I’ve been realizing it’s time to put up another blog post. I knew it had been some time. But when I checked to see the dates, it’s been a year since I wrote for my blog. And what a year it has been!

Some things I learned this year:

• My clients and I adjusted very well to doing telehealth sessions via zoom or on the telephone. Really, none of us had thought this would work. We have all been pleasantly surprised! We actually prefer the ease of just logging in and not having to drive anywhere. Or get dressed up from the waist down. 🙂
• I like telehealth so much that I will be letting go of my office where I have paid for my space with barely using it for the past year.
• I like doing all morning or all-day workshops or retreats or intensive one-on-one sessions for individuals and have a lovely space in which I can continue to offer those going forward.
• My clients appreciate reminders that as surreal and lonely and bizarre this year of quarantine has been, they are not alone in feeling this way. Each of us has our particular challenges and at the same time, as a society, we share the commonality of going through uncharted terrain of the pandemic with its associated fears and angst.
• I knew that the transition out of the quarantine would be chopping and tension-filled as well as exciting and a relief. I did not realize the extent, though, of this adjustment. My clients report a sense of almost vertigo as they grapple with where to go without masks, whether to go without masks, how to resume their lives and whether they want things to go back to the way things were “in the before times”. 
• There is a kindness I see demonstrated in the public at large as I go about my business and life. We, as a people, have been through something unprecedented in our lifetimes. I see compassion and relief in people’s faces.

We still have a ways to go in integrating this HUGE experience of the last year with all its pros and cons. Some people are grieving mightily the loss of loved ones, the loss of an entire school year, the loss of their businesses and income. There is, yes, PTSD in the population. 

So, please look out for support for yourself and for your loved ones – through therapy, yoga, breathing exercises, gardening, being in nature, eating well, spending time with vaccinated loved ones, petting your animals, meditating, doing art, playing music, hiking in nature, going to the beach – whatever nourishes you. We need to take time to heal and not rush into some imagined lifestyle we are not sure we want to return to. Things have changed. We have changed. Give yourself the gift of time to ease into this new phase of your life.

Recently, a 79 year old male client and I were discussing the topic of courage. His courage. Having to do with the fact that he has been coming to weekly counseling sessions with me for two years now. His adult son is having some challenges in his life and we discussed whether this father, my client, might want to tell his son that he has been diligently working on his own challenges, with the help of a therapist, for these past years.

My question for us to discuss was: did he think it might engender a feeling of respect and courage in the son to know that his senior dad is not above actively seeking out help and a sounding board where he can find support and ideas regarding his own situations.

My client, this father and brave pioneer, hesitated. He expressed doubt that this would matter to his son. I asked him, “Do you have any guess about how many senior men come to counseling? What percent do you think of all older folks who go to counselors are men?”  He had no idea he replied.

I told him I guestimate that it’s about 15% at most. Later, I asked the same questions to my 75 year old male colleague who has been a practicing psychologist for the past many decades. His reply and guess? 5%!

Looking around the Internet, I find articles estimating the numbers to be about 10%.

So, yes, I think it’s VERY impressive for me anyway when older men seek out therapeutic relationships where they can get in touch with their feelings – all of them – and find a supportive, nonjudgmental, caring sounding board and confidante.

Like women, the older men who have seeked me out for counseling, do not want to burden their adult children and/or friends with all of their concerns. They don’t want to be burdens and they need the safety, as well, of confidentiality.

Over the past years of my counseling career, I count myself so blessed to have had and currently have older men clients in my client population. My oldest male client is currently about to turn 90! And, my very first client, many years ago was a gentleman in his late 80’s.

My joy is that they often have not ever been in counseling in their lives and that now they have a place to talk about getting older, about their relationships, who they’ve lost, their joys and their sorrows, their military careers, the whole nine yards!

So, actually, counseling totally IS a country for old men! And for older women. For all ages! We never stop learning. “An unexamined life is not worth living”, said Aristotle. I agree. Let’s keep learning and looking and feeling and getting touch with ourselves. There is ALWAYS room for growth and healing for all of us.

With Respect and Love,

Nancy

After experiencing both providing care for senior family members – mother, father and husband – and walking alongside counseling clients who are walking similar walks, it started to feel to me like the word “caregiver” carried a lot of assumptions and, as several clients put it, “baggage.

It can make those of us who have first experience with such a role, that we are supposed to give over our own lives, our own druthers, sadly, even our own health to fulfill some cultural idea of what we “should” do. We experience receiving lots of opinions from other people – generically through popular media, and specifically through our friends, acquaintances and other family members.

I started to think about travels in southeast asia where there was, not that long ago, a tradition called “sati”. Long story short, a widow was placed unto of her deceased husband’s funeral pyre to die with him. Maybe to accompany him in the afterlife…? The point being that the woman was supposed to end her life when her husband’s did.

This practice was legally outlawed by governments in that part of the world. The practice did still continue for some time. But the notion of -whether it’s a wife or husband or life partner or other family member – unhealthy sacrifice for the healthy partner for the dying partner is still something that permeates our culture.

I stopped using the term “caregiver”. Months later I talked about this with a psychologist colleague who had just attended a workshop with renowned Alzheimer’s expert Teepa Snow. My colleague told me that Teepa also refuses to use the term caregiver and prefers the term “care partner”. Ahhh, I said, something relaxing immediately inside me.

Care partner connotes love, attention, walking *together* down our life’s paths and also includes the ill individual taking responsibility for their care as they are able and partnering in this life project together with their support person and support circle.

Partnering includes care for *both* individuals and guides us away from latent smatterings of “sati” vibes and expectations, even in a much lesser way that the extreme practice of widow sacrifice.

So, I am encouraging all of my clients, and my family members, and friends to go ahead and try out using care partners to describe themselves and their situations. If they want to use caregivers still, that’s perfectly fine! But at least now people have more choice. And language makes a difference in how we feel!