Senior Relationships' Self-Talk

One of the really dangerous things about senior relationships is that we have such a storehouse of self-talk that we've developed over the years that our automatic cognitive/emotional central computer figures that it knows what just about everything means.


Notice that I said that our automatic processing figures it knows. It does have a lot of data from which to make educated guessed. Maybe they are even very educated guesses, but they are still just guesses.


Anything that we can do to stay where we are right now and not get ahead into what we remember about what happened before in a situation just like this one, or what we remember someone told us about a situation just like this one, or what we are sure is going to happen next, is a great accomplishment.


In other words, to get the good stuff, we have to be present.


This was portrayed incredibly in the movie Rainman when Charlie Babbit, one of the two main characters, is being read his wealthy father's will in which he learns that he has been left his father's prize rose bushes and a car with the remainder of the estate going to an unnamed third party. After reading it, the lawyer asks if Charlie has any questions to which Charlie replies that he missed the whole thing and needs it read over. His mind went to the rose bushes, the car, the 3 million dollars that someone else was going to get, what all this meant and completely left where he was.


It was so clear what was happening in that scene. Alas, it is almost never so clear in intimate relationships. We're always hearing things that weren't said, missing things that were said, and "knowing" what it all means and what we "should" do based on automatic retrievals and processing that is going on all the time and that in many cases has very little to do with what is right in front of us.


What to do? Well,. . .

• it helps a lot just to realize that this is something that the human mind, the human organism tends to do


• it is possible to change it by just noticing when it is happening


• using listening skills can make a difference


• and, . . . regular mindfulness practice can make us better and better at it

"Be here now" just about sums it up. There is lots of good stuff that we miss when we let ourselves go on autopilot; especially as we get older and our autopilot gets more and more data in its memory banks.

Mindfulness Practice: . . Vital For Us Seniors' Relationships .

Mindfulness practice could arguably be called vital for seniors' relationships.


Relationships thrive when we focus on the here and now, but what do you do when you have so much "there and then?" The baggage has a way of getting heavier and heavier as the trip goes on. At some point lugging all that stuff becomes just too much.


How many times hav you heard someone recount a slight or a hurt from their partner that sounds like it happened yesterday,only tolearn it was 11 or 18 or 27 years ago? How many times have we done the same thing ourselves? Never? Good.


Having some mindfulness practice that we daily can keep us in the present, a great place to be when relating to our loved ones. Things are so much easier when we can let our memories of the past and our worries about the future stay out of our experience of right now.

Mindfulness Practice For Seniors: . . . . . . A Skeleton Key? ..................or A Waste Of Time?

Mindfulness practice of one kind or another probably offers more help in difficult and changing times than anything else someone could suggest. Why?


Mindfulness practice is totally generic and at the same time it is totally personal.

• The only belief that it starts with is that the answer to whatever we're asking is there to be found, if we'll only stop talking and stop thinking long enough to allow it to be observed.


• Whatever we observe, experience, come to, will necessarily come through us in the right form and way for us.

Next time someone tries to tell you that they know exactly what you should do in your relationships, in your sex life, in your thoughts, they may be telling you exactly the right thing, . . . . but that will probably be for them.


Mindfulness practice is the generic tool that returns the specific solution.

When You Don't Know What You're Doing, the Sky's the Limit

Yeah, but what about when you do know what you're doing? . . . . . .
I am not totally sure, but I suspect it includes mediocracy, rigidity, fighting the last war, missing new opportunities, not seeing the writing on the wall. The list goes on and on. It applies to all kinds of endeavors, not the least of which is relationships.

As we age, we change. Yet, how many of us look at our relationships and see what's right here, right now?

It is so easy to not see that "what we've always done" is not working. It can be even easier to see that there are things that we have never done, perhaps even things that "we don't do" that would be just perfect now.

Chairman Mao apparently killed a lot of people in his effort to shake up Chinese culture in this regard and get out of this kind of energetic, creative straitjacket. Lots of pain and suffering resulted. What do you do to re-energize the creative forces of a whole nation? I don't know.

I do know that the best work-around for this inevitable trap that I have come across is in practicing some form of mindfulness as described on my website http://www.better-relationships-over-50.com/ . (When I first wrote that page I thought that it was just a form of meditation, hence the current title of the page, but I have since become aware of the work of Dr. Langer at Harvard who does not describe her version of mindfulness as meditation, but, rather, a kind of noticing, so I will be broadening what I refer to as mindfulness.

Mind-Body Connections

For every change in the mind, there is a change in the body. And, for every change in the body, there is a change in the mind. It is as though they are on two sides of a ring or a circle so that there is no way to move one without moving the other.

I came across a quote to that effect by a neurophysiologist over twenty years ago.

I always think of that when someone says that anxiety or depression or something else is chemical. Well, yeah, the mind and body are electrochemical systems. So what are you telling me that everyone doesn't know?

Push the circle on either side and the whole thing moves. The hard question is, can you use that to consistently get a desired result? The drug guys are trying to get better and better at making what we want to happen happen without other stuff we don't want (side effects) coming along for the ride. More power to them. I hope they get it right.

In the mean time, if I can regulate my breathing, change my thinking, relax my muscles, be mindful of myself and the world around me in new ways, or do whatever else I can to push that mind-body circle toward health, happiness, and sanity, I want to be doing it. Side effects suck. Sometimes entering the circle from the chemical side is the best or only option, but I like to be pretty sure of that before I pop the pill.

Eckhart Tolle - The Power of Now - relationship resource

Just had a friend tell me that I was ignorant of a major source of excellent information and support in the area of mindfulness would fit right in with my website, www.better-relationships-over-50.com and it's mindfulness meditation page.

A quick trip to Barnes & Noble and a skimming of The Power of Now makes me both happy to have found this and embarrassed that it took me this long.

Haven't had time to study it, but it looks very good and may "make the penny drop" for some people who don't quite "click" with Michael Brown's Presence Process. I am still a Brown fan, but this looks like a good addition.

Any comments on either or both would be appreciated.