In Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, we encourage the adoption of unconditional self-acceptance and unconditional life acceptance. With these powerful ideas, we can acknowledge our strengths and weaknesses and the good and bad aspects of life and choose a healthy view of ourselves and life. When it comes to aging, we can apply both unconditional self-acceptance and unconditional life acceptance to adapt to the negative changes brought on by the aging process.
Unconditional Life Acceptance and Aging
The gradual process of aging happens to all humans. As we age, we had better emotionally prepare ourselves for the inevitable losses. As we age, we lose our ability to do some things as well as we once did them. We see physical changes in our skin, hair, and fat to muscle ratio. As we age, pain generally increases in the form of arthritis in certain joints. We even experience changes in our sleeping patterns. We lose the opportunity to take specific paths in life as we age. Even our relationships with people and family members evolve and change, sometimes not necessarily for the better. Our parents, siblings, and friends pass away, and unless we actively work to prevent it, loneliness and social isolation can occur. Depending on your occupation, you may face a mandatory retirement age and must contend with giving up a career you enjoyed and lent meaning to your life. With retirement, you lose the structure of your life which kept you going and now must structure your day or sit around wasting time waiting to die. I do not know any human who likes the changes I am referring to here. I don’t have to spell them out as the list is quite lengthy.
Fortunately, as we age, some benefits occur. Often, we have gained some degree of life experience, personal growth, and wealth. These psychological gains include how people, life, and things work. Our vocabulary is likely to grow. Hopefully, this learning and personal growth will enable us to navigate life better, have greater life satisfaction, and have better skills to face adversity. If we retire, we have more time to pursue vitally absorbing interests and new passions that can keep us learning and growing. We can use some of the wealth, and free time we have to travel and continue learning about the world around us.
REBT encourages you to adopt and maintain healthy attitudes towards the tradeoffs of aging. Healthy attitudes are flexible and non-extreme, functional, empirically supported, and logical. Unlike rigid and extreme attitudes towards the negative aspects of aging, flexible and non-extreme attitudes are more difficult to cultivate and maintain when facing threats to what we value most. Nevertheless, you can work on these attitudes to mitigate the adversities you face as you age. Here are a few healthy attitudes that apply to aging:
1. I wish there were no negative aspects of aging, but sadly there are losses and inconveniences. Aging does not have to be without these negatives. I will try to minimize the impact of the negatives. I will change what I can and accept what I cannot change about aging.
2. The necessary adaptations to aging are inconvenient, uncomfortable, and challenging but not unbearable. I can bear to make these adaptations. They are worth making as I do not have much choice. I can either live with the negatives of aging well or poorly, but either way, they will occur. Disturbing myself about having to adapt will not help me. I am therefore willing and committed to making these adaptations. I want to enjoy life despite having to adjust as I age.
3. The many losses of aging are bad. I can acknowledge this and will choose to take the awfulness out of the losses and adaptations that aging gracefully requires. Bad but not awful is the best way to think about the negative changes and required adaptations brought on by aging. If I face significant loss or tragedy as I age, I can strive to take the awfulness out of the misfortune and transcend it with REBT.
4. There are bad aspects to aging. This much is clear. Our bodies change, we lose function, and friends and loved ones of our generation die. Sooner or later, we die too. Socrates said that death might be the greatest of all human blessings. Perhaps we come to understand his wisdom as we age. Despite the bad aspects of life that come with aging, defining life as totally bad is false. We can still enjoy some of the positive aspects that result from aging, like experience, perspective, knowing our priorities, and deepened general fund of knowledge.
Unconditional Self-Acceptance
The best definition of the self is that it encompasses everything about you that can be rated. There are many aspects of a human to evaluate. Aging negatively changes some of the parts of the self. What is essential for well-being throughout the life span is to never define ourselves in terms of any parts of the self. Youthful beauty and strength fade and some who have explicitly or implicitly defined themselves in terms of these qualities will suffer ego-related emotional disturbance. This conditional self-acceptance leads to depression, anxiety, and unhealthy envy. Shame will result if age-related changes impact our ability to meet our standards. REBT’s solution is to see that it is arbitrary, invalid, and self-harming to define your essence in terms of youthful beauty and strength. Although it is invalid and self-harming to devalue your total self for growing old and losing these qualities, it is equally unwise to devalue and dismiss younger people for youthful ignorance. It would be just as arbitrary, invalid, and self-harming to define one’s essence in terms of life experience, age-related wisdom, and general fund of knowledge. People have equal human value regardless of their age and the condition of their almost infinite number of characteristics. Below is a healthy philosophy rooted in unconditional self-acceptance. This stance will protect you from unhealthy envy and shame if age-related changes in function impact your ability to meet your standards:
I wish I retained my youthful beauty and strength, but sadly I am losing both as I age. My youthful traits and abilities were parts of my essence I valued, but defining myself by the condition these traits and abilities are now in is arbitrary and self-harming. I can choose to accept myself even if I do not like the changes in my hair, skin, muscle mass, memory, and other diminished functions I recognize occurring as I age. I will also choose not to define myself as a better person than those younger and perhaps not quite as wise or experienced. The young and the old are fallible humans, each having age-related strengths and weaknesses. We all face different challenges as we age, and the aging process proves we are human, not lesser humans as we age.
Conclusions
When it comes to aging, it happens to all of us except for those who die young. Aging has many bad aspects, and I am not aiming to minimize these. However, with healthy REBT philosophical attitudes, we can adapt to the losses of youthful beauty and strength and the many challenges, inconveniences, pain, and impairment that creep into our lives as we age. We may wish we were younger. With a healthy acknowledgment and desire, we can maintain a wish to be younger but not demand reality be different than it is. With this healthy, flexible stance, we can make the most of our abilities, the vigor we still possess, and our existence. By not clinging to unhealthy rigid attitudes, we can cultivate unconditional self-acceptance and unconditional life acceptance, which will serve us well as each day passes. Keep at it. Acceptance is the key to healthy aging.