Getting Older

If there’s one thing that unites us as a species, it's that, no matter who we are, we all get older. All the money in the world and all the surgical procedures it can use to try to hide it doesn’t change the fact that our body changes with the years.

We can do what we can with a healthy diet and lots of exercise, but sometimes it can be a bit of a genetics lottery and some of us will remain healthier than others even if they don’t especially look after themselves.

Getting older affects how we look, our ability to experience the world (our sight, our hearing), our mobility, our memory and we can find ourselves slowing down. All of these things can significantly impact how we feel about ourselves, and our mental health more generally.

From a mental health perspective aging can impact certain groups more than others. For example, the menopause can bring with it anxiety about who someone is in this next phase of their life. You may have heard of “30 is gay death” in reference to aging in gay men (something I’ll talk about in a future blog). The elderly can struggle with isolation and depression, having lost many of their friends and loved ones as the years have gone by.

While these are challenges, and counselling can help us navigate them if we’re struggling, there are also positives to aging.

One of the best things about getting older is that the need to change ourselves to fit in becomes less and less important. It’s not that we stop caring as much as we get more comfortable in our own skin and what someone else thinks becomes less important to us. ‘Crows feet’ mean that we’ve had things in our life that made us laugh and smile. Isn’t that better than a soulless Mar-a-lago face?

What other people thought all those years ago stops mattering, if it ever really did and our perspective shifts. Thinking back on things with the benefit of wisdom can reframe things that we might have thought were absolutes. If you had the chance, what piece of advice might you tell a younger version of yourself? How many of us might say variations of “it’s no big deal”?

We also get to choose who we spend our time with and do more of the things that really matter to us. Our own little window of time becomes something we can really celebrate and cherish. Of all the ages of the world, we got to live in the time of Prince and Bowie and got to experience those moments in ways that future generations won’t be able to.

No matter how old we are, I want to encourage us to be ok with who we are right now and everything that’s led us to this moment. Aging can bring challenges, but let’s value who we are, what we’ve experienced and what our unique perspectives bring to the people around us.

If you’re struggling with your mental health and you’d like to speak to someone, you can get in touch with me via the website or contact me directly at mckellarcbt@gmail.com.