Don't believe everything you think: Common Emotional Potholes of Aging

In other words, feelings are simply a biological response to our thoughts. To begin dealing with negative feelings, realize that we are not our thoughts. They are just thoughts, not necessarily facts. Also, we are not our feelings. They are just feelings, not necessarily permanent. Using mindfulness techniques, we can treat both thoughts and feelings like clouds, just letting them pass on by. What gets us into trouble is when we over-identify with the feeling and think it’s permanent and that we will feel like that forever.

Feed yourself a good mental health diet.

The Greek word for mind is very similar to the words we use to describe “self-talk," those conversations in our head. Every spiritual text advises this in its own way. In the Bible, Paul said in Philippians 4:8, “Whatever is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, gracious…think about these things.”

Isolation is a killer.

Loneliness, in one study, was the health equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes/day, being sedentary, or drinking five alcoholic drinks/day. By isolation, I mean when you go days and weeks without seeing a friend. We’re all like logs in a fireplace. If you take a burning log out of the fire and put it on the hearth, what happens? It goes out. Put it back in and within a few minutes, it will be flaming.

The sedentary lifestyle is also a killer.

If you’re sitting alone at home much of the time on a couch with the TV clicker, you’re not around other people.

The best template for communicating with someone who is frustrating you is to say, “When you did (or said) ‘X’, I felt ‘Y’.”

You can generally ballpark the feeling you’re feeling, by picking one (or more) of the four general feeling words, “mad, sad, glad or scared.” You never want to start the sentence with “you” because it will put the other person immediately on the defensive.

Regarding the big, difficult emotions of this phase of life, you have to feel them to heal them.

A difficult emotion is like a wound. It hurts to scrub and clean the wound, but the wound will heal if you feel it and let the tears out. Buried feelings never go away. They just live to come out sideways in an indirect way at a later time.

Research shows that tears of sadness contain not only salt but also hormones.

This affects mood. It’s healthy to cry and feel.

Sadness and grief, if not felt, can turn into depression.

Something that is normal in life, like sadness and grief in response to a loss, can turn into something abnormal that looks like sadness but is a big, exaggerated version of sadness, which we re-name Depression.

Anger, if turned inward, can cause depression.

It’s like you bang on yourself instead of externalizing the feeling. The best way to get rid of anger is to acknowledge it, express it assertively but calmly and sensitively to the party involved. This expression helps immensely, but the greatest release comes when we get an apology or desired outcome for the situation.

Anxiety is a feeling grounded in fear about the future.

It often arises from our self-talk. If you change the self-talk in your head to something more rational and true, the feeling thet follows can change from anxiety to calmness or even enthusiasm. Try to remember the “Triple A Rule.” Action absorbs anxiety. If you can just force your feet to move and take some action, it will serve as a distraction and afterwards bolster your pride and self-confidence.

Letting go is so important as we age.

We get angry about things we cannot let go of. We have to accept that we can’t play tennis, paint, play piano, or walk as far without our hip hurting. It’s so difficult to let go of these dear and appealing activities. It is like a death. There are many “mini deaths” along the way and each needs to be grieved with wet tears.

Andrew Carnegie said, “If you think you can do a thing, or if you think you can’t, you’re right.”