As a psychologist, I have been dealing with change in women’s lives for decades. Recently, I noticed that the process can be a bit more challenging for women over 50, myself included.

The other day I was sitting in a session with Lucy,* a woman in her mid-50s. She cried as she told me that her husband had recently left her. She felt alone and confused, she said, with her kids grown up and her job failing to provide meaning. “My whole life before, I knew who I was and what I was doing. I had a vision for my future self that made sense. Now I feel like I have no map. I close my eyes and all I see is a black hole.”

She wasn’t the only one. It seems I keep hearing multiple versions of this story—women who reach a point in their lives when they feel anchorless. Women over 50 experience multiple transitions: divorce, death of loved ones, illness, menopause, and job loss, to name a few. And, like my client, in the crux of these changes, they all report a crisis of vision. They can’t imagine themselves moving into the future.

BLUE BIRD
BLUE SERIES
TOP: ONE HOUR AFTER SUN PRINTING
BOTTOM: ONE DAY AFTER SUN PRINTING
ANITA YAN WONG, 2019.

As I sat in my therapist’s chair listening to Lucy talk about her black hole, I briefly took a quick scan of my own internal future-self map. I too drew a blank. There we sat, two middle-aged women, each with perhaps 40 years left to live, lost in a visionless void.

My research on women over 50 highlights invisibility as the number one complaint. It seems the disappearing act starts with the outside world. We notice that we stop feeling the gaze of others. Things that we say go unheard, or are dismissed as irrelevant. Overall, our resonant vibe has dulled. But the real trouble starts when we go invisible to ourselves. Where we were once creating identities with a pictured life trajectory, we now stare at the empty canvas of our future.

Sadly, the popular cultural narrative that tells us to cling to youth and to dread aging confirms this flawed premise. But the creation of our identities doesn’t have to end just because we have fewer decades left to live. Transformation is still possible—but only if we push ourselves to be our most experimental.

My clients felt unmoored by their absence of imagination about themselves. When they looked to me, they were greeted with more smoke and mirrors. I had to find a way to define who I was becoming and fill the hole in my own vision. How does one begin to make something from nothing?

The truth is, we are always creating something new from nothing. We are re-creators by nature.

In “Homo Prospectus,” psychologists Martin Seligman, Peter Railton, Roy Baumeister, and Chandra Sripada suggest that everything we are, and everything we do, is birthed by the extraordinary act of envisioning future possibilities that cannot be seen, felt, or smelled. We use our minds to make them up.

As humans, we possess the unparalleled gift of visionary change. We actually create our futures by dreaming up possibilities that have never been before. Our evolution owes it all to the ongoing and multiple creative innovations of our ancestors. Without the force of imagination, we would still be wearing fur skins and chasing wild boars with a dull spear. Thankfully, someone, somewhere, somehow, envisioned it otherwise. The talent to imagine our possible prospects is our magic.

It was clear that in order to fill my own nothingness, I needed to conjure some possible women to become. Consider Enid. She walks with a springy bounce. Her energy is contagious. I decide that I have a button inside of me that can turn Enid on when I need a lift. Then consider Shawn. She is fierce and outspoken, with a strong sense of wisdom. She is not afraid to speak her truth.

My creation of Enid and Shawn started to fill the space of my becoming. Then I asked Lucy to start to materialize her visions of her future self. This proved harder for Lucy than she expected. “It’s not easy,” she said. “I feel so invisible, I disappeared almost. How do I re-imagine myself?”

“Here’s how,” I answered, “I discovered a secret potion.”

It’s called intuition.

Dr. Laura King, of the University of Missouri, describes intuition as knowing without knowing why or how one knows. The Latin root for intuition translates as “seeing within.” We have this super fast search engine inside each of us that can scan decades of experience, sift through loads of information, and simultaneously combine and recombine patterns until eventually pulling a surprise from our big black hat. Even the most rational of thoughts and most scientific of all knowing is birthed first from intuitive thought.

Intuition is the engine for the amazing trick of creating a persona within one’s mind. We intuitively know who we are, what we want, and what we need to do. This magic trick may seem challenging. It is not something we are schooled in. And it requires openness and flexibility of mind. But this craft need not be out of reach. We simply must recognize what stands in our way.

By the time we are in our 50s, there are two evil fiends to combat: implicit biases and expertise. Social psychologist Becca Levy, of Yale University, cautions us about implicit bias, most specifically ageism. Her research warns that decades of ageist lore have made their way underground into our psyches, where they eat away at our confidence and core belief systems. Without even realizing it, and without question, we start to believe the messages that tell us we are all washed up. Imagine the wizard who doesn’t believe in her own magic. One of the popular ways women attempt to combat ageism is by trying not to age. While this may seem like quite the magic act, it doesn’t work. Restricting our transformation only blocks us from letting something new emerge. Instead, we need to reveal the biases, and then get busy countering them with alternatives that inspire and pull us forward.

Then there is the expert trap. Of course we all have worked hard to earn our stripes and become who we are today. We are experts at what we do. But, if we admit it, we are also a little threatened by the youth behind us, close at our heels and breathing their hot breath of energy and innovation in our ears. So we cling to our posts, announcing our authority and claiming our thrones. All good, but dangerous if we sit there too long and don’t move.

I have so many clients who have climbed the corporate ladder only to face that proverbial ceiling. And the ceiling forms a sort of mirror reflecting back on you, sitting and waiting. One of my clients told me her neck hurts from trying to see through to something new. Only then did she began to realize: “Maybe it’s not up there; maybe it’s inside of me somewhere.”

Lucy realized she also had been sitting too long. She was coasting on the narrative that said she had achieved her goals and so was fully formed. Then, poof, the divorce shook her awake. Now, rubbing her eyes in disbelief, she realizes she has to find more lives to live. If we are expert at anything, we need to be expert at change. We all need to let go of certainty and embrace learning and discovery. If we want new jobs, new titles, and new positions, we have to get busy making them up.

Lucy started to think about a career. She imagined becoming Justine, a social activist and world traveler. She even dallied with the image of Cora, a community organizer who loved many, and gathered circles of people around her.

I muse over my creation of Benedict. She has super-powered listening receptors in her heart, and she loves to hear stories and the stories behind the stories. I started to listen to the intuitive becomings of Lucy and the others. We can’t do it alone; we never could. No single imaginative mind has ever changed the world by itself. We are social animals and we are biologically designed for the collective experience. This is the most magic of all magical truths. All of our inventions and creations are birthed from our own imaginations, but our imaginings are derived from our cultural inheritance. We create something new by dipping into the pool of centuries-old becoming. And further, all of our new input requires the cooperation of others in order to take hold and become manifest.

Enid, Benedict, Shawn, Justine, and Cora are the seeds of an ever-fluid becoming we can all grow into. They personify not only what Lucy and I want to do, but who we want to be as women moving onto a yet-to-be-defined path.

Let’s get busy, get out the scraps of material, scissors, glue, patterns, and spices and start making it up. Let’s use our minds to create new roles, new careers, and fresh visions of ourselves moving forward into our futures. Let’s create and then re-create out of our own intuitive imagination what it looks like to be a woman over 50. Let’s change the collective face of longevity as we embrace it.

As for Lucy, she has started to talk to other women about forming an organization to serve refugees. She has travel plans ahead and an idea for a book. Our sessions no longer take place in a void. There are many of us in the room now.

*All names have been changed

BLUE BIRD 2
BLUE SERIES
TOP: ONE HOUR AFTER SUN PRINTING
BOTTOM: ONE DAY AFTER SUN PRINTING
ANITA YAN WONG, 2019.

Anita Yan Wong is an American Chinese Impressionist painter best known for her distinct dynamic brush works and unique style of Contemporary Traditional paintings that defies tradition and modernity. To learn more about the art of Chinese brush painting, take a look at the artist’s YouTube channel Joy Brush or follow her on Instagram @anitayanwong.

About the series: “Blue” ​is a Contemporary Traditional photography series in form of a collection of sun prints from Wong’s original paintings. Sun prints, or blue photographs, are photographs without the use of a camera. The series title reflects the emotions the artist faces as less and less young viewers appreciate and practice traditional painting in the digital age. The project is a performance act of the artist creating photo negatives of her traditional paintings (darkness) and bringing sunlight into the art form (hope).

The post Can a Woman Over 50 Magically Recreate Herself? appeared first on Twisting the Plot.

I ask her how she was so sure her future lacked new potential.

She replied.   “My proof is my past.  It has always been bad.”

It’s a common complaint: The data is in. The findings are set. The future is determined (and it sucks by the way).

I see that we are gazing into a crystal ball that reflects only what’s gone before.  

It could be that psychotherapy contributes to this effect.  As psychotherapists, we encourage clients to look at their back-stories in order to better understand their present selves.  This is fine, to an extent.  But it becomes a problem when windows to the past are all we offer.  

We can’t stay in the past expecting to find new futures.  It won’t work because the past has already happened.  The future lies ahead, and it is unknown.  Just like our potential.

“Yes, “says Karen, “but how can you believe in something that doesn’t exist?”  

Good question.  How do we come to envision something that has not happened before?  How do we begin to live something we haven’t done already?  How can we be someone we have not yet been?

Simple.  We use our imagination.  We make it up.  We believe.

We create fictions in order to find new truths.

It’s not such a crazy notion, really.  We do it all the time.  

Most original discoveries, the ones that blow our minds and change our lives, are born from something never experienced before.  It is something out of reach in the current objective reality, something beyond the data points on a graph that produces the invention that moves us from who we have been to what we could be.  

At times, in both science and in art, we have to believe in fiction and free ourselves from the narratives we retell again and again.  Likewise, we have to challenge the limits put upon us by unimaginative, rote and repetitive stories.

Like the stories promoted by ageism and sexism.  Like the belief that going over and over our past helps us evolve and transform.  Like the notion that who we are now, and who we will be next, is determined by who we have been so far.

Because neither future possibilities nor their estimated value can be seen, heard, felt, or smelled, these are not features of the world that are presented to the mind by perception, past or present.  The mind must add them. 

                                                Martin Seligman in Homo Prospectus

Once we create some future possible scenarios that capture our interest, we have to believe in them and enter the new reality by taking action.  If you think this is far fetched, consider this, a child learning to walk has no advance proof she can succeed but believes it enough to keep getting up.  The runner who prepares for the next marathon believes her goal is possible while she runs her first lap.  The artist who images a scenic vision believes something will emerge when she paints the first stroke.  

It’s the future that puts us on the path to our becoming.  It’s the future, not the past that pulls us to our new possibilities.  

So to Karen, who sits in my psychotherapy office and tells her story of “been there, done that, done,” I say, It’s time to create.  It’s time to pretend.  It’s time to take steps that bring forth new doings.

It’s time to venture into fictions so improbable that you are pulled out of the repetitions of the past. Let’s shake the crystal ball and look beyond the expected to take action on the not yet dreams.

What else can you envision? What else could be?  What can you do next? 

Make it up.

Make it good.

The post How to Build a Future with New Potential appeared first on Twisting the Plot.

The beauty of DBT skills is that when they are practiced, they open doors towards a deeper wiser experience of life.Source: Shutterstock

For years I have been teaching and coaching clients to use certain skills during painful times. Lately I’ve been teaching the skills to middle-aged women.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy—DBT—is a solution-focused, active treatment with the overarching goal to build a life worth living. Instead of just talking, you teach skills and ask the clients to practice them outside the session room. The skills, created by Dr. Marsha Linehan, are research-tested tools for managing thoughts, emotions and behaviors during trying times.

And middle age can be a trying time.

In 2016 the CDC published findings stating that the suicide rate for women between the ages of 45-64 increased by 63 percent between 1999 and 2014. Likewise, there is a significant increase in women over 50 visiting ERs with opiate and alcohol-related overdoses. And the number of women over 50 diagnosed with eating disorders has caught up to that of adolescent girls, necessitating an increase in residential treatment facilities to house the older women sufferers.

The middle-aged women in my practice are dealing with a myriad of challenging issues. They struggle with physical illness, divorce, difficult children, grief, regret, career shifts, financial issues, menopausal symptoms and body concerns. They experience mood shifts, intense anxiety, depressed feelings, irritability and hopeless thinking.

Regardless of what women experience, midlife is a time of challenge and transformation. We could all use extra guidance and new coping skills to help us through uncertainty and change. The beauty of the DBT skills is that when they are practiced, they open doors towards a deeper wiser experience of life.

There are many skills, but I have eight favorites for middle age woes.

The first one that I will discuss is OBSERVE.

We can practice Observe in the following ways.

1. Noticing what you are experiencing through the five senses. Practice seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling daily.
2. Observing the world inside of you by noticing thoughts, bodily sensations and emotions within yourself.
3. Attending to people and events surrounding you. Act as if you have a camera attached to your body. Notice, without pushing away, all that is presented to you.
4. Observing only what is, without judgment. Judgment requires a thought process that pulls you out of the present action of pure observation.

While it may sound simple and easy, the practice of Observe can be quite challenging.

The truth is, after years of living, we often function on autopilot. To a major extent, autopilot is necessary. We can’t approach every day and every experience as if it were the first time. Imagine getting in the car every morning and having to re-learn how to put the key in the ignition. The problem occurs when we let our observing muscles atrophy.

There are three main reasons to practice Observe at midlife.

Observing makes us less reactive

The very act of observing helps us step back and be less reactive. Observing creates space to respond in ways that nourish, instead of depleting or harming us.

Lonnie was having daily fights with her teenage daughter, who would leave her clothing around the house. Everyday, Lonnie would yell at her daughter and immediately experience a headache. She would feel angry and frustrated and go straight to the refrigerator and shove food into her mouth. Lonnie was miserable, gaining weight and losing work due to the headaches.

Starting with the skill Observe, Lonnie practiced noticing her daughters clothing on the floor. Taking time to observe the clothing, she would then describe to herself what she saw: red pants, pink blouse, blue socks. Next, Lonnie would observe her own reactions. She began to notice that her jaw was tightening and her fists would clench. Later Lonnie noticed that when she screamed at her daughter she would feel tension in her temples. She then noticed her thoughts. Her thinking told her that her life was intolerable and unfair.

The observed experiences gave her space to consider other options for responding. Instead of yelling and clenching, Lonnie began taking care of herself when she observed her daughter’s clothing on the floor. She would immediately take some soothing breaths and perhaps make a cup of tea. Eventually, because she was calmer, she started leaving humorous post-it notes for her daughter about the clothing. Her daughter, freed from having to defend against the attacks by her mother, picked up the clothing and started leaving loving post-it notes to her mother suggesting she have a nice day.

The change in this interpersonal dynamic began with the skill Observe. Taking time to reconsider our automatic reactions to our experiences gives us the chance to redesign who we want to be and how we want to show up in our lives.

Observing helps us learn new things

Our brains are capable of something called neurogenesis. We can create new neurons and keep increasing our brain’s capacity, but we can only do this by giving ourselves new experiences that fire new neurons. All learning starts with observing.

Psychologist Ellen Langer states it simply: “What we have learned to look for in a situation determines mostly what we see.”

By learning new things we can see things differently. Sometimes in midlife life we refuse to see things differently. When change is forced upon us we freeze up. We get stuck because we try to adapt to change without noticing the change. Instead, we cling, hold on or willfully wait for our status quo to return.

Beth couldn’t deal with the change that befell her life. Her parents passed on and she couldn’t accept it. Practicing Observe, she started noticing her flower garden each morning. In time, she witnessed the cycle of birth and rebirth in her flowers. This sparked her interest and she began to do research about plant life. She planted more and more flowers. As her flower garden grew, so too did her capacity to accept life and death. Beth then started volunteering at a hospice center teaching and helping others grasp the mysteries of mortality with grace and beauty.

Observing in midlife reignites the pleasure of being

Finding new meaning, gaining joy from this life, and re-discovering who you may be all starts with observation. Building a sense of curiosity and wonder may be the most vital skill for growth and well-being in midlife.

But because we are so harried and stressed, many of us stop noticing the little treasures of living.

In 2007 Pulitzer Prize winning Journalist Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post did an experiment to illustrate how much we miss in our daily lives. In the experiment, he had an average looking man in a baseball cap and t-shirt set up to play violin next to a trashcan in Washington DC subway station during the morning rush hour. This man opened his violin case, took out the instrument and left his open case on the ground for passersby to drop in coins or dollar bills. More than a thousand people passed by as he performed six classical pieces over the course of forty minutes. The catch was that this man wasn’t just any street performer. He was the famous musician Joshua Bell and he was playing Bach’s Chaconne—the most difficult violin piece—on a $3.5 million Stradivarius. A hidden camera recording revealed that over the course of that rush hour performance in the subway station, only seven people stopped to watch his performance for at least a minute. However, the tape also revealed that every time a child walked past Bell, they tried to stop and watch but were rushed along by their parents. Ironically, days before this experiment in the subway, concert-goers had paid up to a hundred dollars for a ticket to see Bell play the same instrument at a sold-out show.

How much more of life will we experience if we are truly present to it?

In sum, observing our lives in the moment can make midlife less overwhelming and more pleasurable. We always have a choice, not of what happens to us, but what we observe about it, and how we respond.

Next week I will talk about the next DBT skill for midlife woes, PARTICIPATE.

The post How to Build a Midlife Worth Living appeared first on Twisting the Plot.

“I can’t cope with things anymore. It’s all too much.”

I guess one could say it wasn’t Maura in the driver’s seat that day. Instead, her emotions took the wheel. Meanwhile, Maura, an intelligent, reasonable and professional woman, went for the ride.

Maura thought she was responding to her situation. But instead she was reacting.

She’s not alone. When bad things happen to us, it is natural to react. When a tiger chases us, we run.

But Maura was tired of running. Besides that, she wasn’t running from a tiger, she was running from herself.

When we run, we miss out on our inner experience. We give up agency over our bodies, thoughts and behaviors. When we sprint from the moment, we miss out on the opportunity to fully engage with our emotions.

Reacting is a way of avoiding our feelings. When we avoid our feelings, they get control, we feel like victims, helpless and unable to stand our ground.

And with everything going on in the world, we need more ground.

It’s time to respond.

Marsha Linehan, PhD, in Dialectical Behavior Therapy says the function of emotions is to communicate to others and to ourselves. Emotions are private experiences that have powerful potency to influence.

Emotions are superpowers. And like all superpowers they need to be practiced and harnessed.

Dr. Linehan claims that in order for emotions to work for us, they need to be regulated. She describes emotion regulation as the ability to control or influence which emotions you have, when you have them, and how you experience and express them.

A tall order.

How do we begin to control our emotions?

We start by practicing experiencing them.

It’s important to first point out that experience and expression are not the same. One follows the other. But most of us express before we have experienced. Skipping over the experience of emotions allows the emotions to bully us.

One way to practice experiencing emotions is through pretend practice.

Actors in training learn that emotions are the fuel for delivering powerful performances. Since emotions are felt in our bodies, actors must be comfortable feeling them and practice giving them gesture and voice.

Try this. Take five minutes every day to experience feelings as an actor would.

Imagine a situation that could make you angry. (Perhaps keep it a fictional situation while you practice.)

Let the sensations enter your body.

Stand up and notice what anger brings to the body. Notice heat in the stomach. Sense the heart pound. Become aware of vibrations in the legs and arms. If you are alone, let the anger have voice. Take your anger for a walk. Keep your focus on the body. Keep your attention on the physical sensation. Make note of the power this feeling offers.

After five minutes shake it out. Switch to imagining a relaxing, peaceful scene. Let your body response switch.

Flexing emotions is the second step to owning them. We can actually feel multiple feelings at the same time. In Emotional Agility, Dr. Susan David suggests getting “unhooked” from an emotion by changing your point of view and reframing your story.

Emotions are meant to be felt but we don’t have to be beholden to them. At any point we can switch the pallet.

Maura wanted to stop running. She wanted to be a fighter and fight better for herself. She deserved to be treated better. She wanted to be seen as competent and strong. But she had to get more practice with the surges of anger in her body.

She practiced daily, feeling the energetic force of anger in her body. She noticed how if she felt the anger in her legs she could use it as strength to hold her ground. She called the heat in her stomach fuel that can be used to influence others. She imagined the energy in her arms and hands as laser might for making things happened. She started to feel more confident that perhaps the next time she gets slammed by life, she would not run.

And then she was tested.

Maura’s supervisor unfairly demeaned her in front of her employees. But this time instead of running, she stayed. She felt her legs strong like oak trees, she noticed her heavy pounding heart pump blood into her arms. She kept her breathing measured, her eye contact firm. Instead of running, she waited a few seconds.

And then she responded.

“I am going to think about your feedback and get back to you about it.”

The response was delivered with control and confidence. She could see the effect it had on her supervisor. “He was shook. And I think he was impressed somehow.”

But most important, Maura felt present. She showed up for herself. She withstood the dizzying wave of her emotion without running from it.

She was triumphant.

She refocused her attention to her prepared calming image of the ocean on a sunny beach. Took another breath and immediately felt more relaxed. The practice of unhooking had worked.

She noticed her employees sitting around the conference table and watching her, waiting for her response. She smiled.

No matter what happened next, Maura had won. She was in control of herself. She had experienced her emotions and used them to manage a difficult supervisor’s comment, and she reassured her employees that she was in charge.

Her feelings were her superpowers after all.

The post How To Turn Painful Emotions Into Superpowers appeared first on Twisting the Plot.

While you bang on the wall, you hear yourself proclaim: “I can’t take this.”

You are suffering.

You resist reality.

When midlife hits there are so many things to resist.

For Lynn it was the death of her husband, for Annette it was the loss of her parents, for Ellie it is betrayal and divorce, for Lily it was her cancer diagnosis, and for Viv it was her financial crisis.

The challenges of midlife don’t quit, and the walls don’t help.

Radical Acceptance is the skill for letting our walls down.

Radical Acceptance is the most promising skill that Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) offers. It is also the most complicated to conceptualize, and the most difficult to practice.

Most of us resist instead of accept.

On the other side of our walls lies the pain, grief, disappointment, regret, and other things that seem unbearable.

We built the walls to protect ourselves, but the problem is, we need to travel beyond them to problem-solve, make change, and find peace.

We actually have to enter the pain in order to tolerate the pain. As Robert Frost said, “The best way out is always through.”

Radical Acceptance is the first step into and out of misery.

Marsha Linehan, the creator of DBT, says it like this: “Radical Acceptance means complete and total openness to the facts of reality, as they are, without throwing a tantrum.”

In other words, no walls.

This is radical.

Here are three reasons why we need to Radically Accept.

Denying reality does nothing to change reality.

Just because you don’t talk about it, feel it, see it or listen to it doesn’t make it disappear. And jumping up and down while you hold your breath doesn’t make the bad things stop. It just makes you pass out. And even when you turn your back on the cloud, it’s still there. The truth is, reality hovers and waits for you to take it in.

No matter how hard Annette tried, she couldn’t keep her parents from dying. And despite Viv’s denial, her finances needed help. She needed to face facts and make changes.

All change begins with acceptance.

You may confuse acceptance with approval or giving in. They are not the same thing.

There are many things we must accept even though we don’t agree with them. And accepting doesn’t mean things can’t change. In fact, all change starts with acceptance of what is.

Lily needed to accept her cancer diagnosis in order to find the best treatment. Ellie had to come to terms with her marriage ending and find a way to move on. Both Lily and Ellie experienced pain.

Pain cannot be avoided.

It is just a part of life. We are built to tolerate pain. But when you don’t accept pain it turns into agony. In DBT we say:

Pain + Non-acceptance = Suffering.

Avoiding all cues that are associated with pain ensures two things: the pain will continue, and suffering will ensue.

After her husband died, Lynn refused to leave her bed. Over and over the thought, “I don’t’ want this” looped in her head. “ I refuse to accept that he’s not here. This should not have happened. “

But the reality remained. Lynn had to find a way to go on with her life.

Lynn started taking five minutes a day to lie on her living room couch and accept that her husband had passed. Palms up, face relaxed, she would take a breath, open her mouth and let out a sigh while saying to herself, “For this moment, I accept that Ken is gone.” Over time she was able to accept and let herself cry on walks. Next she was able to hold some of his belongings while she accepted that he was gone. Her wall of resistance was softening, and though she felt grief, the suffering became less.

The way to Radically Accept is to do it radically – which means you do it all the way, with your full body, mind and spirit. And often, it’s a practice, not a one-time fix.

You have to stop pounding the wall. Instead, gently lean your body against it and slowly let yourself slide down to the ground, soften your face, gentle your breath, turn the palms of your hands open and, just for this moment, accept what is.

And then do it again.

Radical Acceptance is your entry into misery and the way out of hell.

The post The Best Way to Get Through appeared first on Twisting the Plot.

Marta was awarded her silk robe on her 80th birthday. She decided her new name would be Supreme Listening One. She has honed the skill of listening well beyond the expertise of others. She listens better than the best psychotherapist. People say that she listens with her organs, not just her ears. Google and Amazon are currently vying to hire her in a high earning position as chief listener for their companies. Recent research illustrates that when employees are deeply listened to, they work harder and feel more satisfied in their professions. This makes Marta a valuable commodity.

Lorraine is about to leave for her latest mission. At 97 years old, this is her fifth. This time, she embarks for North Korea to represent the Global Peace Project started by a group of powerful older women. Despite the fact that Lorraine uses a wheelchair and has difficulty with her sight, she is able to get people in great power and with great egos to listen to her. “I have the gift of sensing their inner child. I soothe the hurt in them. And then I get them to listen closely.” Lorraine has a wait list of over 100 leaders soliciting her soothing, no-nonsense counsel.

Last week a bus full of 50- year-old women pulled up to a dormitory at Harvard University. As they exited the bus, one after the other, the women looked radiant and energetic. This will be the 10th class to study art, theatre, film, and dance in the new program at Harvard. The program is fully funded by investments made by several Fortune 500 Companies. The program was designed in response to a study demonstrating that older women artists enhance social progress. Middle-aged women art makers advance education, motivate young adults, and decrease violence and aggression overall. After their training, the women will be stationed around the country to make art.

Ashton Applewhite calls for us to defy ageism. In her book This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism she addresses the stereotypes and myths that we, both as individuals, and as our culture live by.

Ageism (as with all the isms) tells a story that is limiting. Ageism narrows possibilities. Applewhite asserts the necessity to tackle this story of ageism. She speaks to the fact that it’s not enough to just resist aging. We have to deal with aging by making change. In fact, she says this: not dealing with aging is a way of not dealing with living.

So perhaps the best way to defy ageism is by living.

But how is it that you want to live? Who are you becoming? Who else would you like to be?

What is it you can imagine?

Imagination is the process of envisioning something that does not exist.

So I ask you, what does not exist for you about aging?

It’s not just us older folk that I ask to imagine their aging lives. The question is as vital for young women and even girls to consider. Technically, we are all aging. Let’s make the prospects appealing.

Research by Becca Levy illustrates how the limiting story of ageism goes underground and becomes something we don’t even know we are following. Ageist stereotypes tunnel themselves into our consciousness and cause us to think and act in certain ways. Levy calls this process implicit ageism. And she warns that it has deadly costs. Individuals with negative implicit biases about aging are more depressed and die younger than the rest.

So let’s defy aging by imagining.

Using Eric Liu and Scott Noppe-Brandon’s book Imagination First, I will make a few suggestions on how to get started.

Invent a challenge instead of solving a problem

Implicit and explicit ageism makes us not want to age. So our resources turn to staying youthful. We attempt to solve the problem of aging instead of making it into something that challenges and motivates us.

Marta was envisioned when we invented the following challenge: people need to be listened to and there aren’t enough people with the time and skill to listen.

We need to feel listened to in order to feel good about ourselves and be successful. Who can find the time to devote to listening? How can we listen in new and fuller ways? How do we get companies to pay individuals for their listening expertise?

Hence Marta and her Supreme Listening Skills. Imagine this: The listening has been so successful, that Google is now hiring 20 more women and designing rooms for the listening sessions to be held.

Sign me up.

Liu and Noppe-Brandon stipulate that inventing a good challenge is often more useful than solving a problem. Often when we jump to problem-solving, we blindly reuse old strategies and miss out on new and different possibilities.

Engage in the counterfactual

Sometimes, in order to imagine the world of unlikely possibilities, we have to ask new what-ifs.

What-ifs are counterfactual when we think we already know what happens. Ageism tries to tell us that we know what will happen. But what if we counter?

We would suppose that most women in their late 90’s, especially those blind and in wheelchairs, don’t work and live in nursing homes or other forms of assisted living. But what if we what-if this? What if women in their 90’s have great diplomatic power? What if ego-maniacal leaders listen to old ladies? What if old women are able to reach deep down inside of the early needs grown men and get them to see things differently?

Ageism needs counterfactual thinking. It’s a form of play that we all used as children. Liu and Noppe-Brandon state that along the way, we let our counterfactual muscle atrophy. We stop playing with what-ifs.

Enter Lorriane and her emperor fixing skill. Imagine this: What if we can get other elders to be dictator whisperers all over the globe?

Finally, We have to give ourselves permission to feel foolish

Foolish is good. It’s the feeling we get when we take action outside of the expected norm.

If we are going to defy the dictates of ageism we have to be willing to let go of being cool, status worthy and popular. According to the ageist rule, we are going to lose all this anyway. Let’s dare to welcome foolishness and step out from under the oppressive story of the norm.

Liu and Noppe-Brandon say this:

We cultivate imagination and make its exercise possible when we create permission to nudge what had once been foolish into the realm of the OK.

Is it foolish to go back to school and learn to be an artist in your 50’s or 60’s? Let’s hope so. We think we should do it anyway.

For most of us, the way we defy is to resist. But resisting is not enough.

Michelle Alexander in her debut Op-Ed piece for the New York Times calls for us to be more than the resistance. She was speaking of resisting authoritarianism, sexism and racism. But I think the same can be suggested for ageism.

She says:

Resistance is a reactive state of mind. While it can be necessary for survival and to prevent catastrophic harm, it can also tempt us to set our sights too low and restrict our field of vision…

Resistance is unimaginative. And does not make room for the possible. Instead, Alexander encourages us to enter the “revolutionary rivers” and take part in active change.

Active change starts with active imagining.

There is much to be done. Many challenges to invent. Millions of what-ifs to play with.

Be foolish.

Don’t resist aging.

Make it new.

The post How To Defy Ageism appeared first on Twisting the Plot.

~ Barbara Bradley Hagerty in Life Reimagined: The Science, Art and Opportunity of Midlife.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy, (DBT) created by Marsha Linehan, offers skills to build a life worth living.

Lately, I teach the skills to women who want to make the most of the midlife experience. This is the second in an eight part series in which I share my favorite DBT skills for midlife.

Midlife can pose challenges to our stability, certainty and identity. So many changes happen to our bodies, to our social lives, and in our work worlds. With all the change, we can become unsure of ourselves, and perhaps live our days with hesitancy and self-criticism, sometimes emptiness and boredom.

PARTCIPATE is the DBT skill that helps us move from rote, to alive.

Participate means to enter wholly into an activity, nonjudgmentally. When we use Participate, we completely immerse ourselves in the moment. It involves intentional and total engagement in whatever we are doing, be it dancing to Donna Summer music, cleaning out the garage, or sitting in a chair and breathing.

When we practice Participate we engage in an activity with full abandon, letting go of analysis and evaluation of what we are doing. We are acting intuitively and spontaneously, fully aware and one with our experience.

There are three compelling reasons to practice the skill Participate in midlife:

1. Participate allows us to be free of self-consciousness, comparisons and evaluation.

When we Participate, our attention merges with our sensory and energetic involvement in the moment. It is virtually impossible to evaluate or compare ourselves when we are fully focused and engaged. Evaluating and comparing require us to step outside of the moment and involve our minds in a separate cognitive exercise. Likewise, self-consciousness occurs when we are watching ourselves with an outside critical eye.

When we step out of participating to criticize ourselves, we inhibit our experience and obstruct intuitive creativity and discovery.

At 52, Tess was growing increasingly self-conscious and critical of herself. For one, she compared her face and body to younger women and was very unhappy. She started to avoid social events and became depressed about her future life. In our session she shared that she felt useless and uninvolved with her day-to-day life. “I just keep thinking about what is wrong with me.”

We decided to use the skill Participate. Tess chose two activities that she had previously enjoyed. She took a ski trip, and started volunteering with a not-for profit business venture. While skiing she consciously put her full focus on the feel of the cold air and the movement of her body as she navigated down the hill. While working on a grant for the business venture, she got completely involved in strategizing and crafting the proposal. In both cases, Tess felt fully engaged, time stood still and she noticed energy and excitement in her body. During both activities she was not thinking about what she looked like or how she wasn’t good enough. Tess’s mood began to improve. “I feel more free. I realize I am quite strong and capable. How could I have forgotten that?”

2. Participate helps us feel one with our experience and increases our sense of belonging.

When we Participate we become “one with the music.” We can also become one with our body, a tree, the laundry or our family and friends.

Gail felt lonely and unsettled in her apartment after her partner moved out. We had to find a way to help her tolerate being alone. We decided to use Participate. Every evening, for five minutes, Gail would sit in her favorite chair and fully engaged in the feeling of her body connecting to the chair. She focused her attention on the sensation of her body being supported by the chair. While breathing in and out, she imagined herself completely linked to the chair. She told herself that the chair was present and accepting of her. They belonged to each other. The following week she walked through the apartment, noticing the presence and acceptance of the floor beneath her feet. She told herself she was one with her home. In time, Gail started to feel more attached to her home. She started to relax and feel less anxious at home with herself. Wanting to be less isolated, she decided to invite a friend for dinner.

There is a subjectivity to belonging that is encountered through Participate. When we connect with a sense of oneness, we become more aware of the arbitrary walls we put up that obstruct us from connection with ourselves and others.

3. Participating gives us zest.

Even mundane and difficult tasks become doable (sometimes even pleasurable) when we participate in them fully. Most of the time we approach dreaded tasks with one foot out the door. We don’t want to do the task, so we bring very little of ourselves to it. The problem is, this makes the task even more intolerable. It is miserable to be in-between an experience, doing it but not really into it.

Participate helps to move us from the torture of resistance and ambivalence, to a full embrace of the task. In this way, even taxes, work-outs, errands and caretaking can become acts of engagement.

In a bold move, Jackie decided to host a dinner party with some of her high school girlfriends. But planning the event became complicated and she grew stressed and overwhelmed. Every time she thought about the party, she got a headache and felt fatigue. “That’s how it always is when I entertain, stressful. I never enjoy myself.”

During the party, Jackie decided to use the skill Participate. She mentally put her focus on her exchange with her girlfriends and physically gave her energy a heightened lift. She recommitted to this mental focus and physical involvement every time she felt the urge to fret or worry about the details. This redistribution of her attention increased her oomph. “I was having fun.” At one point she turned up some disco music and she and her friends spontaneously broke into a super charged dance-a-thon.

One of the things that takes a front seat in midlife is time. Whether we see life as almost over and too short, or relentlessly long and plodding, it’s the moments that count. Participating fully in as many moments as possible can be the antidote to the burden of time and aging. Participating gives us energy and makes us feel alive. Participate as a skill turns midlife into an experience that excites.

This series will continue with the next DBT skill for midlife coping: RADICAL ACCEPTANCE.

The post How To Come Alive in Midlife appeared first on Twisting the Plot.