Overeaters Anonymous on the healthy aging series by mark neese

Using Overeaters Anonymous to Break Up with Food | Healthy Aging Series: S9 E15

/in , , , , , /by

One of my favorite movies is “Signs,” by M. Night Shyamalan. Please don’t judge me :-)

One of my favorite scenes is when Graham, the former Episcopal priest, who had just lost his wife to an accident is having a conversation with his brother Merrell about the appearance of lights in the sky. Merrell is struggling to understand what is happening, how is this going to end? He wants to be comforted by his brother, the former man of faith. Here’s what Graham says to Merrell:

People break down into two groups. When they experience something lucky, group number one sees it as more than luck, more than coincidence. They see it as a sign, evidence, that there is someone up there, watching out for them. Group number two sees it as just pure luck. Just a happy turn of chance. I’m sure the people in group number two are looking at those fourteen lights in a very suspicious way. For them, the situation is fifty-fifty. Could be bad, could be good. But deep down, they feel that whatever happens, they’re on their own. And that fills them with fear. Yeah, there are those people. But there’s a whole lot of people in group number one. When they see those fourteen lights, they’re looking at a miracle. And deep down, they feel that whatever’s going to happen, there will be someone there to help them. And that fills them with hope. See what you have to ask yourself is what kind of person are you? Are you the kind that sees signs, that sees miracles? Or do you believe that people just get lucky? Or look at the question this way: Is it possible that there are no coincidences?

You have to ask yourself, what kind of person are you?

This season I’ve been writing about the very serious struggle that many of you are having with food. For some, it’s a life-or-death struggle because you feel powerless over food and it’s creating a dark cloud over your future much like the lights, threatening Graham, and Merrell‘s future.

I want to share two roads, two ways to help you break up with food once and for all. Which road is for you? It depends. It depends on what type of person you are.

Are you the kind of person that feels a sense of powerlessness over food and you need a higher power to take away your shortcomings?

Or, are you kind of person that sees yourself as powerful and you have the ability to overcome your problems with food?

I know, I know, it’s not quite that simple. Most of us are not one or the other, but sometimes, it helps to see the issue as “one or the other.”

If you mostly see yourself in group one, then Overeaters Anonymous is most likely the road to take in overcoming your compulsive overeating. We will look at group 2 in Episode 16. Both Roads have very similar “hacks” or tools for breaking up with food, but at the heart, the issue is where does the power come for overcoming your problem with food?

First Overeaters Anonymous

How does Overeaters Anonymous work?
It’s a 12-step program similar to Alcoholics Anonymous. There are also 12 Traditions. Think of them as bylaws. They guide members on the day-to-day operations.

The 12 steps are strategies for helping you to think and act differently about food, yourself, others, and God.

Here are the first three steps:

  1. We admitted we were powerless over food, and that our lives had become unmanageable.
  2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
  3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understood him.

For many, these steps help them gain a sense of meaning and hope in life. They have unsuccessfully tried to manage their eating or drinking, and finally they are able to see something or someone out there that will remove all of their shortcomings. They get better.

In their literature, they write, “As a result of practicing the steps, the symptoms of compulsive eating and compulsive food behaviors are removed on a daily basis. For most of us, abstinence means freedom from the bondage of compulsive overeating, achieved through the process of surrendering to something greater than ourselves; the more total our surrender, the more fully we realize our freedom from food obsession.”

The other steps involved admitting to God, to ourselves, and to another human being those shortcomings. They involve making amends to people who we have harmed and working on our relationship with God through prayer and meditation. The last two steps encourage us to help others who have an addiction to food, those who are compulsive overeaters. Overeaters Anonymous members see the problem as mental, physical, and spiritual. 

Those are the Steps, but then there is the Program.

As I’ll share in the next episode, this is where the approaches overlap or where the different roads converge at times. Every plan, every program is unique, despite having many similarities. 

Here is the general look at the AA Program. This is what they mean when they say in unison at the end of the meeting, “It works, if you work it!”

  1. Attend meetings regularly. Overeaters Anonymous is a fellowship. It is a fellowship of fellow strugglers and people who are recovering, growing, overcoming their shortcomings. They share what it was like before Overeaters Anonymous, what happened to bring about their change and commitment to change, and what life is like now. You go. You keep your mouth shut and your ears open. You listen to the success stories. You keep coming back. You take what you like and leave the rest.

  2. Get a sponsor. After attending several meetings and listening to the success stories, you approach the member who you think can help you through the steps. This is life or death, and your sponsor will be the life preserver that will help you stay afloat during the years and storms to come. What does a sponsor do? They listen without judgment. They use their experiences as a sponsor to guide you through the steps. They are there to help you follow your plan. You call them when you feel powerless or when you feel like you’re going to relapse. Overeaters Anonymous is a relapse prevention program that helps you break up and stay broke up with food. You will need a sponsor.

    3. Make a Plan of Eating. You make a list, with the help of a sponsor and possibly a nutritionist, of the foods and drinks that you are powerless over, your Trigger Foods. These foods, along with accompanying behaviors, are what’s keeping you in a dysfunctional relationship with food. “An individualized food plan is a tool designed to help you know what and when to eat. It is a flexible, usable worksheet that assists with maintaining absence from compulsive overeating and compulsive foods behaviors” (The Brown Book).
    You develop your food plan with the help of a sponsor. You make a commitment to follow the plan one day at a time. That’s your sobriety date. And with the help of your higher power, your sponsor, and the fellowship, you follow this plan one day at a time. You work the steps. And you work your Eating Plan, and you find sanity, freedom, and strength. 

Overeaters Anonymous will not be for everyone. Allen Zadoff, from the book “Hungry,” found freedom from food using Overeaters Anonymous.

My next episode is for the other kind of person. Moderation Management for Eating (MMFE) is what I call it. 

Do you see yourself as having the power to change within yourself? Then check out my next episode.

To read more entries in the Healthy Aging series, click here.

Image of Terri Schmidt, interviwed by Mark Neese for the Healthy Aging Series blog for True North Counseling in Louisville, Kentucky

Terri Schmidt: How Sober October and Jazzercise Saved My Life | Healthy Aging Series: S9 E14

/in , , , , , /by

I’m headed to Colorado again to spend some time with my two granddaughters, son, and daughter-in-law. And then a road trip. My plan A was to do a four-day, three-night backpacking trip into the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park, but my son’s lower back-issues forced us to change our trajectory. Plan B is a road trip through Utah to visit the five national parks. That’s my physical trajectory on this trip.

I’ve used that word as a therapist working with teenagers and their parents. Parents do this thing about predicting the trajectory of their teens, especially if they get into a little bit of trouble at school or with the law. They predict that their Teen will end up in prison, or homeless, or living in their basement at forty.

Teenagers grow up, eventually, and the parents’ prediction of where their sons or daughters might go almost never happens. That’s Parent Trajectory.

What’s Your Health Trajectory?

This season, I’m starting something new. Healthy Aging Interviews. I’ll be interviewing people in their mid to late 50s and up. Maybe you’ll get some inspiration. Maybe some edification. And maybe even some encouragement to break up with food.

This season, I interviewed Terri Schmidt. She’s 57 and attends Jazzercise with my wife. She and my wife are longtime Jazzercisers. She got our attention when my wife told me she had been reading my blog and Terri recommended that I read, “Nature Wants Us to be Fat,” by Dr. Richard J. Johnson.

Here are the questions that I used for my interview with Terri:

  1. How do you feel about getting older?
  2. What does Healthy Aging mean to you?
  3. When did you become health conscious?
  4. What was the factor that moved you to focus on your health?
  5. Who were some of the examples for Healthy Aging?
  6. Who are your biggest cheer leaders?
  7. What books have you read that influenced you to focus on healthy aging?
  8. What does your diet look like?
  9. What does your fitness regimen look like?
  10. What is it about Jazzercise that appeals to you?
  11. What makes it difficult to maintain a healthy aging lifestyle?
  12. What would you say to your younger self?
  13. What advice do you have for people that are contemplating changing their lifestyle?

I’m not going to give her word-for-word responses, rather I’m going to give you the highlights.

Terri looked at her life in September 2022 and didn’t like her health trajectory. Her diet contained way too much sugar and alcohol. She reported that she was experiencing brain fog and irritability, most likely due to her diet.

She had been active as a younger woman and has continued to move using Jazzercise these past years. Maybe Terri is an example of not being able to outrun a bad diet and chronic alcohol use. She had other issues that she worked through. Her first marriage created an environment that caused her to blame herself for everything. She looked at her life mentally and physically and didn’t like where it was going. She looked at some family members that struggled with their own wellness and saw herself in them.

That was the push she needed to break up with food and her old lifestyle. She looked around and saw people in her life that were failing to thrive and said to herself “That’s me if I don’t change my trajectory!” Some of these family members have difficulty walking, anxiety, and worry about what everyone else is thinking.

The pull was her mother-in-law, who maintained an active lifestyle, volunteering, living a balanced emotional life, happy and strong. “That’s me, if I change my trajectory.”

In October 2022, she listened to that still small voice within and stopped drinking alcohol and eating sugar. She began creating a new trajectory, taking care of herself. Terri lives her life now very intentionally. She’s not one of those goal-setters, although she does try to walk 10,000 steps a day. She wants to eat real food. Fruits and vegetables. She practices time-restricted eat (intermittent fasting). She stops eating at 6 pm and then eats a big breakfast with lots of protein, whole grains, and what I would consider a disgusting smoothie of kale, cinnamon, and protein, just kidding Terri. She’s not perfect. She does have some guilty pleasures periodically, like potato chips.

If you were to ask Terri, what she loves about her new lifestyle, she would answer, “I love feeling strong.” She gets stronger physically and mentally by Jazzercise three or four times a week. This group has become her support system. What was an intentional consequence of her new trajectory from abstaining from sugar and alcohol? Clarity! She started seeing she was enough. She started seeing the importance of self-care, the need to stay in her lane, and take care of herself. She started to see that this was her journey to walk, and she wanted to be happy.

And now, here is what she says: “I feel great, that’s what makes me happy.”

Again, Terri isn’t perfect. She has her snacks every now and then, but she has the clarity now to see where she is going and loves it.

Freedom from addiction is what she is loving.

It’s not easy or pleasant sometimes to see where we’re going, seeing our trajectory. For some it’s not a major overhaul in your diet or exercise. Maybe a series of tune-ups.

Add a little walking and group fitness.

Take away a little of the processed foods, sugar, and alcohol in your life.

What got Terri’s attention was the week before her sober October last year, she literally got sick from drinking alcohol.

I think it scared her. Maybe we all need a scare about where we are going.

To read more entries in the Healthy Aging series, click here.

Mark Neese of True North Counseling in Louisville, Kentucky

How a Stoplight Can Help You Break Up with Food | Healthy Aging Series: S9 E13

/in , , , , , /by

I remember my first week of basic training in the United States Air Force. There’s a lot to learn. Really, it’s indoctrination. Military bearing. You’re learning to stop being a civilian and act like an Airman, a Marine, a Soldier, or a Sailor. They teach you how to salute. They show you, then have you salute, then correct you.

I remember our Sergeant teaching us how to put our laundry mark on all our clothing. They were nice enough to make us rubberstamps with the first initial of our last name, and the last four of our Social Security Number. It  was like N1234.

The Sergeant gathered us around him and took an Airman’s trousers and said, “Put your stamp here,” pointing to the inside area of the zipper section. “Questions? Then go put your mark on your trousers.“ And you guessed it, someone had put his mark on the wrong spot. “Come here,” the TI said gesturing to the Airman to come close. “Give me your stamp.“ And then our Sergeant stamped the Airman’s forehead with his laundry mark. When that training session was over, and everyone had finished marking their uniforms, I noticed that two or three Airmen had two or three laundry marks on their foreheads.

I feel like one of these Airmen at times, and no, I wasn’t one of them. I need someone to teach me, show me, train me on how to do something successfully. That’s what I found in Allen Zadoff’s book, “Hungry: Lessons Learned on the Journey from Fat to Thin.”  I’ve shared Zadoff’s book in part three of strategies for breaking up with food. In the first part, I looked at compulsive overeating as a disease and changing the way you look at food and yourself. Zadoff offers a visual approach to categorizing food.

A Stoplight.

Red light foods:

These are foods that you cannot stop eating once you start. Make a list of those foods for you. Is it sugar? Ice cream or bread? Pastries? Candy? Chocolate? Popcorn with lots of butter? Potato chips? Alcohol? Actually, this is my list. And then he talks about Red Food Behaviors. This is good. “What are behaviors around the Red Light Foods” As a Behavior Analyst, I might ask where are you likely to eat these foods? Maybe it’s while you’re driving. Where do you buy these foods? When are you more likely to eat these foods  and less likely to eat these foods? What are you doing when you’re not eating these foods? Are you in a gym or walking in the park? Who are you with when you eat or drink your Red Light Foods? And, when you don’t eat or drink these foods, who are you with. This is just a start. You need to do a thorough assessment of Red Food Behaviors. We’ll come back to what you’re going to do with this list in a bit.

Yellow light foods:

These are foods that you have a problem with sometimes. Yeah, bread is one of those foods for me. I love biscuits. But I have some control over Yellow Foods. Your Yellow foods could include soft drinks, pasta, processed food, fried chicken, or any kind of fast food. Make a list of your yellow foods.

And lastly, Green Light Foods:

These are foods that you have no problem stopping when you start eating them. We’re talking about things like vegetables and fruits, grilled chicken, fish, and really what we’re talking about is mostly real food.

Next, Zadoff refers to Red Foods as Trigger Foods, because once started, they trigger a powerful response in our bodies. They activate your pleasure pathway which releases dopamine. And after many, many episodes of this dopamine release, we develop dopamine resistance, and need more and more to get the pleasure response and then you guessed it. You’ve developed an addictive response to Trigger Foods. Zadoff then directs us to abstain from Trigger Foods. I know there are a lot of other ways of working with Trigger Foods besides complete abstinence, but this is the approach he took and it worked for him.

He spends time throughout his book discussing the addiction and recovery process and compares food addiction, which he calls compulsive overeating with alcoholism. And although he rarely if ever mentions Overeaters Anonymous, there is no doubt he is heavily influenced by it. I am not a compulsive overeater. I would probably fit, at times, into the Problem Eater Category that I mentioned in Episode 12 of this blog. I struggle to manage my weight. I don’t abstain from anything and probably won’t. The key food management word for me is moderation. But I am at a healthy weight.  I do have Gout, which is caused from foods high in purines, so I limit those foods. Otherwise, I have no food restrictions. I mostly abstain from sugar, but I occasionally eat bread, which is almost like sugar. I have attempted to abstain from alcohol, mostly for health reasons and sleep hygiene, but have decided that moderation is a key there as well. There is no credible science that supports total abstinence from alcohol.

Zadoff suggests a support group. I would too if you’re a compulsive overeater. Overeaters Anonymous involves developing a food plan, having a sponsor, working on the 12 steps of OA. These involve the work on your emotional and spiritual issues in your life. In other words, an inside job.

I would recommend Overeaters Anonymous as one option.

So, you have Red Light Foods that are typically creating a weight management problem for you, and then there are Yellow and Green Light Foods which are typically good that you do have control over.  Zadoff recommends abstaining from Red Light Food, finding a support group, and building within that support group some accountability.

And that is Overeaters Anonymous. I want to share in the next part what you can expect if you decide to join Overeaters Anonymous. There are lots of other options for weight loss and breaking up with food.

Many of the obesity memoirs I have shared use a very simple approach; eat less and move more.

I  want to give you some options because breaking up is hard to do and you need as many options as you can find.

In Episode 15, I’ll share in more detail OA!

To read more entries in the Healthy Aging series, click here.

Healthy Aging: Strategies for Breaking Up, Part 3 S9 E12

Are You Addicted to Food? | Healthy Aging Series: Strategies for Breaking Up, Part 3 | S9 E12

/in , , , , , /by

Are You Addicted to Food?

I was a precocious five-year-old. Very curious. Very talkative like my mother. And like most children my age, innocent. My parents said that I was the easiest of nine to raise. Maybe I misheard them, but that’s what I want to believe.

And so, I’m guessing that it would surprise you if I told you that my kindergarten teacher paddled me in class, in front of all my classmates. Her name was Mrs. Pott, Mrs. Dessa Pott.

It was circle time. Mrs. Pott gave us some instructions. “I’m going to show you a picture and then go around the circle and ask each of you a question about what you saw in the picture. Don’t repeat someone else’s answer.”

Of course, I was so bored and wanted out of the prison called Stringtown Elementary, so I tuned her out. I didn’t hear the instructions, blah, blah, blah.

She came to me, and she said, “Next, it’s the little freckle faced boy’s turn.”
And as sure as I am typing this, I repeated verbatim what little Pammy had just said.
“Oh,”  Mrs. Pott said glaring at me. “Little freckle faced boy, I want you to stand up and walk to my desk, go ahead now.“
I stood up, and the little freckles on my face were looking like little croutons in a bowl of tomato soup, and I did the dead man walking thing.

“Now, reach in and grab the paddle and bring it here.”

That walk was like the walk in the 1957 anti-war movie I saw this past year staring Kirk Douglas, “Paths of Glory.” Douglas was a French colonel who is unable to save three of his innocent soldiers from execution. It was gut wrenching as they marched these three soldiers to the firing squad through columns of their own troops. They were being made an example. Completely innocent. Probably heroes. I’m sure it felt incredulous that they were being executed because several other soldiers failed to charge when given the orders to attack.

That’s how I felt, reaching into that drawer, picking up the paddle, walking through the circle formation of my kindergarten classmates, and delivering it to Mrs. Despot, I mean Mrs. Dessa Pott. I’m sure I looked at her with incredulity.

She had me bend over, without a trial, without even a good explanation, and gave me two or three, or maybe five swats.

Complexes

I’m sure somewhere in my young psyche, and what would become my shadow, I began developing a complex, about school and education, that would affect my self-confidence and my desire to learn for many years.

Thankfully, my fifth-grade teacher at Elberfeld Elementary would help me make a course correction and would reignite my curiosity and love for learning. “Little freckle face boy,“ she said, “you are very smart, and you could accomplish anything if you just tried.“ And then, that became part of my educational complex. It helped me think differently about education.

Complexes are a collection of experiences, ideas, beliefs, and values that you have that revolve around a theme, like money, work, family, friendships, education, your parents, just to name a few. Complexes can exert a strong, unconscious influence over you. In fact, you can be possessed by a complex and not even be aware of its influence and control over you.

Breaking Up with Food

We have been exploring ways to break up with food. Why? Because many of us have a dysfunctional relationship with food. All of us have a food complex. Think about the millions and millions and millions of millions experiences you’ve had with food. Maybe not that many, but a lot. I’m 67. Times 360 days. Times three meals a day. Equals 73,365 experiences. Every time you see a commercial with food. Every time you walk into a store or anywhere with food.
These experiences make up your food complex. All of our experiences, and conversations about food, anything your parents said, your teachers taught, your friends modeled, diet books explained, and everything you can imagine about food makes up your food complex, and it controls you every day.

That’s why it doesn’t matter what diet you try, and it doesn’t matter how much weight you lose, if you don’t work on your food complex, you’ll regain all of the weight loss, because breaking up with food is mostly an inside job.

“Hungry: Lessons Learned on the Journey from Fat to Fit.” Allan Zadoff

That’s one of the lessons that Alan Zadoff shares in his book, “Hungry: Lessons Learned on the Journey from Fat to Fit.”
Zadoff explains that 90% of our fight with breaking up with food is an inside job with only 10% involving what’s outside of us.

This is the fifth or sixth obesity memoir I’ve reflected on this season. He hits the nail on the head throughout his book on breaking up with food. There are so many good things to share that I’m going to make this into two separate episodes.

This episode, 11, will share about Zadoff’s discovery of his addiction to food, the disease of compulsive overeating

The next episode, 12, will share some very specific strategies that he used to overcome his addiction to what he calls trigger foods

My takeaways from “Hungry.”

The First Take-Away from “Hungry”

Zadoff gives us insight into compulsive overeating as a disease. I have listened to talk-show hosts who don’t have an overeating problem and don’t suffer from obesity, and who often suggest that people who suffer as compulsive overeaters and suffer from obesity simply need to learn how to push back their plates.

I don’t think these folk mean to be malicious or judgmental, they simply don’t understand the all-encompassing aspects of this problem. Zadoff would say, “Yes, they need to be able to push back their plates but,” he would add, “feeling satiated has little to do with a food addiction.”
The disease of compulsive overeating is an addiction that affects many people mentally and physically. Zadoff would also add spiritually to that list. Compulsive overeaters are not addicted to all food but to “trigger foods.”

These are the foods that control the addict in much the same way that alcohol or nicotine controls people with those addictions. Sure, there are people who can eat almost anything without being a compulsive overeater, but compulsive overeaters, enter a land where choice is extinct. Dopamine plays a role in this addiction. Emotions, including shame, guilt, happiness, and joy also play a role. Our appetites and cravings play a role. Our evolutionary biology, which causes us to seek out calorie dense foods and salty foods, plays a role.

The point I think Zadoff is making isn’t that if you’re a compulsive overeater, there is nothing you can do about it. You’re doomed! On the contrary, he is saying you can overcome your overeating. But you cannot overcome it with purely behavioral and environmental changes, or solely with self-binding strategies. You can read about these in later blogs.

Throughout much of Zadoff’s life, he focused on trying to change his outside while his problem was inside. It had always been in his head, an inside job. In Alcoholics Anonymous, they say they don’t have a drinking problem, they had a thinking problem, stinking thinking.
Behavioral strategies are tools for change. Weight loss occurs by working on both the inside and the outside. Zadoff began putting 10% of his energy into eating and 90% into healing his life. Part of the inside job was learning to think differently about food.

“I knew that a hit of sugar on my tongue would make my frustrations disappear. It wasn’t a conscious thought; I knew it in my bones. Eating chocolate meant I wouldn’t have to think about the job I resented, the career dream I was ignoring, or the eating problem that was killing me. Enough chocolate, and I wouldn’t even remember that I was fat. I would be free.” He saw his food as medicine that would fix his problems.

How did Zadoff’s thinking change? He began seeing food as fuel. Eating to Live rather than living to eat.

Take-Away Two from “Hungry”

The next take away from Zadoff’s book has to do with thinking differently about your relationship with food. He enlightens us about three different types of eaters.

The first type of eater is a normal eater. They eat when they’re hungry and they stop when they’re full. Normal eaters can consume a little more over the holidays, but they lose weight they gain magically. Normal eaters are not obsessed with the next meal. Normal eaters are mostly OK with their bodies, mostly.

The second type of eater is what he calls problem eaters. Problem eaters think about calories, read food labels, and try to make healthy choices. Problem eaters exercise, and bargain with themselves about eating more later. Problem eaters constantly feel guilty about eating. Problem eaters describe themselves as someone who struggles with weight management. Honestly, most people have some level of a dysfunctional relationship with food. I wrote about this in an earlier blog entitled, “Why is it difficult to break up with food?”

The third type of eater is the compulsive overeater. These folks are obsessed with food and their body. They believe that thin equals well and plan their lives around their weight. They often eat to excess and then wonder why they did it. At times, they become obsessed over the perfect diet. They typically pass through the problem eating stage, and they have lost their ability to control their weight through diet and exercise.

Warning: If you are a problem eater, you are at risk of becoming a compulsive overeater.

Lesson from Zadoff: You must change the way you think about yourself and food.

Breaking up with food is an inside job.

It’s deeper than that. I’ll share in a couple blogs on ways to address and reconstruct a more positive eating complex through active imagination and the mindfulness practice of urge surfing.

In the next episode I share the strategies Zadoff gives us for breaking up with food.

To read more entries in the Healthy Aging series, click here.

The Healthy Aging Series by Mark Neese at True North Counseling

An Interlude: What a Fox and a Horse have to Say About Agism | Healthy Aging Series: Season 9, Episode 11

/in , , /by

Look in the mirror. What do you see?

You might see your mother or father. I do.

I try remembering when my father was my age. My father was 30 years older than me, so I was 37 when he was 67, the age that I am now. That was 1993. I had moved to Louisville the year before and had started seminary to work on a social work degree.

My father was still working, like me today.

His body was starting to fail him, almost all due to smoking. He would hit 70 a few years later and face several operations and procedures that included heart bypass, colon cancer surgery, and the replacement of his aortal-femoral artery.

These were difficult times for him. I can only imagine.

It was at this time that he was diagnosed with emphysema, which would lead to COPD, and eventually take his life at 82 years old. I’m certain he was demoralized when he received that diagnosis. That’s what aging can do.

You are not the person you were 20 or 30 years ago. You become so much more aware of your mortality. And you begin to lose your sense of value, your sense of worth.

It doesn’t help that we live in an economic system that values productivity, and success, and capital, of which we have a little when we age.

I want you to take a few minutes and read a fairytale about a horse and a fox. It’s short. It’ll take 1 to 2 minutes.

The Fox and the Horse

A peasant had a faithful horse which had grown old and could do no more work, so his master no longer wanted to give him anything to eat and said, “I can certainly make no more use of you, but still, I mean well by you, and if you prove yourself still strong enough to bring me a lion here, I will maintain you. But for now, get out of my stable.” And with that he chased him into the open field.

The horse was sad and went to the forest to seek a little protection there from the weather. There the fox met him and said, “Why do you hang your head so, and go about all alone?”

“Alas,” replied the horse, “greed and loyalty do not dwell together in one house. My master has forgotten what services I have performed for him for so many years, and because I can no longer plow well, he will give me no more food, and has driven me out.”

“Without giving you a chance?” asked the fox.

“The chance was a bad one. He said, if I were still strong enough to bring him a lion, he would keep me, but he well knows that I cannot do that.”

The fox said, “I will help you. Just lie down, stretch out as if you were dead, and do not stir.”

The horse did what the fox asked, and then the fox went to the lion, who had his den not far off, and said, “A dead horse is lying out there. Just come with me, and you can have a rich meal.”

The lion went with him, and when they were both standing by the horse the fox said, “After all, it is not very comfortable for you here — I tell you what — I will fasten it to you by the tail, and then you can drag it into your cave and eat it in peace.”

This advice pleased the lion. He positioned himself, and in order that the fox might tie the horse fast to him, he kept completely quiet. But the fox tied the lion’s legs together with the horse’s tail, and twisted and fastened everything so well and so strongly that no amount of strength could pull it loose. When he had finished his work, he tapped the horse on the shoulder and said, “Pull, white horse, pull!”

Then up sprang the horse at once and pulled the lion away with him. The lion began to roar so that all the birds in the forest flew up in terror, but the horse let him roar, and drew him and dragged him across the field to his master’s door. When the master saw the lion, he was of a better mind, and said to the horse, “You shall stay with me and fare well.” And he gave him plenty to eat until he died.

What are the lessons that we can learn about aging from this fairy tale?

1. We tend to see ourselves, the way our culture sees us. And then we reinforce that by becoming the very thing that our culture sees. The poor farmer didn’t see value in the aged horse. The horse was no longer strong, and he was no longer able to plow the fields, pull the wagon full of grain, or carry supplies from town. In the farmers mind, the horse was worthless, a drag on his economy. And so, the horse withdraws from the land of productivity and enters the forest in his despair.

The horse saw itself as worthless. We become the vision that the world projects onto us. That’s how agism works. It’s like parent projection in a way. Parents project out to their children the wants and dreams they have for them. A doctor, a lawyer, a teacher, a mechanic, you get my point. Society projects onto us, those of us that are aging, a vision that we are tired, that we are a burden, and that we can barely expressive a cogent thought. That’s agism.
And then we believe that vision. We succumb to our own ageism, much like the aged horse.

2. The horse goes into the forest.
In the Jungian interpretation of fairytales, going into the forest often symbolized going into the unconscious. It’s in the forest that the horse hears a voice. It’s the still small voice of the fox that saves him. It offers the countercultural solution of agism: wisdom and cleverness. 

Foxes symbolize many things in fairytales. Foxes symbolize overcoming obstacles, solving problems, or outsmarting opponents. The fox is the still small voice that advocates for us. The fox was the voice that helped the horse find its value and it’s worth in the face of despair. 

The message from the still small voice is this: You are more than your body.

Think about that for a minute. We are more, much more than our body. We are powerful, much more powerful than the strongest foes, even the lions in our life.  I remember being a supervisor 35 years ago at UPS. I was responsible for loading aircraft in the middle of the night. This involved sometimes loading 75- or 85-pound boxes into the belly of a DC 10. I often supervised women who had a difficult time picking up boxes that weighed that much. I would train them and remind them that they have the great equalizer. We understood that men typically were stronger than them, but they could use their brain, which was that equalizer, and ask for help.

There is another fairytale about a fox in some geese. The fox came upon a flock of geese and announced that he was going to eat them one at a time. In that fairytale the fox is outsmarted by the geese because one of the geese was not disheartened, and came up with a plan to pray without ceasing, which put off being eaten even until now!
The message is, do not become disheartened, you have within yourself the strength needed to overcome the frailties of old age.

The truth is, you will begin to fade physically.  You will become frail. You will lose outer strength.

But what is also true is you have an inner strength, an inner wisdom, and an inner cleverness that makes you valuable and gives you worth in a society that struggles to know what to do with you.

When you look in the mirror, look past the thinning gray hair, and past the crow’s feet, and past the sunspots, and see the real you. See the person who is much more than a body and see the lion slayer or at least the lion tamer. 

Look into the mirror and see into those blue or brown or gray eyes, deep into the inner you and see the fox. Listen the clever, adaptable, and cunning you that lives deep within your unconscious, and listen to that inner voice. That’s what will allow you to fare well in a society that struggles to see your worth.

We have some choices in life. On the one hand, we are aging, getting older, and losing our strength.  On the other hand, we can choose not to see ourselves the way society sees us, but see ourselves as having an inner strength that is able to conquer even our greatest foes in times of trouble.

To read more entries in the Healthy Aging series, click here.