Upset About Looking Older?

As a therapist, the issue of aging and appearance comes up a lot in my work. I've spent years with women struggling with eating disorders and body image issues—objectively beautiful women who loathed how they looked and searched for ways to look “better.” Compound the fact that they didn’t like how they looked in their teens and 20s, they find it all the more difficult to like how they look decades later. We are all one day older than yesterday, so how do you dial down the inner critic and obsessiveness about what is inevitable and instead make peace with how you look today as you age?

Isn’t the concept of “anti-aging” a contradiction? Isn’t aging, the fact that we’re still here, a gift? I would think so. We live in a visual culture where industry after industry is targeted toward making us “better” versions of ourselves—in how we feel and how we look. The parade of things we can do or buy to make that happen is led by the quest for youthfulness. As we evolve and age, we inevitably become an improved version of ourselves. Life has taught us, experience has molded us, and there's wisdom we've attained—we’re better humans now for what we’ve been through. But do we look better? That becomes the stumbling block.

A while back, my brother and I were sitting in an Italian restaurant dipping crusts of bread in marinara sauce, reminiscing about how our grandmother and the older women in our Italian family struggled to look good for weddings and occasions. My brother remembered that they wore dresses that looked like pillowcases and used to wear girdles to fit into those dresses. They always complained about how they felt like stuffed sausages and how much the girdles hurt them. They cared about how they looked—strong, competent women who held down the fort during more than one war, women who were treasures of wisdom and life experience, tortured themselves with girdles to fit into some societal expectations about how they thought they should look. Fast forward to now when shapewear, a current version of sausage, is de rigueur. Is this really necessary as we age?

Of course, there is a myriad of things you can do cosmetically, surgically, or strategically to “improve” how you look. Years ago, a friend of mine worked for a famous plastic surgeon. I met her at her workplace one day. In the waiting room was a book with a photo of the doctor on the cover. Minutes later, I met the doctor. She looked nothing like the photo—an older, seasoned version of the cover photo instead. My friend told me that she didn’t believe in plastic surgery. That made me think.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to make peace with your appearance and body now instead of engaging in painful solutions? That’s not to say that you should not aspire to the healthiest versions of yourself, but what if you can’t?

As a clinician, I can attest to the fact that, to a degree, it is healthy to care about how you look, as it has some correlation with your overall health. But it can easily turn into obsessiveness peppered with self-loathing. With the inevitability of aging, what is the secret to being okay with your aging face and body? Here are some tips that might help you catch yourself when you find yourself going from caring about how you look to obsessing about what more you can do to look better, especially as you age. Here's some help with the inner critic:

1. Take care of and focus on your health and the parameters of your body’s capabilities. Healthy lifestyle choices go a long way toward making you feel good about yourself.
2. We are all victims of our image-obsessed culture, which encourages us to always want something more to look or feel better. We spend an awful lot of time, energy, and money on that. Maybe it’s time to do less and care less.
3. Being perfect is never an attainable goal. Good enough is healthier.
4. Remind yourself that photos of yourself that you thought were bad at the time were actually pretty good in hindsight. And you look just fine now, too.
5. Making peace with how you look now actually facilitates self-improvement. It’s hard to do anything proactively in a state of self-loathing.
6. Self-care is essential, and engaging in activities that make you feel good will keep you focused on how you feel and not how you look.
7. Obsessing about your looks might be better addressed with the help of a therapist.

I think that the wisdom of age lies in the fact that you are a breath away from making peace with how you look now. You really are more important than how you look. So, if caring matters to you, go right ahead and care. But also give yourself permission to stop yourself from overthinking and over-caring about how you look. Maybe it’s time to give yourself the gift of self-acceptance or at least think about it. You know that you really are okay whether you care or not, and wearing pillowcase dresses is still part of being beautiful.

To find a therapist near you, visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory.