My first insight into the feeling of being internally old occurred during adolescence.
I felt unusually different from the kids around me, somehow older, but ‘mature’ wasn’t exactly the right word. The best way I could describe it back then was as though I had lived hundreds of years of life which had been condensed into 16 years of time.
As the years went by, I encountered a few Old Souls who I shared my experiences with. I would talk about my insights and introduce them to the concept of Old Souls. One of these people was Luna. She was so excited about it that she eventually wrote the well-received article 9 Signs You’re An Old Soul as well as a subsequent Old Soul Book.
In my years of mentoring Old Souls and helping them through their spiritual development, I’ve witnessed a number of issues. I want to mention that it’s important to remember that having an Old Soul doesn’t necessarily equate to being ‘all-knowing’ or perfect. Rather, it’s an indication of the age of the energy known as your soul. With that being said, these are some of the biggest problems I’ve seen, and personally experienced:
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1# You’re a Social Outcast
As with anyone who perceives the world differently from others, Old Souls can experience a great (and unending) sense of isolation. Because they fail to fit into the standards that society admires and values (careers, materialism, status and so forth), they’re commonly seen as strange, offbeat and unconventional.
2# You’re the “Black Sheep”
While Old Souls can build many strong relationships with people, their penetrating ability to connect with the depths of the people in their lives can create many enemies. Seeing deeply into the core issues of the people around them, Old Souls feel an innate desire to be truthful, even if this means revealing uncomfortable truths such as the fact that many problems are caused by immaturity, or a failure to take responsibility.
Those who are willing to change will listen and like you, while the rest will feel great disdain towards you. This is why Old Souls often become the “devils advocates” or “black sheep” of their friends or family.
3# You Often Get Mislabeled
If there’s something we all love and are good at, it’s labeling people. We fool ourselves into thinking we can “know” someone by attributing a label to them. However, humans are far too complex to be boxed into a specific and unchanging group of people. In this case, Old Souls will often be given different labels, from “beatniks” to “hippies”, “anarchists” to “new age freaks“.
While you can’t fight labels, you can try to use them in a positive way. Labels can be used as signposts, as directions towards awareness of some quality many of us share. These qualities will be different in intensity and strength in each of us, but at least they will help us understand ourselves (and the people around us) a bit better.
This is partly why I called the Old Soul Group “I’m an Old Soul” – not so people can gain egotistical pride with such a label, but to create a sense of self-awareness, to allow people to better understand themselves.
4# You Speak an Entirely Different Language
Words are symbols we each load with our own unique definitions according to our own unique life experiences that are associated with each word. What I associate with love might be entirely different from what you associate with love. For example: When someone thinks about love, they might remember their old failed relationship and feel a terrible sense of vulnerability when the word arises, while others might associate love with loyalty and friendship.
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Old Souls realize this limitation, and therefore greatly struggle to express entirely what they want to say, knowing that it’s as though they are speaking an entirely different language from others.
5# You Are Prone to Intense Existential Crises
I have sometimes witnessed cases where Old energy is born into the body of a person who does not have the matching mental maturity to embrace it. This can result in depressions, substance abuse and existential crisis’s.
When a person realizes that everything is transitional and passing, life can become pointless. This person sees that our bodies are temporary vessels that don’t really matter, and without the ability to cultivate self-love, self-destructive habits can result.
In this case, it’s necessary to undergo intense spiritual-growth, to cultivate existential meaning and inner-understanding through inner work in order to learn how to embrace your soul.
6# You Easily Become Emotionally Drained
With the wisdom and patience that comes with being an Old Soul, there also comes others people’s desire to use you as a dumping ground for their emotions. I’ve experienced this a lot in my own life, often experiencing emotionally-charged conversations that last for hours at a time. Some Old Souls also double as Empaths, which can also take a great toll on your energy.
7# You’re Prone to Becoming Mentally Drained
In the search for truth, deeper understanding and inner exploration of yourself and the world around you, it is common for the Old Soul to experience a lot of mental fatigue. Double this with acting as a mediator between people and their problems, and you’ll end up exhausted at the end of the day.
#8 You Struggle to Find a Kindred Spirit
If making friends who connect with you is difficult, finding a kindred spirit, soul mate, or life partner, can be even more of a challenge. It took me living in 6 different countries to find Luna.
But it’s not always as hard as that. Having the wisdom to discern the true depths of your connection with a person will be your greatest asset in the area of love.
#9 You’re Crippled By Possibilities
As we grow in maturity our perception of possibilities and explanations expands: we see life from limitless angles. This means that we see more than one way of doing things which makes us unfailingly indecisive as we see the full expanse of possibilities, and the lack of absolutes. Although making decisions and judgments can be a crippling experience, this can double as a virtue, allowing us to understand that we can’t simply judge people by face value, and that they are the result of millions of internal and external influences.
#10 You Yearn For a Place to Belong
For some Old Souls, the world feels alien. They find it hard to understand people, why such chaos and misery exists and how it is allowed, and sometimes encouraged, to continue. They long to find a place where they feel like they belong, a space filled with freedom and liberation. This often results in the feeling that this world is not their true home.
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Regardless of which of the above problems you may come across, these struggles will affect your life a lot less when you grow in inner understanding and acceptance.
The stronger your ability to channel and use the Old energy that is latent within you, the greater your capacity will be to aid in the continuation and evolution of your soul.
Please feel free to share your experiences below.
There was something almost mysterious about this woman. Her face had lots of wrinkles. These were the first things to catch your eye, but they didn’t make her look old. Instead, they emphasized a certain youthfulness in her that transcended age. The wrinkles belonged where they were, as if they had been part of her face since birth. When she smiled, the wrinkles smiled with her; when she frowned, the wrinkles frowned, too. And when she was neither smiling nor frowning, the wrinkles lay scattered over her face in a strangely warm, ironic way. ~ Haruki Murakami (Norwegian Wood)
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I am not trying to show that I think I am advanced. Modesty is very important. It is just what I am seeing and feeling
I really want to be an old soul because I am tired. World seems small and I think I have got to the point or will get to the point of knowledge that I can move on. I hope, because while I feel I understand the way the world works and different walks of life, idealistic concepts like world peace and no suffering does not seem to be the goal of this life. I seem to be able to channel energy for myself as in guide my life with the use of energy, but I ask myself what is the point when it doesn’t seem to make a difference in the grand scheme of things. I have come to the realization that the world is not intended to change but to teach and I really want to know what. I know that challenge is needed to exercise free will. But i want to know what it is all for. I can go on, but I hope you understand where I am going with this. The thought of doing this over again is exhausting, so I am trying to get there in this life I hope.
When i took the old soul test i got 80%. I just turned 20 and don’t think I am an old soul yet, but i definitely feel like a mature soul. I’m emotional and neurotic and always questioning life and why people do things to me, others, and why people act a certain way with others. And i’m obsessed with listening to spirituality tapes and looking up websites like this to find out who i am and how i should view life. I feel so overwhelmed and i’m always in my head trying to figure out situations. I find it excruciatingly hard to make friends my own age. I tend to distance myself from people who i feel are very childish, which feel like majority of the people my age. Most of the girls my age are very petty, like to gossip, and like to be in cliques and crush other girls’ feelings. Most guys my age only are interested in sleeping with as many girls as possible and are not interested in mature relationships like me. I feel like a 35 year old in a 20 year old body and its just very uncomfortable and I end up spending… Read more »
I so deeply identify. I struggle every day; I don’t know how to communicate with my family, have rare true friendships. I speak as if I have lived endless lifetimes, I feel existentially tired. People around me don’t understand my language, so I have become lonely. I am not even twenty, yet I do not enjoy the entertainment those my own age live for. I enjoy speaking to friends double and triple my age. I get into crippling existential crises. I have a certain rare maturity about me; at the same time I can act and feel quite immaturely. I feel fundamentally different from others (which I have come to appreciate) and when I do meet another soul like mine, the connection is deep.
Wonderful! Thank you.
I have been down lately but reading this has made me feel so much better, it’s nice to not feel so alone all of the time. I was always an old soul, and I was headed to a great spiritual path until a horrible incident happened in my mid-teens that I mentally and emotionally couldn’t handle at the time. Sadly, because of the toll it took on me I turned to hard drugs, and have been on and off prescribed opiates for fifteen years now. I’m still spiritual but I sleep a lot, which connects me to my past lives while I dream. I haven’t been fully living though. I’m 30 now and slept through most of my 20’s. My soul can’t fully embrace life this way, and I’m getting ready to enter treatment for a few months so that I can take the spiritual path I was meant to lead. At the same time, I know all of this happened for a reason. I was meant to live this particular life of suffering, maybe to really understand true peace and help others who don’t want to suffer alone. We have a few things in common. my parents came to… Read more »
from an early age i always felt different , not in an elitist way , from a troubled dysfunctional background I leaned the environment i was bought up in left me feeling alien to something i did not quite feel was right , having an experience of being placed like a round peg into a square hole. like a pinball i ricocheted through life gathering experience and wisdom , a rapid awaking almost overnight revealed to myself that i was a very old soul indeed , bringing into my existence a core of unconditional love for all , a birds eye view of my existence in this form showed despite all challenges , all trials , all hurts and E.motions left me with not a why me syndrome or bitterness at the lack of love received or the oppression but an unconditional love and understanding of all , to be able to see what animates another to reflect their own hurt on others , their ignorance of feeling towards others . compassion grew like a lotus flower within . I am a loner who observes without judgment , who compassionately proffers that unconditional love with no thought of reward or… Read more »
Hi, thanks for writing that. I guess I’m another one. For me, my love of truth has always been a barrier to understanding the people around me.
I suppose I’m a modern alchemist, a science and logic geek, I seek to understand rather than to believe. Recently, I have learned that this attitude is also known as scepticism. Started looking a little deeper into philosophy, found some useful tour guides written by great minds of the past.
Eureka, suddenly everything is different but nothing has changed. Another awakening, another step forwards, a brief glimpse of the path ahead. How to share this inner vision in a world of blind men?
Maybe I’m not so alone in this after all :D
We shared the same path. I started studting and dealing with mysteries as early as 10 years old…
So I’m an old soul. That’s it. This article really resonates with me. I never thought its just that I am an old soul. But it gets extremely lonely being like this. I have this feeling all the time that I am wasting my life and that I have a burning need to get out of my skin. Don’t know how to put that in words. Thats just the best I can describe it.