How To Build A Healthier Relationship With Ageing

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Welcome back everyone, I'm a Shandy Dante and this is but are you happy? I'm Mother with Me a podcast for people curious about their mental health and because of that, the chances of having a rest for a weekend are very slim.

And hello again everyone, I'm doctor Anastasia Ronas, clinical psychologist.

Now are you coming to terms with getting older? More aches, more, doctor visits, the endless weight of adult responsibilities?

If so, this episode is.

For you, and this topic actually came from one of our listeners, Thanks Lisa.

Today we're going to be talking through the anxiety of aging, the anxiety of death.

And why we feel so much pressure from society to stay young and youthful.

Let's get into it.

So aging and this concept of getting older is inevitable, but it's really interesting because I feel like it can bring up.

So many thoughts and feelings for everyone.

Yes, and I actually want to start by asking you a question, Shani.

You usually come with a question.

The turntables?

Okay, how old do you feel?

Oh?

This is a good question because I definitely feel older.

Than I am. You feel older that I feel older?

Okay? Yeah, yeah, fascinating.

I feel like I'm probably late forties, early fifties.

Oh wow, yeah, okay, yeah, but then it's really weird too because I do feel very youthful.

Too interesting.

Anyways, there's so many lays to it. How about you, how do you feel?

I oscillate.

I feel my age. Yeah, so I'm thirty four, I feel mid thirties. Yeah, but there's also a part.

Of me that still feels like twenty seven.

Yeah, like that specific.

Yeah, it's like a cusp of like, oh, like I'm growing up, but I'm not there yet. I'm still in my twenties that like late twenties. Yeah, there's a part of me that still feels that.

That's so interesting.

The reason I'm curious to ask you the question how old you feel? Is because, like, so many people have so many perspectives on this, and it's very interesting to notice if people feel older or younger than what they actually are, and how that kind of internal emotional age changes depending on the context we're in or the people that we're with, and this idea of like aging, you know, biologically aging being this very structured linear thing.

Every year you have a birthday, you turn a year older.

So true, but like, internally our emotional age can feel so different to our biological age.

It's so true.

And it's interesting even just thinking about age because I know, for me, I don't really think about my age, but I do have to say now that I am in my thirties, I do think about it a little bit more because you know, the biological clock, just hormones are changing things that I didn't even think about before, which really ties into this episode because I know, like we were talking about, when we get older, we do think about our health a bit more, and you know, and

It is a it's probably old to them.

Yeah.

You know, there's so much of a.

Charge, an embarrassment or the shame around getting older.

I feel like I have an interesting relationship with age, particularly when it comes to my work, because I work at a university as well, so I'm a lecturer, and sometimes when I meet people for the first time and I tell them I work at the UNI, They'll be like, oh, what are you studying. Oh. So I feel this like weird relationship with age where I feel underestimated by people and people who are potentially older than me as well.

Sometimes.

Yeah, wow, that's so fascinating. I feel like being underestimated.

As a whole. Other podcastops in itself. Stay tuned for that one.

But it's interesting too, because I feel like culture does play a big role in the way that we perceive aging.

Right, Yes, especially for women.

Yeah right, Gosh, there is such a sidal expectations and pressures on women to stay young and youthful and beautiful. Yeah, and it's a shame because when we look historically to how women have been portrayed in the media, older women in the media, you know, we think about like kids, nursery, rhymes and things like this. It's like Hansel and Gretel, and it's like the old grandma who like puts kids in the oven and eats them, and like Kruella de

It's so true because it's like there is so much beauty with getting older, and you know, I really admire women in my life who are older because they're not grumpy. It's like maybe it's just they know what they want, you know what I mean? Like, is this confidence that women have that are older than me, They just they know what they want, they know what they're going to tolerate, they know what they're not going to tolerate, and they

To be accepted.

But I feel like there's some life lesson we get eventually. I'm still on the journey where it's like you don't really care anymore and you just follow your internal compass.

Yes, yeah, you believe in yourself. You have that self assuredness and confidence in who you are and what you want in the world, which is wonderful, yeah, and which feels very contrary to a lot of the social media trends that.

We see nowadays as well.

Yes, I mean I really try not to intentionally engage with this kind of content, but like all the stuff about you know what was it, Korean beauty trends and skin and I went on a deep dive or like it wasn't.

Even deep, it was a dive.

I was too scared to go deep to be honest into like looks Maxing, looks Maxing, looks Maxing.

Yeah, it's the lingo of.

That is that the gen Z stuff that looks it looks max I love that you say to it again, because I gotta get it, like.

It's it's the trend of like maximal physical appearance and sadly, like I know we often speak to kind of a female audience, but looks maxing is very much also targeted towards young men as well. It's like ultimate Patrick Bateman American psycho vibes of like you need to look your absolute best and here's all the ways in which you can do that. And if you look good, then you are a more attractive to females and b you own

At all this content. That's my biggest concern.

I was listening to a podcast where a guy was being interviewed about this, and he was making these comments about, you know that men are expected to be providers for women these days, and so if every man's a provider, what's going to set you apart from the next guy?

Yeah, so true.

And it's like you don't see often such a diversity represented in age in media as well, Like I think it's coming a little bit into the space. Like I definitely have seen older women that are modeling products or campaigns, and I'm like, that's amazing, Like we're definitely turning the dial very slightly. So I'm like, okay, let's celebrate that. But also it isn't.

It's not the majority.

Absolutely, and so much so that I actually found a report that was done by the Australian Human Rights Commission and they literally state that older people in the media are often portrayed as frail, weak victims or in poor health, and that those age sixty five and over rarely feature in advertising campaigns or editorial media.

Wow. So it's crazy.

I think what that creates is this perhaps unconscious bias within us to be biased against older people, but potentially even our own older selves.

Yeah, that's so true.

You know, the reality is as you get older, you actually become all wiser, Like that's just inevitable. Like the amount of friends that I have or mentors that are older than me, and I love beating their presence, Like I'm just sitting there just soaking up like a sponge because they have so many things that they want to share, and I think so often in today's society we don't value those in that internal journey as much as we do with that outward appearance.

Well, it's such a good point about culture because there are so many cultures that have, you know, the elders totally. There are the wise members of society that you go to for guidance and wisdom and advice. Yeah, and we've perhaps lost that in certain ways, you know, valuing the wisdom that comes with age and experience.

Definitely, I mean definitely if we just take a snapshot of where things are in the world, like you know, the fact that elders aren't involved in a lot of conversations like that just shows, you know, because yeah, a lot of I know previously, for me, I've done a lot of work in the rights of passage space and we would talk about with young people around a lot of those traditional Eastern cultures where they do have certain rituals when young people come of age and then they

And it's just like, even just hearing that story, you're.

Like, wow, we really have lost touch of those really beautiful aspects of eldership.

And how different is that experience to perhaps when a young girl or a woman bleeds for the first time. Now, where it's something that's like hidden away, it's very private, it's not to be discussed, you know, it's like kept in the corner in a dark secret somewhere, as opposed to the story that you've.

Just shared exactly exactly, And there's so much like in those moments where we feel certain ways. That's why we can lean on elders be like, oh, I had that same feeling. Don't worry, this is what I did. Like be kinder to yourself. So anyways, it's just I just find it really interesting because we don't value it as much yet I feel like it's just so valuable. So we have spoken about grief before on the pod, so if you haven't into the episode, go check it out.

Yeah, past our past self, past identity, but also like, you know, my past body that was maybe a little bit more able than my.

Current body is. Or you know what I grieve, Yeah, innocence. Oh, and I guess.

When I say innocence, I'm thinking about a younger version of myself. This is gonna sound sad, but like a younger version of myself that wasn't as aware of how hard the world can be. And I think that's something that we learn just as we get older, we're exposed to more hardships in life, whether it's our own hardships

I don't know about you, but I definitely feel like time speeds up as we get older. You know, there's some quickening that's been happening. I don't know, I'm noticing it more. The perception of time changes.

It's definitely the case.

I feel it as well, where like a whole other year passes and I'm like, it's already Christmas.

Didn't we just do that?

True?

This is an.

Interesting concept because as we get older, we have more routine, more structure, and less novelty in our day to day life. When we're young, a lot of things are very new and fresh and exciting. But when we're older, we settle into our routines, and so this sense of sameness can can make it feel like time is passing quite fast, and when we look back at like the past week or the past month, we're like, gosh, it just sort of flu by because I was so set in my

First of all, savor.

The moments, yea, even if their routine moments, just like savor them when you sit in the morning with that cup of coffee and you take those few SIPs. Savor them when you're having that really nice lunch and the sun is shining down on you and you can feel the sun against your skin. Savor those moments. Be really mindful and present with them is one way to sort of help kind of slow down time, to actually be mindful rather than mindless and thinking about other things.

So true.

But the second is find novelty, have new experiences, try.

New hobbies, new activities, go out, meet new people, chat with the person at the bus stop. Newness and novelty will also help it feel like there's more actually happening in your day to day life, and the brain is more likely to remember those new novel experiences than the more kind of mundane routine things that we're doing.

I love that because I feel like, in a way for me, when I think about a new hobby and as you're talking about it, what comes up is like, oh, I have to go out and socialize, Like, oh do I have to? And it's interesting because it's so funny.

I go through the same loop where I'm like.

Feeling stuck and then you're like, hey, you should go out and connect, and I'm like, oh, I don't know if I want to connect. And then I go out and connect and I come back I'm like that was great. You know, it's like we're so so stuck in our ways that we can be a little bit stubborn.

I e.

I can be stubborn to like be a little bit more fluid. You know.

Yes, yes, it's interesting because different people like different kind of personality traits will mean that some people are more kind of open to new experiences and other people are less. And you know, I know for myself, I'm certainly like, I hate routine, I hate structure in my week.

I like every day to be different.

Yeah, despite the chaos that that can sometimes bring. But I'm not a kind of routined person and I love new things. I will try a lot of things, not all things, a lot of things.

Yeah, I find it very exciting.

I can imagine as well. We can feel a lot of different things when the reality is as you're getting older, you're getting closer to death, and that's that's a lot to sit with sometimes.

Yes, yeah, there's the fear of the unknown totally, the fear of change, but also the fear of death that can be a very real source of anxiety for a lot of people. In fact, there's this sort of body of work and research in psychological literature around death anxiety as an actual condition that exists.

It's a condition.

Well yeah, there are two leading clinical psychologists in Australia, Rachel and Ross Menzies, who do fabulous work in this space.

They've written a book called Mortals if.

Anyone's interested in reading more about death and death anxiety. But it really is this fascinating concept that there are some of us who think more about death than others, and for some of us. That thought process can become all consuming, overwhelming. It can lead to panic attacks, it can lead to feeling quite paralyzed in life, or feeling constantly anxious as we go through the world.

Totally, I'm really glad to hear that there is something around this because I definitely, whether it's myself or friends that are older, like we talk about, you know, death in a way and noticing like for me, even just saying the word death and it's like wow, Like it is such a taboo word. We don't talk about it enough, and it's important we do. But it's just good to know that it's a normal thing to feel as well as you get older, right.

Yeah, absolutely, to become more aware of it, more conscious of it, and you know, being aware of our own mortality is not a bad thing. It can be really useful to help us make some really values aligned decisions for ourselves. What we don't want is it to riddle us with anxiety to the point where we feel like we can't move through the world in the way we want to.

After this break, we're going to be teaching you how to build a healthier relationship with aging. Stay with us, Okay, So how do we build a healthier relationship with aging because it is happening to all of us.

Yeah, no one gets out of this life alive. Sorry, was that too much?

I don't know why it sounds. Really, you're all stucky, you're all gonna die. Oh my god, you're all trapped in this body.

To make friends at parties. Okay, I'll keep.

That one inside my head.

Oh, I feel like.

So that's the first takeaway.

But my point is.

Now, I feel like anything I'm gonna say is just be Death is inevitable.

But it's true. Like you saw me stuttering over the world, I.

Was like, and you'm just more used to talking about things like this.

I think that's what it is.

Okay, But I guess what the point I'm trying to get at is that, you know, we need to acknowledge death is being inevitable for everyone. Aging is being inevitable. It's gonna happen to all of us, and no matter how hard we try to resist it with all the face creams and the injections and the peptites and the whatever else.

Is the trend at the moment that I'm not across.

It's the buzzwords I have picked up aging happens. The first part really is an acceptance around it. Acceptance is me saying, you know, I don't have to like the fact that I'm always getting older.

It doesn't always feel pleasant.

It certainly comes with some changes that can be quite uncomfortable or hard to sit with. You know, physical changes to my body, you know, the emotional changes that come through perimenopause and menopause. All these changes that are ahead of us that may in many ways be uncomfortable. But an acceptance around the fact that they will occur. So how do we best kind of arm ourselves to be able to cope with them when they do happen? How do we lean into this feeling of this is normal.

Yeah. So true.

It's interesting because I know we were talking about before, but I'm like, isn't acceptance one of those final stages of grief as well? I just thought of it just then, as you're talking about acceptance. I'm like, oh wow, there is so much power in it, just that surrender and letting it happen.

We go through the struggle of it before we kind of get to that surrender. Yeah, I know, we're also talking about gray hairs and this idea of like, you know, women perhaps are maybe more likely to have some of these conversations than men, I would say, you know, noticing the gray hairs.

That are coming out. Yeah, and you know, we have a choice.

Do we sort of accept them and let them be or do we make a choice to kind of cover them up and do something about them.

But the reality is they're coming whether we like them or not.

It's true, It's true. I can't wait to rock the gray hair eventually. Yeah.

So, as you know, I'm such a pro journaler and I feel like journaling is such a great way to kind of excavate and unpack what's going on for us internally. So do you have any questions we can kind of start journaling about.

Yeah.

Absolutely, For listeners out there who are wanting to reflect on their own relationship with age and aging, here's a few questions and a shiny feel free to think through these and give us your thoughts as well.

For sure.

So, first question, what beliefs about aging have you inherited that you could perhaps question or even rewrite. Second question, when you look back at your younger self, what qualities or perspectives have improved with age? How have you actually grown or changed in ways that you like?

I like that question.

Have you grown or changed in ways that you like?

I really hope?

So?

No, no, No, I have? I have? I definitely I have.

Okay.

Next question, what would it mean to see aging as growth instead of loss?

Okay?

Next one, who in your life or even a celebrity or person you can look up to, has aged in a way that you admire and what makes their attitude or approach towards aging inspiring?

I already know some. Yeah, Michelle Obama.

I was watching an episode that an interview she was doing recently, and I'm like, damn, she is goals.

She's just like she just knows who she is. She's so clear on her purpose.

I don't know, just I love yeah, and everyone just loves her. She's so authentic and she just really owns who she is. Uh.

I like that.

And the last question I've got is how a might embracing age change the way you spend your time, the way you care for your body, or the way you connect with others.

So a couple of questions there.

For a big question.

Yeah, we'll take some time. I'm actually going to journal about this on my ride home. I love that these questions are really helping us to build a healthy relationship with aging and really starting to challenge and you know, unpacked, get curious, like, I feel like this is really healthy for us.

Yes.

And the last thing, actually, i'd recommend for people a practical thing you can do spend more time with older people, so true, get curious about older people's experiences, about the lives they've lived. You know, talk to them with the view of learning from the wisdom that they have. Befriend the old neighbor next door in the apartment complex below, you, you know, like, find those older people who exist in your life somewhere because there's a chance they're feeling lonely

And it also can be inspiration for them as well as the elder, because they realize how much wisdom they do have and how they can still be contributing to the world in their ways.

Yes, they get to give back up.

Next, Why does having too many options stress us out to the point where we can't even choose?

Stay with us?

Do you understand how your behavior is confusing?

Fine?

Why are we like this the best way to understand behavior? Well, some look at the causes.

Of an action, So why are we like this?

Okay, So I don't know if you find this, but anytime I'm on Netflix and I want to find a show to watch, I end up spending so much time trying to find a show to watch in the same time where I could have just watched a show, And then I just I.

Don't choose to watch anything at all.

Like, is that like decision fatigue or like what's going on there?

Oh?

Well, yes, but decision fatigue.

But it's actually kind of this idea of the paradox of choice. Think about how many options and choices there are on Netflix. I don't know how many, but there's a lot of endless Yes, yes, this is the idea that we feel like having choice and option is going to come with this sense of like freedom, and it's going to be really good for us. But actually what we find is that having choices is only good.

For us up to a certain point.

After that point, it actually becomes very overwhelming and paralyzing and it makes us it makes it hard for us to choose any decision. It's this idea that the grass is always greener, you know, but there might be something better or more interesting that I could find.

We see it with like Netflix. We see it when we go to the ice cream shop and there's lots of different flavors and I'm like, oh.

My gosh, but what if I don't choose that one and it ends up being really good, then what I'm going to regret that for the rest.

Of my life?

You know?

So true.

We see this also with dating apps these days. True paradox of choice comes through a lot with dating apps. Now that people feel like there's this kind of endless supply of people's profiles that we can kind of swipe through, what we actually see is there's much less kind of commitment to agreeing to meet up with someone and go on that date, or to swipe and have a conversation with them, because it feels like, well, what if I

Yeah, it's a bit like you spiral into analysis paralysis, you know, yes.

Yes, yes, definitely done that before.

And the thing is, again, people can can kind of fall into one of two categories. So we have people who are the maximizers, right, These are the people who will become very overwhelmed by just the endless choices, and they're the people.

Who are looking for the perfect choice.

They're aiming for the best, and so they really get quite paralyzed by all the options.

Sounds like me.

But then on the other hand, we have people who fall in the category of satisfices, okay, And these are the people who are like, it's good enough the option that I choose, it's good enough, and so that's fine, and they don't kind of feel overwhelmed or obsessed by this idea of finding the best.

Yeah, And also I can imagine it's a world of just trusting the decision you make, you know, like in the present moment but also the future.

Yeah. Absolutely.

What should be the main points that people should take away from today?

So, first thing, aging is inevitable, We're all going to go through it. Secondly, lean into the parts of aging that can inspire you and fill you with growth, but also accept the parts that are perhaps going to be a little bit more painful or harder. Lastly, spend a bit of time reflecting on where your beliefs about age and aging have actually come from, and if you can do with tweaking or challenging those beliefs at all.

If you'd like us to talk about something specific on the podcast, please get in contact with us.

Polics are in the show notes.

And while I am a psychologist, this podcast isn't a substitute for therapy or a diagnosis. Always take what we share here in the context of your own health and lived experience and look if anything we brought up today in the conversation was difficult for you to listen to. We have additional resources with links in the show notes. If you are needing more immediate support, there are organizations Life Lifeline and Beyond Blue.

That can provide that assistance. See you later, See you

Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of the land and waters that this podcast is recorded on.