Bette Davis said it best: Old Age is not for sissies. As if Alzheimer’s , diabetes, and cancer were not three of the worst specters of elderhood, it turns out aging human beings lose confidence in their abilities to perform tasks they are actually good at. This last aging challenge deserves time and attention, because a lack of confidence can limit our joy in life. Once we’re aware of confidence erosion, however, we can reframe this issue as an invitation to explore how negative beliefs may be impacting our view of who we are and what we can do.
Category: Ageism
Building Bridges Through Loss: Three/Aging, Vulnerability, and Activism
My lovely mouser, Prince Meadowlark, who has been with me for sixteen years, recently reminded me of aging’s toll on the four-leggeds of the world. I’m used to thinking about the human experience of aging, ageism, and vulnerability, but his current challenges with sight and mobility remind me that animals too experience the erosion of strength and sensory acuity that leads to feelings of helplessness. Animals, however, require our expanded sensitivity to their well being and suffering. Beyond a plaintive meow, this wonderful companion cannot describe his fears, his heartaches, his frustrations over the circumstances robbing him of agency, and so, as his designated person, it is on me to interpret his needs, to meet these as best I can, and to comfort him when his experiences prove frustrating.
Continue reading Building Bridges Through Loss: Three/Aging, Vulnerability, and Activism
Making Change in Later Life
Please Note: Winter Blooms is an educational website created to support the most effective use of Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) to reduce stress and increase joy. To experience the benefits of EFT for in-the-moment emotional support and learn how to build emotional resilience, contact Jane (802) 533-9277 / jane@winterblooms.net. Visit www.aamet.org and www.neftti.com to learn more about how EFT can support the resolution of inner and outer conflicts, inform more loving and respectful relationships, and empower practitioners to contribute to the changes we want to see in the world.
Making change is often challenging, especially when people we love and respect express intense emotions about our choice to change. Making change in our fifties, sixties, seventies and beyond can attract even more criticism from loved ones and friends because of their strong attachment to who they think we should be and what they think we should be doing. Because we live in an ageist culture, limiting expectations often form unconsciously around us as we age, and while these limiting beliefs may be intended to support our well being and safety, they often act as gatekeepers, ensuring we make minimal changes, even positive ones.
Since most of us tend to define ourselves through our relationships, changes, especially those we make to support our health and personal fulfillment can feel like an attack on friends’ and family members’ choices. Happily, the desire to make change in later life often comes with its own “this-is-absolutely-right-for-me” imperative. This means disapproval from adult children, intimate partners, close friends, and even our wellness team members cannot impugn the inner guidance prompting us to change. If we avoid making changes simply to please or comfort others who may be living from fear rather than love, we threaten our own authenticity. When this happens, the body will complain loudly about this betrayal, through pain, anxiety, sleeplessness, or all three.
Supporting mature clients who want to make changes that may not be approved of by family and friends is one of the most rewarding aspects of my coaching practice. The road newly taken is not always smooth, but it is full to the brim with learning opportunities and positive growth. Those of us called to make big changes in our later years can do so with relative ease when we follow a few simple guidelines.
Discovering Wisdom After A Fall – Part One
Please Note: Winter Blooms is an educational website in no way meant to replace building a relationship with a trained EFT practitioner, counselor, or therapist. To find an EFT Practitioner, visit the AAMET website, the Gary Craig website, the EFT Universe website, the Tapping Solution website, or contact Jane for EFT coaching support.
Nothing can unsettle us like a bad fall. Whether we fall because of carelessness, weather conditions, or the sudden giving out of a body part, falling grabs our attention and suggests we develop a relationship with the circumstances sooner rather than later. As with fear, ignoring the emotions surrounding a sudden fall ensures they will persist. Tapping for the pain, shock, and beliefs that follow a fall helps us to tune into our body’s wisdom as it teaches us how to relate to ourselves in more loving and positive ways.
Positive Psychology and Tapping
Please Note: Winter Blooms is an educational website in no way meant to replace building a relationship with a trained EFT practitioner, counselor, or therapist. To find an EFT Practitioner, visit the AAMET website, the Gary Craig website, the EFT Universe website, the Tapping Solution website, or contact Jane for EFT coaching support.
Martin Seligman’s latest book, Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well Being, describes exciting scientific evidence proving our ability to replace negative beliefs and thoughts with those that support well being. You can experience Seligman’s enthusiasm for Positive Psychology first hand at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0LbwEVnfJA. Those of us who have been using tapping as a means of daily self regulation know that the benefits of replacing negative beliefs and thoughts with positive ones include joy and optimism; we have also discovered that joy and optimism contribute to our overall sense of well being while increasing our store of resilience. Tapping builds what in Seligman’s Positive Psychology theory are measurable aspects of well being: positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, and achievement (PERMA). Using the positive psychology exercises along with tapping strength our ability to live with resourcefulness, enthusiasm, kindness, and hope.
Why Daily EFT/Tapping Matters
Please Note: Winter Blooms is an educational website in no way meant to replace building a relationship with a trained EFT practitioner, counselor, or therapist. To find an EFT Practitioner, visit the AAMET website, the Gary Craig website, the EFT Universe website, the Tapping Solution website, or contact Jane for EFT coaching support.
Sometimes just turning on the computer in the morning can feel like an ambush. People shot at parades, terrorist plots, childish sniping among our politicians, and stock market fluctuations can make us feel vulnerable and even trigger our Fight, Flight, or Freeze response to events that happened yesterday or a week before, events over which we have absolutely no control. Tapping daily helps to regulate responses to asynchronous media and real time situations that might otherwise lead to hyper-vigilant behaviours, those stress responses that exhaust the immune system and make us more susceptible to serious conditions such as heart disease and anxiety, conditions that are debilitating enough to lead to serious physical and emotional distress. Tapping on our specific fears helps us to return to centre and supports clarity and creativity when resolving personal and professional challenges. And, because we share our energy field with everyone we meet, our centred calmness helps others to cultivate more clarity and creativity as well.
Celebrating Girls and Women – A Farewell (for now) Post
Please Note: Winter Blooms is an educational website in no way meant to replace building a relationship with a trained EFT practitioner, counselor, or therapist. To find an EFT Practitioner, visit the AAMET website, the Gary Craig website, the EFT Universe website, the Tapping Solution website, or contact Jane at 802-533-9277 or jane@winterblooms.net for EFT coaching support.
One of the most satisfying rewards of being a life coach is helping girls and women see how skilled, resourceful, fair, and creative they are. In our culture, and in most cultures around the world, girls and women internalize the message of inferiority from the patriarchal systems that conflate authority with maleness. One look at a list of presidents, CEOs, religious leaders, and judges proves this. In the west, we have done great work in dismantling the beliefs that women and girls are less than, but as current “run like a girl” campaigns show, this work is generational and ongoing. I created this blog to explore how energy psychology, more specifically Emotional Freedom Techniques or tapping, enriches and empowers its users. One of the side effects of a year-and-a-half of diverse explorations is a growing sense of my own resourcefulness, flexibility, and commitment to social justice issues. When I look around at my age cohorts – the vanguard of the Baby Boomers – and at our spiritual mothers, I see Maya Angelou, Vandana Shiva, Frida Kahlo, Margaret Mead, Oprah Winfrey, Mary Oliver, Alice Walker, Mary Wollstonecraft, Toni Morrison, Madeleine Kunin, Rosa Parks, Virginia Woolf, Angela Davis, Gloria Steinem, and countless others who continue to create the remarkable tapestry that is our collective feminist heritage. These are the women, alive and dead, who fuel the remarkable work of creating a world hospitable to diversity, intelligence, creativity, and fairness. It is a world I give thanks for every day.
This post is personal and celebratory. If every girl and woman in the world participated in celebrating girls and women, we would create an ever expanding spiral of acknowledgement, from the earliest times to those seeds, bursting with purpose and love, waiting to be birthed into a world where all girls and women live in joy, freedom, purpose, and power. To participate in this International Women’s Day, I offer the following personal celebration of but a few of the girls and women who have deepened my understanding of just how resourceful, intelligent, and empowering our global tribe of women and girls is.
Continue reading Celebrating Girls and Women – A Farewell (for now) Post
Transforming Ageist Thinking
Please Note: Winter Blooms is an educational website in no way meant to replace building a relationship with a trained EFT practitioner, counselor, or therapist. To find an EFT Practitioner, visit the AAMET website, the Gary Craig website, the EFT Universe website, the Tapping Solution website, or contact Jane at 802-533-9277 or jane@winterblooms.net for EFT coaching support.
We hear a version of the following every day: “I’m too old to change . . . to begin something new . . . to pursue a treasured dream.” The words may be ours, but our beliefs about aging are very much rooted in family and cultural beliefs. The over-the-hill syndrome is as toxic as any sexist remark and the sooner we relieve ourselves of the burden of belief in an inevitably medicalized old age, the happier and more productive and satisfied we’ll be. How do we age joyfully, energetically, passionately, courageously? Daily tapping can revolutionize our attitudes to aging, and, with psychologist Mario Martinez’s supportive research, help us to see ourselves as potentially successful centenarians instead of customers for adult diapers at seventy or eighty.
Still Alice: A Look at Alzheimer’s Disease from the Inside
Please Note: Winter Blooms is an educational website in no way meant to replace building a relationship with a trained EFT practitioner, counselor, or therapist. To find an EFT Practitioner, visit the AAMET website, the Gary Craig website, the EFT Universe website, the Tapping Solution website, or contact Jane at 802-533-9277 or jane@winterblooms.net for EFT coaching support.
At the heart of the film Still Alice is Julianne Moore’s portrayal of early onset Alzheimer’s Disease. Told from the Linguistics Professor’s point of view, we see the world shrink and distort for her, as if she has boarded a tiny boat and is suddenly in the middle of the Atlantic. It is a terrifying story and an important one, not only because it explores the ravages of personhood that is Alzheimer’s, but also because it allows us to imagine the tremendous loss family members and friends bear in watching this wasting disease erode the loving, competent, insightful, and forgiving person they once knew. One thing I take issue with is the fictional story’s overworked irony of a linguistics professor losing her words; the true story of such a condition may be found in the film Iris, a biographical film acted with ravaging truth by Judi Dench, Kate Winslet, and Jim Broadbent about the life and intellectual disintegration of Iris Murdoch, celebrated Irish philosophical novelist. This disease is horrifying because it robs its sufferers of the competence developed over a lifetime – whether one stays home with children, rises up the corporate ladder, makes one’s mark as an academic, or sells cars. Alzheimer’s robs its sufferers of meaning: how to use toothpaste . . . how to follow directions . . . how to find the way home from a familiar location and, eventually, . . . how to find the very meaning of home.
My husband and I touched hands frequently as we watched this film together. We both wept for the imaginary Alice and for the fraying of family life the disease causes. At the end, we remained seated, our fingers touching, our eyes moist. It is a mature person’s film and a young person’s film; it has a heart and a soul that is deep and tender because it expands our understanding of what it is to care for someone who is losing the self to this condition we call Alzheimer’s as well as our understanding of the person who is losing the self.
Continue reading Still Alice: A Look at Alzheimer’s Disease from the Inside
Tapping and “Wrinkle Porn”
Please Note: Winter Blooms is an educational website only and is in no way meant to replace experience with a trained EFT practitioner, counselor, or therapist. To find an EFT Practitioner, visit the AAMET website, the EFT Universe website, the Tapping Solution website, or contact Jane at 802-533-9277 or jane@winterblooms.net for EFT coaching support.
Recently one of our weekly Vermont papers ran a review of And So It Goes, a film about two people in their late sixties whose relationship evokes such scorn in the reviewer that he must coin a new phrase, “wrinkle porn”, to express his disgust with this film and others whose characters are beyond middle age and still interested in sex. I haven’t seen the film, not because of the review, but because it came and went in the blink of an eye while blockbusters showcasing ever more cleverly manufactured gory deaths, explosions, and earth ravaging have run at local theatres for weeks. This post, however, isn’t about film; it is about language that suggests we should be ashamed of our passions once we reach what our culture calls Old Age. Tapping helps us to claim our passion – for sex and for life – at any age; it also helps us to neutralize the negative effects of words used cleverly, if inaccurately, to describe the waters we navigate in our sixties, seventies, and beyond.