Tackling the current – toxic – narrative of ageing

Since Conscious Ageing became my life mission and main professional focus 10 years ago (at the age of 42), I have never had any problems starting conversations with people I didn’t know. People of all ages and from various backgrounds immediately engage with the topic and start sharing their own experiences of ageing or stories about their older relatives.

I recently attended a gathering where I introduced myself to someone as the co-founder of the Hekate Conscious Ageing Foundation. In the blink of an eye, I found myself in a deep conversation with this person about the biases and negative social status she experienced daily as a recently retired, widowed woman, despite living a physically active, socially and professionally vibrant life. She struggled with the image society continuously imposed on her. She felt tired of trying to remove the stigma of being a “retired widowed woman”, which she felt was attached to her.

In our societies in Europe (and across much of the Global North), ageing has an almost repugnant connotation that can inspire fear. Some people suffer from ageing anxiety (or FOGO — fear of getting old) as early as in their 20s or 30s, but it becomes almost inevitable in our 40s and/or 50s, when going through midlife changes. At the latest, around retirement age, almost everyone faces the (mostly) negative consequences of ageing.

“Useless, invisible, dependent, put away, burdensome, loneliness, pain, sickness, decline.” These were the words that first came to the minds of participants in the UnfOlding (Conscious Ageing - Conscious Living) programme when thinking about “ageing”.

This certainly doesn’t sound like an appealing journey to anyone. Yet this is the dominant narrative of ageing we are told today. And let’s be honest: more often than not, this is also the reality.

I’m a Gestalt therapist and facilitator of trainings and programmes around conscious ageing and conscious living. Through my work, I gain, day after day, a deeper and more intimate understanding of how different one’s ageing journey can be.

The stories and sentences we hear from our parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles strongly - and often unconsciously - shape the way we can or cannot visualise ourselves in old age.

One of my clients (in his late 50s) considered ageing the worst thing that could happen to someone and had great difficulty accepting the changes that came with it. Growing up in a household where “life has nothing to offer after 65” was a commonly shared and accepted belief, he had no model for ageing well or living a meaningful long life. He found ageing so frightening that he struggled to enjoy his otherwise rich and meaningful life.

Family stories are not the only things shaping the way we think and feel about getting older. The culture and society we live in also have a tremendous impact. I do acknowledge the differences between cultures and countries, and yet I would still dare to say that the current perception of ageing and older age in Europe is outdated and toxic.

Outdated, because it fails to take into account that people live longer, healthier and happier lives, and remain active and independent much longer than just a few decades ago. Toxic, because it creates fear by projecting the image of the worst possible scenarios (strong physical or mental decline, full dependency, loss of self-awareness…) onto the entire journey of getting older, while completely ignoring the gains that also come with it.

I’m not trying to say that getting older is all fun and joy. It isn’t. The longer we live, the more likely we are to encounter loss: loss of physical abilities, loss of friends, loss of ideas or identities, just to name a few. My point is that we, both as individuals and as a society, tend to focus almost exclusively on loss and decline (just think about the products and services targeting ageing people), while longer life also brings more connections, more skills, broader experience, numerous identities, different life stages, and more opportunities to contribute. We simply don’t talk about these aspects. Why? Why not?

I’m certainly not the first person to speak about negativity bias. Negativity bias means that things of a more negative nature (unpleasant thoughts, emotions, social interactions or harmful events) have a greater effect on our behaviour and cognition than neutral or positive ones.

To put it simply: when we think of someone old, we tend to visualise our physically and mentally declining neighbour rather than our energetic uncle or our brilliantly sharp-minded former French teacher, long after retirement.

When thinking about old age and our own later years, our mind unconsciously activates these negative images. Sadly, this bias also shapes the way we interact with ageing or older people, as we project these images onto them, and from there, we are only a few steps away from ageism.

One important aspect of Conscious Ageing is becoming aware of our personal and cultural beliefs, our conscious and unconscious biases, and our fears and anxieties related to ageing. Once we become aware of them, we can consciously decide whether to keep them if they support us, or let them go if they hinder us — or at least learn to tame them.

For the first time in human history, people in Europe living to 80 years or more are no longer the exception, but increasingly the norm. If we want to make the most of the longer, healthier and potentially richer lives ahead of us, we need to change the fear-based, burden-focused and toxic narrative of ageing.

Now is the time to (re)design a meaningful, appealing, yet realistic journey of ageing and becoming an Elder. Now is the time to (re)build communities where people of all ages can contribute by sharing their skills, knowledge, experience and capacities.

Not just for ourselves, but also for the generations coming after us.