Nov 17, 2022
How to Combat Your Inner Old Person
Or other voices that do not have your best interest at heart.
I’m 73 and the oldest person among the 15–20 at a twice weekly 45 minute kettlebell workout.
Last fall in Bucharest, Romania, I was the oldest Fulbright Scholar amidst the 20 at the orientation session. I could have been a grandfather to half the group.
Yesterday, my partner Rebecca, who is 71, and I met with an administrator at the college I taught at for 33 years to talk about an alumni trip to Scotland we would like to lead.
Most of our friends are contemporaries and as active or more than we are. So we are not unique or special. That’s not the point of the kettlebell, Fulbright, and alumni trip examples or of this story.
This story is about how to fight voices inside us that do not have our best interest at heart.
The Voice
Before every kettlebell workout, a voice inside me asks how long I can keep doing this. Occasionally, that voice gets louder and more insistent and shouts that our trainer Alecia is coming over to tell me I’m no longer the image she wants for her gym.
In three years, I am eligible to apply for another Fulbright. Rebecca and I have talked about Bulgaria or Slovenia. Again, the voice, muttering this question: will you be able to do at 76 would you could do at 72? And added, with glee, “great-grandfather Fulbright.”
During yesterday’s alumni trip conversation, the college official told us they were studying how alumni trips fit into the college’s new strategic plan and so the next alumni trips would not take place until 2024. Desperate for attention, my inner voice shouted, don’t you realize your age clock is ticking?
No trips during COVID was bad enough. Now this. Your friends Uwe and Ruth gave up hosting at the age you will be in two years. You are running out of time. Paul, dammit, plead your we’re getting too old case.
Of course, I didn’t. Because there is no phony-baloney age ceiling on when we will no longer be able to lead an alumni travel group, or apply for a Fulbright or do kettlebells.
I’ve learned to both anticipate and combat the old man in the corner, a perfect personification of my inner old voice.
Solutions
Three Medium writers offered me solutions and another writer a helpful technique.
One tutor is Catharine Goodwin who has written a terrific and spirited book When I Get OLD I Plan to be a BITCH.
The title suggests an attitude that is not limited to women. It’s a book for men, too.
For me, it gives me a label for that damn inner voice that has been lurking inside me for about a decade. And labeling is the first step toward combatting.
Catharine, through example after example, in a conversational style I find appealing, writes about how what American society thinks about old people has become internalized in all of us.
The voice seems to be coming from the inside, and that gives it power. But two can play this game. That’s the second step.
Catharine says to “replace your inner Old Person with your Inner Aging Bitch.” What does she mean?
Create a dialogue between two parts of you. One gives in too easily to societal stereotype and one that speaks for your potential. She describes an example of how this inner conversation might take place.
So does Jo Saia who writes about an inner defense attorney for older people here.
And Art Bram refers in many of his articles to a harsh inner critic that can be defeated by the “voice of a higher power,” also with examples of dialogue.
This second voice, whether aging bitch or defense attorney or higher power, must be powerful. Because the first voice is used to getting its way. And the powerful never relinquish control easily.
I learned another trick years ago about how to fight another nasty inner voice. I have OCD and at one point in my life my OCD voice told me to check and recheck whether a stove top burner was on.*
But for this voice, dialogue with another voice didn’t help, at first. My OCD voice was too powerful. What did help, slowly and with practice, was a physical movement. Shala Nicely describes the shoulder back technique here.
This physical movement, straightening my back, reminded me I was more powerful than my OCD. This allowed space for another voice to speak up. The voice I used over and over, a quiet and firm voice, spoke these words: “you are not your OCD.”
Moving my shoulders back gave this voice its tone of steel. I suspect bitch for Catharine, attorney for Jo, and higher power for Art works in a similar way.
Some day I will be too old to do many things I can do today. Some day, my inner old man and my outer old man will be one and the same.
But not today. Not yet.
*I am not a therapist. If you suffer from OCD, please find a therapist with expertise in OCD. The International OCD Foundation provides valuable resources including a directory of OCD therapists in your area.
