As a culture, it’s fair to say that we are obsessed with how to look and feel younger.
It’s all over social media: under-eye creams, cold plunges for your face, testosterone treatments to boost energy, and other remedies to slow down aging.
But what happened to aging gracefully? And is there a way to get older and feel good about it?
“As we get older, we are more physically vulnerable to complex medical problems and chronic health conditions,” said Regina Koepp, a clinical psychologist who works with older adults and the founder of the Center for Mental Health and Aging.
“About 85% of people over 65 have a chronic health condition,” she said, “and I think what happens in society is we focus on the hardship and we overlook the gains, and then because we focus on the hardship, we sort of project our dread onto that, but we overlook a lot of the benefits that can come with aging.”
4 questions with Regina Koepp
Can you share your personal journey with aging?
“I’ve had the great privilege for the past 30 years of working with older people. I started my training on hospice, and so all of my patients died. And so, my first exposure to aging came in my 20s when I began working with older people. Now I’m 50, and as I myself am approaching my older adulthood — and I’m not there yet — I’m internalizing a lot of the gifts that they gave me.
“And so that’s sort of the guiding light I use in my own aging. I recently had a cancer scare, and thankfully, it’s something I can monitor and manage, but it really helped my experience working with people who have similar life experiences or even harder life experiences, helps to guide me in my own journey with aging and with chronic health conditions.”
How can negative beliefs about aging impact mental and physical health?
“The most prominent researcher who looks at this is Dr. Becca Levy out of Yale. She has a lab on the impact of ageism and has done hundreds of studies looking at the impact of ageism on physical and mental health. And some of her studies have shown that when we have negative beliefs about aging — for example, when we have these beliefs that aging is equivalent to decompensation and decline and being a burden on others — and we internalize those beliefs, it actually impacts our health and mental health.
“Dr. Becca Levy’s lab has identified that there’s a correlation between those negative beliefs and cardiovascular events. So, one of her studies found that if, around 30 years old, you had negative beliefs about aging, by 60 years old, you’re more likely to have a cardiovascular event like a heart attack. And she found this in two separate studies, independent of the other, and this is correlational. It’s not causal. It’s not going to cause a heart attack. She also found correlations between negative age beliefs and Alzheimer’s disease and dementia disorders, so that if you had negative beliefs about aging and you had an Alzheimer’s gene, you were more likely to develop Alzheimer’s than if you didn’t hold the negative beliefs. Also, if you were living with Alzheimer’s disease, if you had positive beliefs about aging, the disease progressed less rapidly in the brains of people who held positive beliefs about aging.”
How can people change their perspective on aging?
“Ageism is really toxic because if you don’t believe that life is going to be worth living, why would you do what it takes to live it well? And so, shifting it is key. So, one is to really ask yourself, ‘Who are my models for aging well?’ And to look around and look at the older people in your life. And if you don’t have many older people in your life, or if you’re a caregiver or you’re an older person and you’re not inspired by your older peers, then look beyond your social network to people who are doing it well, even in the media. I’m thinking like Carol Burnett. I love seeing her still performing. Dick Van Dyke, you know, people who are much older. And for me, it’s not 65 doing it well. For me, it’s 95 doing it well.
“What does that look like? And then really articulate it. So, for me with Carol Burnett, I think, ‘Oh, she’s engaged with something that she really enjoys — comedy and the community of acting — and she seems to have a sense of meaning and purpose.’ And also for me, with Carol Burnett, she had a daughter who died, and, sort of, talks about her grief and loss. She’s very honest about her life experience, and that’s something I admire. So what qualities or strengths do you admire most, and then identify it, really articulate it, and then think about how you can incorporate that into your own life and experience and nurture these qualities in yourself and imagine yourself in your own aging future, embodying these characteristics as well.”
What are the benefits of getting older?
“There are many, many benefits of getting older. So one is that we tend to focus on the things that really matter to us and highlight a sense of what brings us a sense of meaning and purpose and connection with other people. That’s been seen again and again as we age. And as we grow older from birth to end of life, we cultivate more and more resilience. We build our resiliency muscle because the only way to build resilience is to persevere through hardship. So even as physical health may decline, psychological and spiritual resilience grows. We also see, as people age, they have better emotion regulation, and so there’s a lot of higher rates of self-compassion. There’s a lot that comes with aging that society really overlooks by focusing only on the physical.”
This interview was edited for clarity.
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Samantha Raphelson produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Catherine Welch. Raphelson also adapted it for the web.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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