When you were a child you were mostly driven by emotion. As you got older you learned to control your emotions. But for many people they over-control their emotions. That is, they worry too much what other people think about them instead of expressing their authentic desires.
Now that I'm in my forties, I definitely feel like I am more myself than I was in my twenties.
> That is, they worry too much what other people think about them instead of expressing their authentic desires.
You make it sound like it's mutually exclusive. You don't need to express your authentic desires or to fulfill them to be a psychological healthy person.
I stand by my point that we are always ourselves, wether we want to hide what we call ourselves or not. And hiding it isn't a problem in itself. Reality boundaries are healthy to our desires of "total desires".
It's normal to be stressed out by the limites life impose on our desires.
Now that I'm in my forties, I definitely feel like I am more myself than I was in my twenties.