Aging and turning towards my fear of it.

Earlier this week I attended a conference dedicated to ACT and RFT. In one of the talks we were asked to speak to one another about aging. This is a topic I find quite difficult - I have a deep fear of aging and find it uncomfortable to turn my attention to the subject. But I wanted to take part in the exercise and so I did allow my mind to explore my feelings about aging and opened up to those around me about it.

I found this experience very useful - by discussing it, I realised that I don't really care about my looks changing or my hair greying. My fears lie in the idea of being less physically and mentally able to do what I enjoy doing and what's important to me.

I've returned to this thought in the following days - the fear of losing physical and mental abilities. Obviously I can't prevent what the natural aging process will eventually bring but I realised that there are things I could do differently right now to minimise the risk of certain debilitating diseases that might develop in later life. I am currently overweight and do little exercise. If I look after my health better, I can increase my chances of getting to old age with some of my mental and physical abilities still intact. This has galvanised me into focusing more on my value of health and in treasuring the present while I do have all these abilities still available to me.

By turning towards the subject of aging, despite my fear of it, I managed to define what exactly I am afraid of. Only then could I look at what I am currently doing and what I could be doing differently to minimise the chances of my fears coming true or at least delaying them for as long as possible. There's nothing I can do about the years of poor care I have given my body, but every day I can work towards changing the current trajectory to something better. And that is enough for me. I can accept the natural decline of my body but I can't accept self-inflicted infirmity.

I've found that through this process my fear about aging has lessened somewhat. I guess my fear was more accurately a fear of losing physical and mental abilities sooner than necessary because of poor and selfish choices I make now. I think the point of the exercise had been to practice letting go of wanting to control things outside of our control and I am happy to do that in reference to the natural aging process but when it comes to the potential impact of my current actions on my future health then I am happy to use my problem solving mind to come up with solutions. Looking after my health now may make no difference, I've never smoked in my life and I could still end up with lung cancer but at least whatever hits me I'll know that I tried my best.