, so
I will answer that question a little bit closer to
the date. But yeah, it's my birthday and it's bringing
(00:44):
up a lot of feelings, but it's also probably the
most peaceful, serene birthday I have had. I have never
felt more comfortable with aging, and more comfortable with the
age that I'm at, and more comfortable with what I'm
choosing to do today than ever before. And it's made
(01:07):
me really, really reflective, and it's made me want to
talk about this experience of birthday anxiety that I've had
for so long and all the stress that usually comes
with gaining another year, gaining another year of life, getting
another year of experiences. And I want you to note
that I did not say getting older. I'd like to
position it as something that we are given, something that
(01:27):
we are gifted. So this year, I'm in New York City.
I've been in the US for like two and a
half weeks for work, for work being this podcast and
for Mantra of course, doing some amazing recordings with some
incredible guests that are coming out soon. And by being
in New York, I know a few people, but honestly,
(01:47):
like I don't have a huge, broad wide group of
friends here. My boyfriend's back in Australia. All my close friends,
my family are back in Australia. So I couldn't do
like a big thing this year. I could do like
a big party, I couldn't like celebrate with my closest
loved ones. And you know what, I think that's part
of why I feel so serene about it. Like, my
(02:09):
plan is to go to a diner tonight and I'm
gonna get breakfast for dinner, and I'm gonna do my
little birthday routine, which I'll talk about later in the
episode that I do every single year, and I have
never felt more excited about it. Like I said before,
this experience has not always been the case, and I
(02:30):
am sure for many of you who are listening you
don't find that this is the common theme that defines
your birthday. It's normally quite an intense experience. Birthdays are
really really reflective by nature, you know, they demand pause,
much like a new year. You know, they feel like
(02:52):
this very specific point in time where everything from the
past feels very present, and you're ruminating on who you are,
what you've learned, and also who you want to become.
Like you're very focused on the future. We're getting older.
What if things don't work out the way I want,
I have less time. I feel like my body is aging,
(03:14):
even though if you're in your twenties, like you're still
really at the peak of your youth. But all of
these feelings and this contemplation is naturally very paralyzing, and
that combined with a very sensitive social element as well,
you know, the pressure to be around friends, the pressure
to do a big thing, the pressure to have fun,
all of that can create a real cocktail of complicated
(03:36):
emotions and surprise surprise. A lot about this does come
down to our psychology as humans, as very deep thinking
creatures and creatures who nonetheless love celebrations but also feel
overwhelmed by them at times. You know, we're full of
oxymorons and contradictions, it seems. But today we are going
(03:59):
to hope all together feel a little bit better about birthdays.
I want to talk about what makes them so difficult
at times, specifically the three main reasons that we struggle
with gaining another year, and then I also want to
talk about why and how to rethink this process of
(04:19):
aging and to rethink birthdays in general, so that they
are something that you look forward to, that you're excited about,
that is not stressful, and that, if anything, can actually
bring you a lot of knowledge about yourself and a
really important space to reflect and grow into this next
(04:40):
year of who you're becoming and who you're going to be. So,
I know birthdays in our twenties are a big topic,
and so many of you have asked me for this,
so I'm going to stop rambling and without further ado,
let's talk about the psychology of birthday anxiety. So I
think the reason that birthdays can be so psychologically, mentally, emotionally,
(05:03):
sometimes socially. Taxing comes down to three specific reasons. The
first is very existential reasons to do with aging, to
do with progress, to do with milestones. The second comes
down to expectations and the pressure to seemingly have this
perfect event or this perfect experience to mark another year.
(05:26):
And the third series of reasons, I think are quite
social reasons that have to do with loneliness, perhaps a
great deal of comparison as well. So I want to
talk about each of these individually, starting with very existential reasons.
So I think, for the longest time, the reason birthdays
felt so troublesome to me was that it was a
(05:47):
sign that I was getting older, and that is something
that was very, very scary. My perspective on aging, though,
has changed, and I used to be really scared of it.
I used to joke with my friends that I would
be for aever twenty two. The reason that we are
scared of aging, and if you can relate to this,
I'm sure you've already come to this conclusion. The reason
(06:07):
that we are scared of aging is because we are
scared of the unknown. We are naturally, as humans, always
going to feel a little bit anxious and a little
bit uncomfortable with somewhere in some place that we have
never been before. You have never been in this next
year of your life. You have never been twenty seven,
(06:29):
you have never been thirty five, you have never been
sixty six. And so because of that, it feels very unknown,
very uncertain, very unstable. And with that empty space and
with that uncertainty, our brain likes to fill that with fear.
It likes to feel that with catastrophic ideas and imaginations
(06:51):
of what it's going to be like, and they're not
always positive. The other reason that we are scared of aging,
other than the fear of the unknown, is a similar
fear of the unknown, and it's a fear of death.
It feels like each year we are, you know, closer
to the end of this journey than the beginning. I
used to be very, very scared of this, and I
(07:13):
can openly admit that and talk about it now because
of how much time I have spent thinking about it
and overthinking it and intellectualizing it till the cows came in,
Like it was an obsessive thought of me for me
for so long, of what happens after we die and
aging is just this is just this terrible thing that's
bringing me closer. Then I realized that aging is actually
(07:38):
absolutely necessary, because the alternative to not getting older is
that you would always stay the same and that you
would always stay in the same place as this same
past version of you. You would never be able to grow,
and you would never be able to experience new chapters.
Turning twenty five, twenty seven, twenty eight. Yes, it's a privilege.
(08:00):
I know a lot of people talk about how there
are so many people who don't make it to that
age and you should live for them and realize that
it's an opportunity. Yes, that's one way of seeing it.
But I also think that time holds experiences, and so
if this world was perfectly designed or however you want
to think about it, aging is an important part of
(08:21):
that because aging is what brings you into the future.
Aging is what brings you excitement, brings new surprises. If
you were to stay seventeen for your whole life, if
you were to stay twenty five for your whole life,
you would never get to experience what it's like to
be a grandparent, what it's like to be a senior
in your career, what it's like to you know, own
(08:44):
a home that you love, what it's like to gain
maturity and perspective, what it's like to feel your frontal
lobe develop. That is really how I started to see it.
Another way I started to see it in my brain
that felt more comfortable, is that age is really just
a number. And it's so oh cliche, I know, but
it is so true. It is so true, And I
(09:06):
see this philosophy reflected in so many people that I
love and that I know in my life. So a
couple of weeks ago, I celebrated my grandfather's ninetieth birthday.
Now that man turned ninety. He drank more than me.
He drank more than any twenty one year old. He
pulled out like this really nice bottle of port. He
(09:28):
had this big birthday cake. All of his friends, my
sisters who are literally like eighteen and I don't know,
seventeen at this point, genuinely like they left before the
night was even over, Like my grandparents were the last
to go. We walked home with them all tipsy and drunk.
And not only was my grandfather still this like had
(09:50):
this youthful exuberance and really wasn't showing his age, but
he also had, you know, the blessing of so many
stories that we got to hear. And it made me realize, like,
you can take your age as a sign of who
you need to be, and you need to be this
person who becomes more grouchy, You need to be this
person who, according to society, becomes less happy and exudes
(10:14):
less joy and finds less pleasure and things. But you
also have the choice to take your age, you know,
keep it as something that's just on your birth certificate
or just on your driver's license, and embody the age
that you feel and all the positive parts of that
age that you want to bring forward with you. Another
reason that birthdays can bring up some negative feelings and
(10:37):
some specifically existential feelings comes down to feeling behind when
it comes to your life plans, feeling like you should
be further ahead, feeling like you should be more accomplished,
and yet here you are, and you look around, everyone
else seems to be doing these amazing things, and you're lost,
(10:58):
and you're behind. And now as you get older, all
it's going to be is this game of catchup. If
you can relate to that, I think what you're experiencing
is not so much birthday anxiety, but milestone anxiety anxiety
to do with feeling like you are not hitting specific
socially approved targets when you should be. Now, this is
(11:24):
a real conundrum for a lot of us in our twenties.
I saw this quote the other day that it feels
like between the ages of eighteen and thirty five, we're
all in some imaginary race, and we're not sure what
the race is, but we know that we're behind. That
is really what this period in our life feels like,
and a lot of it does come down to comparison
(11:45):
against our peers, but also comparison against this weird, indoctrinated
blueprint that we all seem to understand. We all seem
to have this weird sense that by thirty, you know,
we probably should have should be married, By twenty five,
we should be knowing what we want to do with
our career. By twenty eight, we should have met our
(12:06):
best friends, We should have bought a home. There are
all these seemingly important milestones to hit before you reach
your thirties, and the thing is all of those milestones
are external. We do not compare important measures like happiness.
We do not compare important things like growth, like self knowledge, authenticity.
(12:31):
We don't think about how far how far advanced we
are in terms of our emotions and how we internally feel.
We are really focused on the external, how our life
appears to other people, and that is a huge source
of disappointment and sadness and frustration. Birthdays, I think, just
(12:51):
really naturally bring that out. I will also say we
also are very, very focused, to our fault at comparing
ourselves to people who are doing better than us. We
often engage in what we call upward social comparison, knowing
that it's going to make us feel bad, knowing that
it's going to hurt our self concept and our self esteem,
(13:14):
but we just can't help ourselves. It's like we almost
convince ourselves subconsciously mentally that if I feel bad enough
about where I am, maybe that will force me to
work harder. If I look at someone that I'm envious
of or that makes me feel less accomplished, maybe that's
this weird sense of self punishment that's going to motivate me.
(13:35):
And that is absolutely not the case. There is no
big finish line that we are all working towards like,
not one single person on this planet has the exact
same goals and the exact same vision of what their
life looks like. It's all different, and even people who
get to the point, or even people who you admire
(13:56):
for getting to the point that you want to be,
they are still looking at their life and feeling some
sense of dissatisfaction. I can absolutely tell you that it
may even be the case that they are looking at
you and thinking, God, I really wish I had as
much peace as this person has. I really wish I
had as much time and space for growth. I really
wish that I was still at the beginning so I
(14:18):
could make different choices. There is something to be compared
against or with for every single person. So as you're
comparing yourself to someone else, they're comparing themselves to someone
else who's probably comparing themselves to you. So I know
that can be a really, really hard part about birthdays
is feeling behind and feeling lost in your twenties. I
(14:39):
always remind myself when I'm at that point, because I
think as humans, we all end up in that comparison spiral.
I always remind myself to think about what I've achieved
in terms of personal growth and reflection in the last year.
So as I'm turning twenty five, I feel like this
twenty fourth year of my life, I became so much
(14:59):
better at f feeling less pressure around social media. I
became so much better in managing my overthinking. I became
so much better in feeling satisfied with the friends that
I have, rather than feeling like I constantly needed more
of that. I was constantly on the precipice of loneliness.
(15:19):
That means more to me, and that impacts me positively
more on the daily than any kind of achievement that
I've had publicly, that sense of inner growth and homeostasis
and progress is really really important. Okay, we are going
to take a short break, but when we return, I
want to talk about two of the final reasons that
(15:41):
we feel a lot of stress anxiety, maybe sadness around
our birthdays, and my perfect routine for combating that. Stay
with us. Let's talk about the second reason that birthdays
can be so hard, and it's expectations. It's there's pressure
to have this perfect, perfect day, this perfect party, these
(16:06):
perfect friends who are all going to wish us happy birthday,
and often we are let down. I would say ninety
nine percent of the time. When you have grand aspirations
for a big birthday blowout, and you know how you
expect everyone to treat you, you're often disappointed. I think
anytime we say that we are supposed to do something,
(16:29):
we're supposed to be happy, we're supposed to be loved,
we're supposed to have all this fun, we're supposed to
you know, just ease through this. You are setting yourself
up for disappointment. You know, when we put should or
supposed to before anything, often it's not going to look
the way that we have imagined it now. I think
this also comes down to comparison. Right. We see people
(16:52):
having these huge birthdays with lots of lots of friends,
and it looks so fun and they look celebrated and loved.
Of course, we want that amazing, and so we go
about trying to make that happen. The thing that we
don't see in those photos, in those pictures is all
the stress that usually comes with having those kinds of
(17:12):
huge events and huge expectations. Now, if you are someone
who specifically struggles with control, the idea of like a
big birthday party, that might seem really impressive and fun
from the outside is probably going to cause you a
lot of internal chaos. For the starters, you're going to
want every single thing to go perfectly. You're going to
(17:33):
want it to perhaps look exactly as you imagined it,
and you are going to feel responsible for other people's fun.
Tell me if you relate to this. But I have
often found whenever I've thrown big birthday parties, I always
spend about fifty percent of the night looking around me
and making sure that people are chatting, making sure that
(17:53):
people are enjoying themselves. I most certainly spend the first
hour wondering if people are going to show up, wondering
if people are going to go away and say that
was fun, or they're going to leave early. Now for
a day that should be focused on you, and should
be focused on this incredible achievement of growing up and
experiencing more. I find that big events like that take
(18:17):
all of the attention you should be showing yourself off
of you and onto managing other people's feelings and other
people's perceptions. It often creates this experience where you can
only feel happy In hindsight, you can only feel happy
with rose tinted glasses on. So throughout the day you've
(18:37):
probably felt very on edge, very overwhelmed, very rushed. Then
during the event, maybe you get like a couple of
hours of a bit of bliss, but you're still worried
about other people's feelings. And then the next morning sometimes
you even have like a bit of an emotional and
social hangover. And then it still may not have met
your expectations. And you've put money into this party, and
(18:59):
you've put your hopes and dreams into it. That can
lead us to feel very, very let down. You may
also have the experience of not telling people what you want,
not wanting to be a burden, not wanting to like
outwardly say hey, please make a big deal about me,
please make a fuss, And because you haven't communicated it,
everyone thinks you want some small thing. You're left disappointed
(19:23):
because you wish that someone had read your mind, and
the sad thing is that they couldn't. And you know,
it's like you can't go out and say, like, I
want a surprise birthday party, because then you're not surprised,
But some part of you is like, I just wish
these people would be able to see into my brain
and know what I want, which even for our closest,
most nearest and dearest friends, is sometimes impossible. On the
(19:47):
flip side, I've also spoken to people who have said
to me, I have these big expectations, but I also
know that I'm going to feel very awkward being the
center of attention, and I know I'm going to feel
very strange about it because I have this fear of
(20:07):
being perceived. But I can't help that feel like that.
If I don't do this, I'm also going to be
very lonely and I'm going to feel very socially isolated.
So it does become a bit of a catch twenty two.
And if you know, for some reason you don't have
friends around you, you're feeling a little bit socially isolated
(20:29):
or alienating at the moment. The experience of like having
a birthday pop up can really put those deeper emotions
into perspective. I feel like a birthday is a great
way to put a big, shining spotlight on what you're
feeling insecure about. Are you feeling insecure about not having
(20:50):
enough friends? Are you feeling insecure about not making the
most of your twenties? Are you feeling insecure about being behind.
Are you feeling insecure about your looks or your age?
A birthday is going to bring all of that to
the surface. It's going to bring your loneliness, your dissatisfaction,
your insecurity straight to the top of your mind. So
I want to talk about how we can do this better,
(21:13):
how can we have better birthdays now? As someone, as
I said, who used to have these big birthday parties
and always end up feeling somewhat disappointed and let down,
I have come to realize that I am not someone
who wants to have a big, all out celebration, even
if that's something that I really thought that I've wanted
for the past I don't know, fifteen odd years. Like
(21:36):
for my twenty first I remember doing three different kind
of events, Like I did a birthday dinner with my family,
I went away with some of my friends, and I
went to the pub for like for my actual day
of my birthday. And yeah, it was fun, but it
was more stress than it's worth. So my new thing
is to choose some activity that I've really wanted to
(21:57):
do and that I've put off for the past year,
and to do it, even if it means doing it solo.
Now for this year. It did happen to mean that
I'm solo traveling, and that's something that I really wanted
to do. But like just before I recorded this episode,
I went to the Tenement Museum in New York City,
that is my favorite museum in the world, and I
(22:18):
booked two back to back tours and I went solo
and I felt completely content. Maybe for you, that involves
going out and getting your nails done and getting a
massage and putting the money you would have spent on
a fancy dinner or a party into yourself. What is
something that you really wanted to do this year that
(22:41):
you haven't had the opportunity to do. Do that on
your birthday. Maybe it's the zoo, Maybe it's a karaoke night.
That is how to make yourself feel less pressure, to
be happy and to have fun in the presence of others,
and to almost like have fun by yourself. I also
do this thing every year, and regardless of whether I'm
(23:02):
doing a big thing or a small thing or a
completely solo thing, I make sure that around the time
of my birthday, I take myself out on a date,
just me and my notebook, and I will go out
to a restaurant. Often I will literally not have anywhere
in mind. I will take myself for a walk in
a part of the city that I know will have
(23:23):
places to go. I will find a restaurant, I will
get a tablewhere myself, I will bring my journal, and
I will ask myself four questions. And I've done this
every single birthday for the past five years. The questions are,
what is the most important thing that I have learnt
in the past year. What is the thing that I
am most grateful for from the past year, what is
(23:47):
the most important thing that I have done in the
past year. And what is one thing that I really
want to achieve in this next year or that I
really want to experience or see. And then I just
let myself also do some general journaling. I just let
myself spill out onto the page. That's obviously what I'm
going to do tonight when I go get my little
(24:10):
breakfast for dinner situation, and I use Actually I should
have said this, I have a specific journal that I
only use for this, so it's like my birthday journal,
and so I'll often read back on all of my
other entries. Obviously, now I have so many that I
kind of well, not that many, but enough that I
kind of forget what I've said and what I've been
reflecting on. So it's actually a really beautiful, serene experience
(24:34):
to really sink into the life that I was living
when I was twenty three, and the life that I
was living when I was twenty two, and the problems
I was having when I was eighteen, and I feel
like I'm right there with her, and yet I'm also growing,
and I'm also experiencing a whole different life in some
aspects of it, So that routine is really really important
(24:57):
to me. More generally, if you're with birthday anxiety, my
tip is just to do less and to be totally
okay with doing some things alone and making it a
little bit smaller. That is always going to lead to
a more happy experience in my opinion. I also think
(25:19):
that instead of feeling like you need to be silent
around your fears of aging or your sense of loneliness
when it comes to a birthday, whatever it is, please
like talk about it with someone. Every single time I've
brought up this specific feeling of stress and worry when
it comes to my birthday, the person I've spoken to
(25:41):
has said yeah, me too. I completely get where you're
coming from. I'm very lucky that my best friend's birthday
is three days after mine, so I feel like we
always share these parallel experiences, and every year we kind
of have the same conversation where we're like, oh my god,
another year older, ah, like freaking out together, but we
also feel this real sense of parallelness and camaraderie, and
(26:05):
we feel like it's quite a unique bond and experience
to be going through a lot of these emotions and
this process of aging together. The other thing I really
like to reflect on and that I think might be
useful is I reflect on all the people I know
who are five ten years older than me. I think
(26:25):
it's really important to have friends who are at different
stages of their life than you. So I have friends
who are fifty, I have friends who are thirty five.
I've friends who are nineteen, and it's really valuable to
kind of get the lived experience and the opinions from them.
And around the time of my birthday, I always think
about a few of my friends who are exactly a
(26:46):
decade older than me, specifically my friend Alisha and my
friend Lindsey. They at thirty five are the most successful, hottest, poised,
richest versions of themselves that I've ever seen, and they
are also the happiest. And I remember as they were
turning thirty, I did talk to Alisha about this. I
(27:09):
was twenty, she was thirty. I think I asked some
naive question around like how do you feel about turning thirty,
and she was like, I'm terrified. I'm absolutely terrified. Five
years later, she's like, I'm this is the age I
want to be forever. I thought that twenty five was amazing.
I thought the twenty one was amazing. Thirty five is
the best, like it's you feel so confident, you feel
(27:30):
so much like yourself. And she also said to me,
you know, my birthday is not as important as the
experiences that I'm having, Like this is less mentally straining
and less mentally exhausting, and there's a lot less pressure
on it the older I get, and I'm just able
to have fun with it. I'm just able to prioritize
(27:50):
what I want to do. And it shows like she
just looks amazing and she has this like shine coming
out of her soul that just says present, I know
who I am and I'm really deeply satisfied and happy.
Whenever I feel scared about entering a new chapter in
a new phase of my life, I look to people
(28:11):
like her and I say, if they've done it, I
can do it. And look at how amazing it's turning
out for them, and it brings me a great sense
of peace. My two final, perhaps a little bit alternative
tips for dealing with birthday anxiety is to actually celebrate
your birthday a week afterwards, so that you get over
the emotional hangarover of your birthday and you feel like
(28:34):
there's less expectations. It's just a more general celebration. And
I also really hope that you engage in this mindset
shift that I've been taking part in the last few
months a few years, which is to see my life
as seasons rather than as just a bunch of years.
And I've spoken about this on the podcast. Before. I
found that life felt a lot more stressful when it
(28:57):
felt like there was just this huge chunk of years
in front of me with nothing really delineating them, nothing
really setting them apart, and I was just going to
speed right through them to the end. Instead, what I
now see and I think of my life as is
the seasons of a TV show, And you know, I'm
still in season two. Like, if every season last ten years,
and that's still a huge number of years, I'm still
(29:19):
in season two. If every season last five years, I'm
in season five, but I have perhaps another fifteen seasons
to go. My math might not be right with that,
but probably isn't. Yeah, but maybe if I live to
one hundred, Like, it's better to see yourself as existing
in these two, three, four or five year periods where
(29:41):
you're learning something new and you're experiencing a new part
of your life, and every five years you celebrate that
milestone and you push yourself to move or to do
something new instead of just thinking, Okay, a year is gone,
a year is gone, a year is gone. Really helps
me put it into perspective. Don't feel like you're behind, Please,
I promise you there is someone looking at your life
(30:02):
wishing for it. Know that if you're experiencing a ton
of loneliness at this point you feel like there's no
one to celebrate you, that's just this moment. There are amazing, great,
fabulous relationships coming your way, and this experience of loneliness
is an important one. But it's going to motivate you
to reach out, It's going to motivate you to be connected,
(30:25):
and I just hope this can be a more positive experience.
Forew I also want to thank you deeply, deeply, deeply
for being with me for this past year, from twenty
four to twenty five. I know I've gained so many new, loyal,
wonderful listeners. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to
talk about my twenties in as much depth as I want.
I feel like I gain so much more from this
(30:48):
than you guys can even imagine. This is like a
personal diary for me and this episode specifically. You know,
of course I have my journal exercise, but I'm thinking
about thirty five year old Gemma or forty five year
old General, fifty five year old German who's going to
listen to this episode and be like Wow. We were
recording that in a hotel room in New York City
and we felt so much peace and being able to
(31:08):
reflect on this moment. So thank you for giving me
the opportunity to make that come true and bring the
thoughts in my head alive in the form of this podcast.
As always, if you have an episode suggestion. If you
have further comments, questions, queries, thoughts about this episode and
the topic of birthday anxiety in general, feel free to
(31:29):
reach out to me at that Psychology podcast on Instagram.
If you loved this episode, leave a comment, leave a
five star review. Make sure you're following along so that
you get notified when we have more episodes coming out
and coming your way. But until next time, stay safe,
be kind, please be gentle to yourself, and we will
(31:52):
talk very very soon.
Host
Jemma Sbeghen
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