Gerascophobia

Gerascophobia (from Greek geraso, meaning "I am getting old") is the fear of getting, also known as. People fear growing older mainly because they are getting closer to their demise, among serious damage to their health. For some who fear growing old, they might have heard horror stories about the nursing home and fear that they will also be put in one of those homes when they grow old. For others, the thought of losing one's self-control such as not able to dress and feed oneself may be the triggering factor for this fear. Others also fear that when they grow old, they will be left alone by their family. Or some may fear that they will develope terminal diseases when they grow old and will be left alone to die without family members to take care of them.

Sufferers can have following symptoms — thoughts of dying, depression, fainting, inability to think or express oneself clearly, shaking and shivering, palpations and rapid breathing. However, Gerascophobia can also be silent.

Gerascophobia can be treated using a variety of methods, like, , , , and medications.

Gerascophobia is closely related to gerontophobia, fear of the elderly, however both are usually hateless in most affected people.

Mind insights
Due to s being, sufferers will often feel as though aging is the first sign that their s are starting to weaken, which makes them more vulnerable and prone to s. They view aging as a human flaw, brutal slow-motion , , long-term , biological , a , disgusting, creepy, scary    and the ultimate   self-obliteration, rather than a natural progression.

To them, the age of decay, even aging's earliest noticable stages on oneself or others, seems like a prerequisite, a very early sign, an initial step towards the direction of (fossilisation) and being dust, which equals absolute non-existence, if not a creepy form of existence. It is a feeling of powerlessness, knowing that age-proneness is currently inevitable, no matter in what physically healthy state one is at the moment. Aging is and  as an  to life and a (literal, in this case), similarly to  with his  is for.

Even who get confronted for the first time with the idea of  finite, external dependence (e.g. ,  tools such as , , , diabetes medication),  and it's self-destructive effects, such as  and loss of ,  (loss of eye's self-ability to focus due to failing ), , ,   , , etc. could become gerascophobic due to horrification and.

Loss of looks
Aging demolishes the looks of a human body, especially facially.

The following changes occur:
 * Facial distortion, loss of smoothness and bone structure deformation.
 * Hanging cheek skin (also known as “face bags”)
 * Wrinkles occupy the entire skin surface, especially on the face and the hands.
 * Liver spots (also known as “age spots”) begin to occupy the body surface, especially the on the hands and the face.
 * Many men lose hair, some men already get bald in their first third of life due to the genetic lottery.
 * Hair becomes less even, more fragile, more untidy and disarranged.

Female
Youth is an indication of high fertility.

The loss of beauty affects women much stronger than men, despite women tend to have slightly longer life expectancies than men. That is because youthful looks are an evolutionary sign of femininity and fertility, the purpose of female attraction, to lead to procreation. However, aging has devastating effects on female attraction, because old age in a woman is an evolutionary sign of poor to no fertility.. Aging increasingly damages the female reproductive system, causing it to fail, making women lose their bio-evolutionairy purpose to produce offsprings. Because an aging woman's reproductive system can no longer fullfill this purpose, the male brain that is naturally programmed to seek fertility does consider women exponentially less attractive at a higher age.

Male
Aging also negatively affects male attractiveness, however to a lesser extent, because the male reproductive system is affected in a far less devastating way, and an elderly man might still be able to procreate, provided sufficient remaining sexual potency, because the testicles keep producing semen cells even well into old age.

Some sufferers are more likely to seek to cut and stretch wrinkles to make them appear more youthful while the main concern of many other sufferers is the internal,  long-term damage caused by the aging process.

Loss of mobility and independence
Symptoms include the fear of the future and the dread of needing to due to loss of strength, to do formerly self-possible actions in  (loss of freedom and personal independence), which includes self-care, climbing stairs, crossing streets, walking, driving and carrying things.

Even things taken for granted (e.g. ability to step on a bus) is getting increasingly hard for elderly people.

Biological failure
Gerascophobists especially fear the fade of, the risk of , and the inevitable loss of  which comes along with the. This includes restricted, reliance on , and loss of , loss of , accumulating  damage,  (loss of attractiveness), vocal distortion, the loss of body functionality (e.g. , which leads to reliance on external tools (i.e. reading glasses) that can break, malfunction, be forgotten and/or get lost), , ,  (food  and issues and , ),  malfunction, desert-dry skin, the increasing risk of  and , , permanent irreversible  (leads to restricted environmental sensory perceptions, slower response times and weakened ability to think and make rational decisions), , the loss of  (while fat increases), loss of  and ;  (including the ability to feel emotions),  (,  (fading memories), , , , loss of  and ), repulsive ugliness, and the permanent loss of overall    , all of which only gets worse and leads to.

Reminders
Any reminder of impermanence, biological failure and evanescence, such as the bare mention of the word “, the name of the song or song lyrics such as “fading memories” anded the sight of old and disabled people, can trigger a wave of gerascophobic emotions, possibly combined with.

Physical restrictions
Gerascophobia gets amplified if oneself lives in a with  (e.g.  reliance,, , , ,  ( reliance), ,  and more…), which restrict one's ability to experience pleasure at any age and enjoy one's one and only ever life. By the time scientists will possibly have found a cure for one's disability, that person might already have past his/her, after which their ability to experience freedom, pleasure, mobility and life enjoyment without the former disability is already restricted by new, old-age-related factors.

Clusminess
Old age makes the hands less controllable, less sensitive, more shaky, therefore more, increasing the likelihood of accidentially breaking things.

Precision work is significantly harder with age-related clusminess.

Loss of significance
Many also fear they will not play an active role in society when they get older, thus a fading significance and the loss of sense of purpose, the and the fear of being forgotten.

Social restrictions
Another sense of insecurity is caused by the possibility of being affected by (social antipathy and reluctance against aged people) oneself one day.

Phsyical obstruction
In their younger years, people, despite respecting elderly people for other unrelated reasons, tend to feel annoyed and obstructed by their disabilities, impediments and repeated needs for special care, which will only deterioate until death.

The same people become aware that they will inevitably be in this physically crippled situation oneself one day, and other people will think about them the same way, although they don't speak it.

Loss of self-esteem
, lack of and  can possibly be caused by watching others enjoying the freedom of youth, vibrancy and mobility, while oneself is stuck in a biologically age-crippled, lesser capable body.

Second-hand Gerascophobia
Second-handed gerascophobia is when one fears the aging and biological decay of someone else, commonly grown-up offsprings for their aging, therefore slowly dying, parents.

Loved people such as friends or family members could lose their health, which is a basic human need.

Gerascophobists describe it as “aging is slaughtering loved ones into death”.

Sense of purpose
Due to the currently irreversible harmful effects of the human-biological time bomb (or age bomb) that were mentioned above, a human being's physical capabilities and freedom become increasingly, permanently restricted by old age, which could lead to uncertainty and a fading sense of purpose for life.

Crime target
Due to being weaker, lesser able-bodied and slower reaction time, thus lesser able to defend themselves, elderly people are an easier, therefore more common target for s such as and.

Due to declining brain performance and sharpness, age-harmed people are more prone to being med.

to participate in life
Gerascophobists fear that their old age will make them lesser able to participate in fun activities in life, miss out on with close people, and miss out on s  s made in.

Death is seen as a “limbo” of eternal non-existence.

This is different from the classic , which rather refers to the Internet and social media.

Life planning
Due to limited health, freedom and time in old age, the ability to plan a future becomes increasingly restricted.

Disorientation
Old age leads to restricted visual (eyes) and aural functionality.

This could lead to disorientation and a challenged ability to balance.

Presbyopia
The thought of relying on external tools (i.e. glasses and/or contact lenses) for basic daily actions such as reading appears horrifying. Gerascophobists consider presbyopia as semi-blindness and reading glasses as wheelchair for the eyes.

Glasses can break, can get lost, and have to be put on/off, which is similar to having to change a camera lens each time when changing the focus.

All of this does not happen to the young, functional eye that does not rely on external tools for normal function.

Hopelessness
Old age is described as a “pit of doom”, or “eternal dungeon” by people with this mental condition, because the effects of aging are permanent.

The certainty that the health condition of elderly people will inevitably only deterioate leads to a sense of hopelessness.

Uncertainty
The effects of aging are dark unpredictable, but always certainly negative and destructive.

Defenselessness
Currently, as of 2019, there is no cure for aging. Therefore, it is currently impossible to outrun, escape of defend oneselves against aging.

Being exposed to aging equals the feeling of being unable to defend oneself against one's murderer.

One's counsciousness is trapped inside a body of which the functions are failing one after another.

Ability to taste food
Due to the degrading taste nerves, the same food tastes increasingly shallow and flat.

Sexual potency
Aging degrades both the brain's ability to become sexually arroused and sexual potency, and the sexual attraction to the opposite partner due to degrading looks.

In addition, the errogenous nerve endings of the intimate organs become less sexually sentivitsensitive.

Physical activities and sports
Due to frailty syndrome, the elderly body can not cope with physical sports and fun activity such as riding rollercoasters.

Triggers
The psychological stress of gerascophobia can be triggered by any reminder to old age (memento senectute) or reminder of death (memento mori), such as elderly people with rollators in public, graveyards, wheelchairs, rollators, or the degenerated, screechy voice of elderly people can trigger psychological stress reactions.

The proximity of very elderly people (see gerontophobia) can lead to a gerascophobia attack.

Social resonance
People who are lesser consciously aware of the effects of aging often suggest gerascophobists to commit suicide to evade the effects of aging.

However, gerascophobia is interconnected with thanatophobia, the fear of death, therefore death is no suitable option to circumvent aging, but rejuvenation (currently hypothetical).

Aging is the currently only option that does not involve deliberate death and keep living as long as possible, therefore the best possible option, but still no good.

Gerascophobists are also being repeatedly told to embrace aging, which is not possible considering the serious destructive effects of aging onto the human body.