Positive Ageing & Resilience Training Guy Robertson Director Positive Ageing Associates
Positive Ageing & Resilience Training
Delivery Miriam Akhtar Guy Robertson
Major Life Events • Retirement • Relationship breakdown • Becoming a carer • Bereavement • Acquiring a long term health condition
Transition Major life events – can trigger an emotional process (a transition) which generally results in a significant change in key areas of life.
Emotional process
Impact * Sense of purpose - people's motivation and meaning in life * Identity - how people feel about their role and place in society * Beliefs - what people believe to be true or important * Capabilities - people's talents and abilities * Behaviour - actions the person takes in their day to day life * Environment - living arrangements or where people carry out their day to day activities
What is Resilience?
A Definition * Resilience is the process of negotiating, managing and adapting to significant sources of stress or trauma. Assets and resources within the individual, their life and environment facilitate this capacity for adaptation and ‘bouncing back’ in the face of adversity. Across the life course, the experience of resilience will vary .”
Ideas about resilience * Resilience is ordinary, not extraordinary * Resilience is about thoughts, behaviours and actions and can be learned by anyone * Being resilient doesn’t mean that a person doesn’t experience difficulty or distress. Emotional pain and sadness are common * There is great potential for growth, healing and insight from traumatic experiences
Learnable Competencies * MITIGATE RISK * Identify emotions in self * Control and regulate emotions through mental skills * Think accurately and flexibly about causes and consequences of adverse events * Build positive emotion * Deploy an optimistic explanatory framework * PROMOTE WELLBEING * Know ones strengths * Know what strengths from past might serve well in future * Have a sense of purpose and meaning in life * Experience present moment awareness * Incorporate a sense of gratitude into every day life * Notice and Savour the world around and day to day experiences * CONNECT SOCIALLY * Build strong connections with others * Ask others for help when required
Core Techniques
Ageing
Myth 1 – Ageing as a decline
Myth 1 – Ageing as a decline * At age 65, people in the UK can expect to live in good health for around 60% of their life after 65 (85 women; 83 men) * Somewhere between 65%-77% of 65 year olds report their health as ‘good or fairly good’ * Even ‘oldest old’ (85years and over) – 80% rate their quality of life as ‘good or excellent’ – 80% need little or no care
Myth 2 – Ageing as unhappiness
Older people are happier
Myth 2 – Ageing as unhappiness * In general people get happier as they age – most unhappy are 40-55 year olds Source ONS 2016 *
Why are older people happier?
Why older people are happier
Myth 3 – Dementia and care homes What percentage of older people end up living in care homes? • 96% of older people do not live in a care home • Even 85+, 84% do not. What percentage of older people live with dementia? • Only 1.7% of 65-69 year olds do • Even with the oldest old (85-89) where prevalence is greatest, 82% do not have dementia
Dementia prevalence Age Range % of pop with Dementia 65-69 1.7% 70-74 3% 75-79 6% 80-84 11.1% 85-89 18.3% 90-94 29.9% 95+ W 41.1%; M 29% Source: “Dementia UK Update”, Alzheimers Society, 2014
Myth 4 – Illness beyond control * “Clear and compelling evidence” that happy people tend to live longer and experience better health * Optimism has been shown to explain between 5-10% of the variation in the likelihood of developing some health conditions * Subjective well-being is estimated to add between 4 to 10 years to life compared with low SWB
Myth 5 – Lifespan predetermined * A genetic predisposition is not the same as a prediction * Research with twins shows that genes only account for 25% of longevity * Most is in our control – lifestyle and attitudes
New Metaphor
Wellbeing
5 Ways to Well- being
Change your thoughts and change your life
Thoughts & Feelings You feel the way you think
Actions, Beliefs & Consequences Consequences Activating Belief Feeling Behaviour event What What you How you What you happens think feel do
Choice “ One of the most significant findings in psychology in the last 20 years is that individuals can choose the way they think.” Martin Seligman
A mindful approach to later life
Mindfulness “Paying attention in a particular way, on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgementally” Jon Kabat Zinn
Mindfulness and Later Life Mindfulness can help greatly in later life by:- * Slowing down time and enhancing our experience of the time we have * Enabling us to avoid rumination or the obsessive thinking associated with unhealthy feelings * Giving us the space to spot ‘thinking errors’ * Enabling us to deal better with pain * Helping us to be more relaxed * Stimulating greater appreciation of the beauty around us * Increasing our cognitive functioning
Key elements * Awareness * Thoughts * Concentration * Pain
Awareness
“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” John Lennon
Present Moment “The present is the only time any of us has to be alive - to know anything – to perceive - to learn - to act - to change – to heal.” Jon Kabat Zinn
Intensity of the Present
Thoughts
Thoughts are not Facts “It is remarkable how liberating it feels to be able to see that your thoughts are just thoughts, and that they are not ‘you’ or ‘reality’.” Jon Kabat Zinn
Concentration
Physical effects “Brain regions associated with attention, interoception and sensory processing were thicker in meditation participants than matched controls…” (Lazar et al 2006)
Cognitive Resilience * Mindfulness may reduce cognitive decline associated with normal ageing * “…concentrative meditation could be a potential candidate as an adjustment therapy for attentional rehabilitation in people with dementia.” Hu et al (2011)
Pain
Managing Pain * An estimated 60%-75% of people over 65 report at least some persistent pain * Mindfulness can be extremely helpful with pain:- * Average pain ‘unpleasantness’ levels can be reduced by 57% * Improves mood and quality of life in chronic pain conditions such as fibromalgia, lower back pain, IBS, MS and cancer
General Evidence Base 1. Insula (related to sense of connectedness and empathy) has been shown to be energised 2. Increases in positive mood & wellbeing directly related to increased daily awareness 3. Reduced mortality, particularly due to cardiovascular illness and stress 4. Reduces depression by up to 50% in those who have had 2-3 previous episodes Data from Williams & Penmann – “Mindfulness: a practical guide to finding peace in a frantic world”
M From – “The Ladybird Book of Mindfulness”
Positive Emotions
Gratitude W hat is good in your life? W hat are you grateful for? W hat has gone well?
Is the glass half full or empty?
You can learn optimism…
Sense of Purpose: the cornerstone of resilience
Possible elements In later life, meaning is often related to:- - Family (e.g. grandchildren) - Making a positive contribution to society (e.g. volunteering) - Maximising our personal development (e.g. learning new skills) - Artistic or other creativity - Spirituality - Legacy - Pleasure (e.g. travelling)
Eudaimonic Wellbeing Study of over 9,000 people over 65 • Found that those with high scores on ‘meaningfulness • and sense of purpose’ were 30% less likely to die over the study period (8.5 years) They lived on average 2 years longer than those in the • lowest wellbeing group “ …shows that the meaningfulness and sense of purpose that older people have in their lives are also related to survival.. .”
Sense of Purpose Woe to him who saw no more sense in his life, no aim, no purpose, and therefore no point in carrying on. He was soon lost. Victor Frankl
Health Benefits Those who express clear goals or purpose in life live longer and healthier:- * “ A higher level of purpose in life was associated with a substantially reduced (57% less) risk of mortality at 5yrs follow up. ” * “ People scoring in the top 10% on sense of purpose measure were about 2.4 times less likely to develop Alzheimer’s Disease than those in the bottom 10% ” * “ Those who score lower on eudaimonic wellbeing in mid 50’s were seven times more likely to be depressed in their mid 60’s ”
Lessons from Okinawa
“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.” * Mark Twain
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