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Key points
- We need to work consciously to counter the shame around aging that we have internalized.
- While we certainly suffer many painful losses as we age, we also can gain notable gifts.
- To age with dignity, we need to come to accept our past, present, and future.
by Bret Lyon
We all go through it, no one is immune, and nothing can produce more universal shame in our society than the shame that often accompanies aging. People can get shamed for different qualities, beliefs, or behaviors, but we all are exposed to spoken or unspoken shame as we age, and it starts when we’ve barely begun to enjoy our adulthood. By our mid-30s we’re already beginning to experience the changes. In a culture that worships youth, we really notice it, and I get clients in their 30s who start talking about their life being over, “I should have done this, I should have done that, I’ve wasted my life,” and they are barely 35 years old!
While many societies have deep respect for people as they age and see a vital role for elders, our society still worships youth. What are we to do as we face the natural progression of losing muscle tone, hair, short-term memory, and many other physical and mental functions, in a society that sees us as lacking if we’re not forever young?
What compounds this predicament is that it is not just society projecting this, it is also internal—we have absorbed these messages from our social environment. In our 60s and 70s, we must work with the entrenched stereotypes we have absorbed. Ideas like we are out to pasture, that life is over, we are supposed to be relegated to sitting in our rocking chairs, and we have no productive use in society anymore. That is a devastating set of stereotypes that do not really make sense for many older people, who have accumulated much wisdom and still have much to offer.
Shame is the feeling that something is wrong with me, which is natural to feel as we undergo unavoidable losses that often accompany the aging process: physical losses, emotional losses, memory losses, and losses of friends and family, all in the face of an indifferent and shaming society. Let’s look at how to become more comfortable with our own aging process, to explore and heal the shame around aging.
Transforming Toxic Shame to Healthy Shame
Last month I turned 81. I have been told I look much younger than my age. I have been able to “pass” as youthful. I have gotten pleasure out of asking people how old they think I am and having them guess the mid-60s. I take it as a compliment, which both feels good and points to the shame I have about aging, like most people in our culture.
As a specialist in working with shame, I have come to believe in the concept of “healthy shame,” in which we are willing to see and accept our limitations and understand that we are all human and we all have limitations. We all have strengths and we all have weaknesses and these strengths and weaknesses vary and change over time. The concept of healthy shame is featured in my new book, “Embracing Shame: How to Stop Resisting Shame and Transform It Into a Powerful Ally.” For many personal reasons, I have put in much thought about how to deal with the shame that always seems to accompany aging in our society and I have come up with some ideas.
As we reach our senior years, it is important to look back and make peace with the past, the present, and the future. If there is ever a time when we need to heal shame, it is as seniors. In some ways, our real task as we get older is to transform the toxic shame our society may put on us, and we put on ourselves, into healthy shame, which includes both humility about our limitations and learning what our shame about the situation wants to teach us. To get to healthy shame about our own aging we need to come to peace with what happened, what’s happening, and what will happen.
We need to be able to age gracefully, and with dignity, and not let others’ others’ perceptions or judgments define us, control us, debilitate us, or undermine our dignity. While we certainly suffer many painful losses as we age, we also can gain notable gifts—including wisdom, compassion, and a sense of generativity by being helpful, nurturing, and supportive of others.
For myself and for the students and clients that I help, I have thought long and hard about how to live a better life as we get older and not fall victim to the despair and uselessness that ageism can bring. I have realized that three major tasks can allow us to heal old wounds and live a more robust and fulfilling life with our remaining time on this amazing planet:
Coming to peace with the past
Accepting the present
Planning for and coming to terms with the future
In my next posts, I will cover each of these tasks in depth.
Copyright Bret Lyon
References
"Embracing Shame: How To Stop Resisting Shame and Transform It Into a Powerful Ally," Bret Lyon and Sheila Rubin, Sounds True, 2023
