TOPIC: AGING; THE TRANSFORMATION FROM ROLE TO SOUL GUEST: Dr. Connie Zweig examines cultural agism, late-life identity crisis's and the rites of passage that personify the shift from role to soul in the journey of aging.
00:00:15:13 - 00:00:48:00
Dr. Selina Matthews
Hi. Dr. Selina Mathew, spiritual psychologist, and I want to welcome you all to social transformation. My guest today is Dr. Connie Zweig. She's an internationally renowned depth psychologist and author of many, many, many books. Today, we're going to focus on her award winning book, The Inner Work of Age. Our topic today is aging, the transformation from role to soul.
00:00:48:18 - 00:01:21:22
Dr. Selina Matthews
This discussion will illuminate the aging process from a myriad of psychological and cultural perspectives. It is going to be an absolute wee fascinating show. So I want you to please stay tuned. Dr. Connie, I am so excited to have you here. Thank you so much for coming on the show and talking about your amazing book. I am thrilled.
00:01:23:02 - 00:01:48:07
Dr. Selina Matthews
I want to start by asking you a question. You know, aging is the fate of human existence. We can either honor it or we can deny it. In your book, you discuss the spiritual journey of aging. So can you extrapolate what that means and what is spiritual aging?
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Dr Connmie Zweig
Well, that's a beautiful question. I'm so happy to see you sitting in our banks. We're having.
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Dr. Selina Matthews
Your World.
00:01:55:26 - 00:02:31:09
Dr Connmie Zweig
Cup. So there are so many books, hundreds, maybe thousands of books about aging. And they all tend to be aging from the outside in aging and crazy with housing issues where health care issues or demographic issues and how many people are all over 65, right? Or Medicare and Social Security issues, financial issues and so on. I wanted to write about the psychology of age, gauging from the inside out.
00:02:32:09 - 00:03:03:19
Dr Connmie Zweig
And the more that I really kind of steeped in my research, the more I began to see that all of the mystical, perennial traditions teach a very simple thing, that the purpose of late life is to explore our spirituality and to expand our consciousness and to become what these days we call awake. To become spiritually awake. So this is not a new idea.
00:03:03:28 - 00:03:40:06
Dr Connmie Zweig
This is rooted in all of the sacred traditions. But what I wanted to do was on rooted in psychology, because today we have so much precious wisdom from Carl Jung and Freud and psychologists, and we have all this precious wisdom from the mystical traditions that have been democratized. I mean, you can learn a practice now that used to be sacred and esoteric, and there are not a lot of bridges between those two arenas.
00:03:41:05 - 00:03:52:24
Dr Connmie Zweig
So I really wanted to look at what's the psychology and spirituality of aging and how can we use the circumstances of our aging as spiritual practice?
00:03:54:05 - 00:04:13:20
Dr. Selina Matthews
Yeah, I mean, I absolutely I mean, you meditate. I know you've been a meditator for decades and you've been spiritually aligned for decades. How has that helped you then?
00:04:13:26 - 00:04:41:05
Dr Connmie Zweig
Well, it's it's it's kind of like a tricky question because I don't know, you know, who I would be if I hadn't started meditating at age 19. And now I have 74 years of life experience. So my whole adult life, I've been practicing. So I don't know. I have some ideas. It might be, but there's no way to know.
00:04:41:05 - 00:05:10:00
Dr Connmie Zweig
So it's hardly many ways. And I learned at a young age how to quiet my mind and watch my thoughts and watch my feelings. And when you learn how to watch or learn how to observe near cell, or you learn how to witness. What happens is you're not so flooded by your thoughts and feelings. You're not so overwhelmed by them.
00:05:10:18 - 00:05:36:15
Dr Connmie Zweig
And I'm not saying that never happens. Sometimes I'm really stressed out just like everybody else. But I often have the capacity to observe my own reactivity. Even when I'm hurt or angry, I can observe it. And that gives me a little space from my mind and from my feelings to have some choice about how I react. So that's one of the ways.
00:05:36:16 - 00:06:14:26
Dr Connmie Zweig
The other way, I think, is that it oriented me with purpose and meaning. The LA very young age. So I stopped asking sort of the why questions, the existential questions, because I knew that human the human lifespan was about evolution. It was about becoming aware in a way. And that was kind of baked in for me. And so my books on the Shadow are about particular aspects of awakening to our shadows, to the parts of us that cause self-sabotage or that harm others.
00:06:16:00 - 00:07:00:10
Dr Connmie Zweig
And then the novel about really is like the superpower is all about his spiritual awakening. And then the inner work of age is all about shifting our identity from role to soul. It's about moving into spiritual life as we age. And then I have a new book out next month called Meeting The Shadow on the Spiritual Path, which is more directly about how we need shadow material in our spiritual lives with our teachers and communities so that we read of spirituality has kind of followed me through the light and through the courier.
00:07:00:10 - 00:07:03:05
Dr Connmie Zweig
It's just kind of threaded in me.
00:07:03:09 - 00:07:31:17
Dr. Selina Matthews
That's really amazing since I've gotten to know you, you know, Through the Mist Salon, I've watched you write so many books. I'm like, blown away at your intellect and your ability to write these books as quickly as you. To I, I'm in amazement, total amazingly that what you're capable of doing. My goodness. It's amazing.
00:07:31:26 - 00:08:05:11
Dr Connmie Zweig
Well, you know, Selena, I don't experience it that way. And again, this is, I think, in response to meditation, because what I learned a few decades ago is that if I do a lot of research and when I meditate, the writing just comes. So I, I read, I interview, I talk to people, and then I empty my mind and then the books come through.
00:08:06:07 - 00:08:26:18
Dr Connmie Zweig
So it's not an effort, it's not effortful. And it and it almost doesn't really feel like it's from my mind. It doesn't feel like it's an intellectual process or an analytical project. It just kind of comes through like my speech right now. It's spontaneous, and that's what happens with the books. And again, I think that's for meditation.
00:08:27:11 - 00:09:05:23
Dr. Selina Matthews
Yeah, I think so. One meditator is guru years ago said to me, and I don't know if he was playing with this because they can they can play with you. He said to me, Selena, if you meditate, you'll look younger. I actually think that there's truth to that. I think because because you are connecting with a deeper part of yourself and you're not the stress is not going to be showing on your face like.
00:09:07:15 - 00:09:37:07
Dr Connmie Zweig
Well, you know, there's a research now that correlates meditation practices with changes in the telomeres, which is the part of the cells and the chromosomes that reflect our aging, really. So there's really yes. So there's really concrete evidence of that. Now, I had the psychiatrist at UCLA who did that research presented at the last stage conference at Pacifica.
00:09:38:03 - 00:09:49:14
Dr Connmie Zweig
And and there's other you know, there's lots of other research about meditation and longevity. But let's get let's stay with the psychology of it.
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Dr. Selina Matthews
Okay?
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Dr Connmie Zweig
Because I think that's what our audience really. Okay.
00:09:53:12 - 00:10:20:14
Dr. Selina Matthews
All right. So I have another question for you. In our society, the culture of which that we live in right now, there's a lot of ageism. And how do we maneuver through the ageism and how does the way that you think about aging affect the way that you age?
00:10:22:09 - 00:10:54:11
Dr Connmie Zweig
Okay. So, you know, the U.N. has now recognized institutionalized ageism as a serious issue because most of the globe is going to be older adults. The birth rate is low and longevity is high. So the aging population of the earth is now getting older and older. And it's particularly serious in some Asian countries now. But even in the US, it's the.
00:10:56:02 - 00:11:30:15
Dr Connmie Zweig
And yet our social justice issues, our institutions haven't really adapted to the reality. And I think some of us were really confronted with that during COVID when we saw a lot of negative remarks about poor people in nursing homes. And there were a lot of sort of cold, contemptuous comments about people. So, you know, institutionalized ageism is in the business world, in corporations, in tech.
00:11:31:05 - 00:11:57:29
Dr Connmie Zweig
I mean, you can't get a tech job if you're over 25, you know, in fashion, which is just starting to change a little bit. We now see some models in their seventies, maybe even in their eighties in politics, that we see many older people who are kind of models of being really active in their eighties, some of them competent and some of them not competent.
00:11:57:29 - 00:12:33:20
Dr Connmie Zweig
Right. And I think there's a really important distinction there about ageism and no discussion that's happening around Joe Biden running for president again is that it's about competence, not age. Right. So for me, my world is more focused on the inner world. And what I discovered in doing my own shadow work is that there's a part of me that I call the inner ajuste and the inner Ajuste has bought into the social, political ageism of the culture and internalized it.
00:12:34:24 - 00:13:05:06
Dr Connmie Zweig
As young kids, we internalize it. If our families make age comments, we're mistreat grandparents, or we watch something on TV where there's an older actor who is being, you know, treated unkindly or with contempt. And so we learn at a very young age that young is good and old is bad, strong is good and weak is bad, independent is good and dependent is bad.
00:13:05:17 - 00:13:45:25
Dr Connmie Zweig
And we internalize that message and it becomes this shadow, what I call a shadow. For a year, the NRA just and when I discovered this in myself, I found that there was research at Yale University by a psychologist named Becca Levy, who has spent her whole career studying the impact of internalized ageism. And what she found is that it has impact on brain health and memory on cardiac level, unemotional health and self-image, even on longevity.
00:13:46:22 - 00:14:23:00
Dr Connmie Zweig
Every kind of aspect of brain, mind body functioning is influenced, is shaped by how we knew aging as we age. And so it actually may be more important to uncover the inner age effect and really heal and and work with that part of ourselves. Then to focus on some of the external social justice factors. I mean, some people are oriented, more extroverted and politically active, and that's their kid.
00:14:23:05 - 00:14:38:02
Dr Connmie Zweig
You know, that's the thing. And that's really important for me. It's just as important to do our inner work around ageism. So that's a big chapter in the book. I came at a lot of space about how to do that.
00:14:38:28 - 00:14:49:13
Dr. Selina Matthews
Yes, you did. And it was it was really cut out. So we have all this ageism. How can we mitigate it?
00:14:51:29 - 00:14:53:27
Dr Connmie Zweig
How can we mitigate it socially.
00:14:53:27 - 00:15:19:09
Dr. Selina Matthews
Culturally, I mean, culturally, internally? I mean, is there is there are some frames that we can shift. I mean, a lot of people say even those that I work with, that I work with, you know, 30% of my practice is the elderly. And and they say, you know, I feel like I'm 35 and I'm like, I feel like I'm 35.
00:15:19:09 - 00:15:38:02
Dr. Selina Matthews
Like everybody feels like we're 35. I don't know where that number comes from, but they all feel 35. And so there's there's two things here. Is that a good thing to feel that to feel that vibrant, youthful energy, or is that part of denial?
00:15:40:11 - 00:16:36:18
Dr Connmie Zweig
Okay. So I wouldn't use the term elderly because I think that's a loaded term that brings up associations for people with frail and weak and needy and so on. So my. So part of what I believe we need to do is reframe the language. And so I wanted to reframe it from senior to Elder. And so anyone who turns 65 and gets a medicare card becomes a senior, but you only become an elder when you do the in a worker age, when you become aware of your inner age just and the impact it's having on you and you walk through some of the other practices in the book to age consciously, then you go through
00:16:36:18 - 00:17:08:24
Dr Connmie Zweig
that rite of passage and you become an elder. And indigenous cultures had this built in. We all know that Native-American cultures have rites of passage to become an elder, but our mainstream Western post-industrial culture doesn't have that, mostly because of ageism, because nobody wants to be old. So in terms of the question of why do people feel like they're Myanmar, I think that it can be very positive.
00:17:09:15 - 00:18:01:12
Dr Connmie Zweig
I have a lot of energy and, you know, I'm productive and I'm getting things done. But the other side of that is I'm not doing all my doing in the same way that I was at 35. And so if we build 35 and we continue to behave that way, meaning acting out of ego with the ego's agenda, acting heroically like we're trying to control everything that's happening, still focused on material acquisitions, still focused on sort of neurotic drives that we were experiencing at midlife and the way that Young Bears was really beautiful.
00:18:01:12 - 00:18:32:21
Dr Connmie Zweig
Quote He said, The Afternoon of life has a different purpose than the morning, but if we continue to behave like we're in the morning of life, there's damage to the soul. So we need to become aware of that 35 year old inside of us and honor him or her in terms of our whatever that is, our productivity, our self-care, our families, our creativity.
00:18:33:07 - 00:19:22:15
Dr Connmie Zweig
And at the same time, we need to honor the age of our bodies and in calling back in our decision making, and including that in our self care. And so if we notice that, we're in denial. So, for example, I have a friend who said to me recently, well, I'm 67, I, I don't need to read this because, you know, I have so much longer I have so many years and not old Now, we could say in this day and age that 67 isn't old, but we could also say she's in denial because she's not looking ahead at her seventies, which are right around the corner and what that might mean for her.
00:19:22:29 - 00:20:11:29
Dr Connmie Zweig
Now, she can't predict it. It's it's uncertain, but she is not preparing herself for changes that will be inevitable. And in terms of the changes in the brain that you asked about, you know, we used to have this framework that aging after 50, nothing broke decline. Everybody would go downhill and then die. So, my friend, at 67, we don't want to put her into the decline frame because actually most of what's happening now is people are aging and having this long horizontal period and actually dying more suddenly rather than long slow declines, which was what everybody was dreading in that narrative, in the decline narrative.
00:20:12:09 - 00:20:47:02
Dr Connmie Zweig
So there's this new narrative now about longevity that is bringing a lot of people into the volunteering world, into service, into spiritual practice, into all kinds of creativity. And so some of it is self-reflection and self observation. What is right for you at this time? You may feel free 35 and your body may be 67 or 75. Where is right for Numero in particular?
00:20:47:02 - 00:21:05:22
Dr Connmie Zweig
Not anybody else. And how can you accept who you are now? Because if you want to be a different age and you know, I used to have clients who just hated their bodies and the changes their bodies were going through and it made them feel so badly about themselves.
00:21:05:22 - 00:21:06:06
Dr. Selina Matthews
Right.
00:21:06:27 - 00:21:14:20
Dr Connmie Zweig
And that's the just messaging that we, you and I had growing up. It's less so now, but, you know, it's still there.
00:21:14:22 - 00:21:18:12
Dr. Selina Matthews
Yeah. Yeah. It's just addressed to acceptance.
00:21:18:28 - 00:21:22:15
Dr Connmie Zweig
Yeah. So that self-acceptance is key.
00:21:24:05 - 00:21:53:25
Dr. Selina Matthews
Okay, so when is self-acceptance? But is there a we have a midlife crisis as we go through the life span. We have a midlife crisis. We see that happen all the time. Is there a different crisis that happens for your word? And I want to thank you for for bringing that to my consciousness. The elder for the elder crisis.
00:21:53:25 - 00:21:59:19
Dr. Selina Matthews
Is there a crisis that happens when you become an elder? I would.
00:21:59:24 - 00:22:30:26
Dr Connmie Zweig
Yes. Okay. So I call it the late life identity crisis. And what do I mean by that? Something triggers another identity crisis like we have in midlife. And for many people, it's retirement. But it could also be an illness or an emotional loss. And we end up saying to ourselves, who am I again? Who am I now at 60.
00:22:31:01 - 00:23:09:03
Dr Connmie Zweig
At 70? At 80? Who am I without my spouse? Or who am I without my job, my role, my contribution? My husband is going through that now. He's been the fabulous psychologist, Bernadette, many decades, and he's moving into semi-retirement. And I can see him really kind of questioning, letting go of this role and shifting into what's next. And that's why I picked up this term, shifting from role to sole.
00:23:09:22 - 00:23:45:19
Dr Connmie Zweig
I borrowed back phrase from Ram Dass. He coined that phrase because it says perfectly beside what this identity crisis is about. We've lived in these roles mother, wife, therapist, doctor, or teacher secretary, attorney. We lived in these roles sister, daughter. And when these roles fall away in later life, who am I? Healthy person is another one. So who am I now?
00:23:46:15 - 00:24:24:20
Dr Connmie Zweig
And that is really a call for spiritual practice, because that's the identity that lasts. That's not fleeting. That's not just based in the moment and on what we do. And so we can begin to shift our unconscious identification from what we do to who we really are, to literally, really are, whether we call it our Christ nature or Buddha nature, spirit being So whatever it is we call it, that's okay.
00:24:25:03 - 00:24:35:01
Dr Connmie Zweig
We can use the language of our own tradition or we can make up our own language. But the I relate like identity crisis is calling us to make that shift.
00:24:35:22 - 00:25:15:20
Dr. Selina Matthews
Well, that's really, really, really beautiful. So the late, like, late life identity crisis. I like how you put that because as it is, there's no ageism in it. And so that's really brilliant, Connie. Really, really brilliant. I really want to acknowledge that. That is amazing. So we have the identity crisis, the movement from role to Soul, which you've eloquently expressed, the rite of passage.
00:25:17:09 - 00:25:27:09
Dr. Selina Matthews
But are there any aspects of denial that we struggle with during that that time?
00:25:29:22 - 00:26:00:16
Dr Connmie Zweig
I think most people struggle with denial of age, as we were saying a minute ago, and it may come up in all kinds of ways. So, for example, people don't want to retire and there's a real struggle, especially for men. But now, you know, many women are so identified with their careers, it's it's a struggle to let go of what we've done, what we do.
00:26:00:26 - 00:26:48:07
Dr Connmie Zweig
And that's a shadow character I call the doer. So the doer is not good or bad, but it's an identity that may block the transition to the elder. Because if we remain attached to all the roles and productivity and success like we were identified with at midlife, then what happens? We deny the value of slowing down and pausing for self reflection and taking the time to really ask Who am I now and what practices do I need or what rituals do I need or who do I need as a companion at this time?
00:26:48:16 - 00:27:00:12
Dr Connmie Zweig
What should I read about now? How should I'd be creative now in a way that's completely different than I was created before? I've just taken up knitting and I'm having such a good time.
00:27:00:12 - 00:27:00:23
Dr. Selina Matthews
I lead.
00:27:01:21 - 00:27:32:10
Dr Connmie Zweig
Yeah. That's so unexpected. My husband can't believe it. So, you know, and I feel like I'm channeling my grandma. So, you know, if we don't allow the doer to move off of center stage, then we're in denial of our own needs at this time. But let me clarify, because most people hear this and they go into a split being and doing right.
00:27:32:21 - 00:28:00:07
Dr Connmie Zweig
We're doing and not do. I am not telling people to be couch potatoes. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that this is a time for self-reflection and that may lead you to be productive in a home in a way, it may lead you to a kind of service or volunteer work that you never imagined before or a creative project or whatever it is.
00:28:01:05 - 00:28:36:15
Dr Connmie Zweig
So for me, but but the deeper level, Salena, is on the level of awareness. What we're doing or don't or not doing isn't as important as what is the quality of awareness. We're doing it where we could talk about the elders, quality of awareness. So from the outside I look like a workaholic. I mean, here I am. We're talking about the aging book and I've got a new book coming out, so I look like the big doer.
00:28:36:15 - 00:29:12:19
Dr Connmie Zweig
Yes, but in terminally I'm not experiencing it that way. In my forties, when I wrote a book about the Shadow, I was really driven and focused on success and fame and money and all that crap. Today I'm having this experience of freedom inside from the outcomes, freedom from the outcomes that I can't control. I really see I can't control how this book sells or how it affects people or how they read it or how they review it.
00:29:12:27 - 00:29:47:04
Dr Connmie Zweig
You just had a bad review. There's nothing I can do about it. There's a way in which the elders quality of awareness is so much less stressful and so much less egotistical and much more about generosity and contribution and legacy. So for me, I'm focused on these books as my legacy. It's what I'm leaving behind. I didn't have children.
00:29:47:19 - 00:29:57:02
Dr Connmie Zweig
They're my babies, and I'm leaving them behind. And it's a very different feeling from my experience of publishing in my forties.
00:29:58:21 - 00:30:31:12
Dr. Selina Matthews
So it's totally a quality. The reason that you did it in your forties and the reason you're doing it now are completely different and your relationship to yourself is completely different because you have the wisdom of age and the work, you know, your depth, psychological work that you did as a clinician and as elected. Yeah, and all of that has shifted you also and it has changed your relationship to the doer.
00:30:31:24 - 00:30:56:12
Dr. Selina Matthews
So that the old doer, when you were 40 and the the doer in your age at this at this moment is a completely different relationship. And as you said at that time, it things may not have come through at the same way that they are coming through now, because you you've set the stage through your meditation and spiritual practice.
00:30:56:22 - 00:31:13:10
Dr. Selina Matthews
And so it's easy for you now because it's just the way it is and it's you're following your soul path. Before you were doing your soul path, not being your soul path, is that am I getting it right?
00:31:14:15 - 00:31:44:24
Dr Connmie Zweig
Yes, that's exactly right. I really am aware that my what I call my soul's mission. I wrote about this in the book. I discovered this through doing my like review that my soul's mission for all, for different, very different careers was transmitting information about consciousness now. And that that's why I've been doing everything I've been doing and I'm not doing it.
00:31:46:29 - 00:32:22:19
Dr Connmie Zweig
It's coming through. It always has been coming through. But there were just more sort of blocks in the stream before where I thought I could manage it and control over it. And you know what's more, there was more of an agenda about it, but at this stage of life, it's very clear that Connie's not in charge. And and you also begin to see that with illnesses.
00:32:22:19 - 00:32:50:27
Dr Connmie Zweig
I mean, my husband just had a health scare and he's very spiritually advanced. And we both just had to recognize we're we're we're not in control here. There's a lot of uncertainty. Gee, living at this age And, you know, I talked about the three qualities of awareness to become an elder, sheer awareness, which we're talking about in meditation.
00:32:51:09 - 00:33:39:13
Dr Connmie Zweig
So connecting to the self or the transpersonal center or spirit on a regular basis, shadow awareness, connecting to the psyche, the unconscious through drains or creativity or shadow work and mortality awareness and maintaining this awareness that we really could die at any moment leaves us with this quality of aliveness and vitality and preciousness as of the moment. And that's what Neil and I have just been living that so intensely as we've been going through these these health crises we have now.
00:33:39:26 - 00:34:05:28
Dr Connmie Zweig
And it just pushes us into now and adoring each other and being really present and letting go because we do what we can do. I'm not saying we're passive. We do everything we can do and we recognize this is the time we have. And so that is a part of being an elder. There isn't a sense of, you know, like my grandkids think they have forever.
00:34:06:19 - 00:34:27:12
Dr Connmie Zweig
I mean, there's no reason for them to think that way. And then my step kids in their forties think they have forever, but for us, mortality awareness is a daily teaching, and that's really precious and really, really powerful.
00:34:28:00 - 00:34:58:24
Dr. Selina Matthews
No, I would absolutely agree with you. Yeah, I had a I want to share something with you. About eight or nine years ago, I had a dream and the dream told me the date of my death. I freaked out for like three days. I was not functional because it was a much younger than I would have imagined. But it was the soul waking me up.
00:34:59:05 - 00:35:26:15
Dr. Selina Matthews
What that dream did. I changed my life. I am doing what I want. I am not worried about the future as the way a lot of people are worried. I'm just living my life, whether live or I don't live. It doesn't really matter. But the wake up call that I got from that dream was phenomenal and I want to go back to the Buddhists.
00:35:26:15 - 00:35:35:27
Dr. Selina Matthews
They also meditate on their on your death. That way you focus on the present. Am I correct on that?
00:35:37:04 - 00:36:16:12
Dr Connmie Zweig
Yes. They're actually in almost every tradition in in Christianity, it's called Memento Mori. Buddhists meditate on skulls. I mean, there are all kinds of practices for meditating on the transitory ness of the body, and it's very powerful. And it's also a recognition that everything is temporary and we're just moving through. And the part of us that lives on whatever, whatever we call that is a part of us that's evolving and that will continue.
00:36:16:21 - 00:36:56:23
Dr Connmie Zweig
But this body will die, my consciousness will die. And that has been with me in meditation for a long time now. Sometimes in my practice I will do breathing in and breathing out. And with every exhale, I imagine that it's my last breath and I just release it as deeply as I can, letting go and practicing dying. And there are other meditations like that as well to be able to practice the inevitable moment.
00:36:57:09 - 00:37:31:16
Dr Connmie Zweig
But it's not inevitable that you'll be conscious at your death. That takes practices. So that is kind of built into all the traditions. There are a lot of books and teachings about that and videos about that. Now it's pretty openly available. And, you know, I want to mention in the inner work of age, there are a lot of interviews with spiritual teachers, and many of them talk about the practices that they're doing now in late life.
00:37:32:18 - 00:37:52:15
Dr Connmie Zweig
Can Wilber, Father Thomas Keating, Krishna does rabbi around the rabbi, Rabbi SHAPIRO And they're talking about practices that are that are appropriate for Sid for this time of the life. And so people can find those in those chapters?
00:37:53:04 - 00:38:27:25
Dr. Selina Matthews
Well, no, absolutely. And I think, you know, as you were about meditating on your last breath, I just thought I'd never heard that. And I think that is extraordinary and I'm going to incorporate that into my practice for personally and with my clients because that's important, brings them back into the present, which is what we can get lost in in, in the culture that we live in.
00:38:27:25 - 00:39:03:14
Dr. Selina Matthews
And the, you know, all the things that are going on right now. Yeah. I want to go to a question that I have. The you wrote about 80% of women are more likely to face poverty. I was shocked at this. I was devastated when when I heard you when I read this in your book, are how can we make a change in this?
00:39:03:14 - 00:39:04:24
Dr. Selina Matthews
This is not okay.
00:39:07:15 - 00:39:47:12
Dr Connmie Zweig
But yeah, you know, the social safety net for elders but also for all poor people is getting more and more afraid in our culture. And people feel very unsafe, is actually a high suicide rate now among white elder males, there's high drug addiction to pain pills and alcohol. And so, you know, many people are not having an easy time of it.
00:39:48:19 - 00:40:24:12
Dr Connmie Zweig
And I think it's that's why important to maintain our connection to the political process and to roading. People who speak about this, like Bernie Sanders and others who speak up about how we protect the social safety net for the most vulnerable. So I'm not an advocate of inner work alone or out or work alone. I really believe we need to do both in all of these arenas that we're talking about.
00:40:26:06 - 00:41:20:09
Dr Connmie Zweig
And there's an international movement now against ageism that people are interested in that they can see what the UN is doing about it. Ashton Apple Way is Big, has a wonderful website which is big pages and crusader and anti ageism crusader. There's a lot going on in that social justice field and and there's really a need and there's a lot of blogs online too and changing aging saying international as a hyphen n G is a community of elders who are teaching well, they have all kinds of webinars happening and they have a one year program that's an initiation to become an elder, which I took before I wrote my book, and that's available to everyone,
00:41:20:29 - 00:41:55:14
Dr Connmie Zweig
Sage and Dawg. There's also third act, which is a fabulous community of elders who are interested in the climate crisis and the democracy crisis, being headed by Bill McKibben, who is the founder of 350 Board. So that's a great way to engage. They're focused on moving money out of the fossil fuel banks. And so while there's all this poverty in the older adult population, we also baby boomers also have more resources than any other group.
00:41:56:14 - 00:42:19:09
Dr Connmie Zweig
And so those of us with resources can get engaged by moving our money into banks that are not funding the climate crisis. My husband and I are just we just found green credit cards. We're cutting up our old cards. So there's all kinds of ways to engage in in the politics of all this as well.
00:42:19:15 - 00:42:26:19
Dr. Selina Matthews
Green credit cards, That's a first. I've never heard of that. That's that's something new. I'm going to look into green and all.
00:42:26:20 - 00:42:59:05
Dr Connmie Zweig
Yeah. So green America dot org. Let me put it in the chat because I'm so passionate about this. Oh, I love Let me see your chat net. Yeah it was green America dot org gives you I think it's dot org maybe it's dot com. I'm not sure if it's com or tech. So they'll give you a selection of credit cards that are that have nothing to do with the bad banks.
00:42:59:05 - 00:43:36:24
Dr Connmie Zweig
The five big bad banks and that fund all positive social project. Well so there's all you know there's a lot of different ways that founders and people of every age now can contribute and become engaged and find purpose. If you're interested in intergenerational. Encore Mortgage, which used to be for Elders, has now become code generation. And so it's youth and elders working together and all different kinds of causes and that's another great group Wonderful.
00:43:36:24 - 00:44:06:20
Dr. Selina Matthews
I was unaware of all of this thank you for Enlighten me lightning me. My goodness. I want to go to you know, you are the guru on shadow work. You have written the books on that. Are there shadow characters that emerge as you are aging that you want to bring out to us and and talk about.
00:44:08:10 - 00:44:35:14
Dr Connmie Zweig
Okay, so let me define the shadow so people are not last year. So B Shadow is the name that Carl Jung gave to the personal unconscious, that part of us that holds their forbidden, unwelcome, unacceptable feelings, traits, behaviors, ghosts in us that we learn as very young children. That's not okay. It's not okay to cry. It's not okay to get angry.
00:44:36:00 - 00:45:00:17
Dr Connmie Zweig
It's not okay to say that it's not okay to get your brother, whatever it is. And those parts of us get repressed. We say in psychology, we're banished to the unconscious. And then what happens is that builds energy. It's energy, it's charged, and it begins to erupt in other stages of our life. You can see teenagers acting out their shadows in all kinds of ways.
00:45:01:01 - 00:45:27:07
Dr Connmie Zweig
You could see politicians these days, every politician acting out their shadows, Right. So you can see it in addiction. You can see it in depression, you can see it in creativity blocks. You can see it in self-sabotaging choices, like choosing the same romantic partner over and over and over again. Right?
00:45:27:09 - 00:45:38:19
Dr. Selina Matthews
So, yes, we know a lot I know a lot of people that are doing that by goodness. Wiles Yeah. Duff And they don't they just don't stop, no matter what I said.
00:45:39:19 - 00:46:11:06
Dr Connmie Zweig
Yeah. So that's that's what Romancing the Shadow is about because our unconscious is leading us to do right. And it has certain valid needs in there to keep on acting it out and become conscious of why, what the patterns are right. But it's so painful. It's painful to experience it. It's painful to watch. So as we age, we continue to meet the shadow we continue to encounter these unwelcome parts of ourselves.
00:46:11:06 - 00:46:43:14
Dr Connmie Zweig
So you and I talked about the inner ages and we talked about the jeweler. So My work has been taking this kind of amorphous, generalized motion. The shadow inside the body mind, and making conscious these little parts that I call shadow characters by identifying what are we saying to ourselves, What are we doing and what are we, what do we sensing in the body?
00:46:44:09 - 00:47:26:26
Dr Connmie Zweig
And when we get those three cues, we can then get an image and a name for a shadow character like the inner just. And when we have that veneer, it's no longer lost in that amorphous general shadow content. It becomes specific and we start to see it's the same thing every single time. Every time that addict shows up the food or the couch potato or the lazy one or the angry guy, whatever it is, it always says the same thing.
00:47:27:02 - 00:48:01:04
Dr Connmie Zweig
Your mind feels the same thing and has the same bodily sensations every single time. So you start to recognize this as a recurring character in your psyche. And with age and especially the longevity that we experience now, we we begin to experience these shadow characters bumping up into awareness in all kinds of ways. So it may come up as the self-hate we were talking about.
00:48:01:28 - 00:48:42:00
Dr Connmie Zweig
It may come up as a the denial we were talking about. So they deny or because, you know holding on to youth or midlife with a death grip and and so we can begin then after we can begin to see I interviewed a bunch of people who've had a lot of surgery to keep from getting old. And I didn't put this in the book, but there's a way in which people who are doing that can accept the changes in their bodies.
00:48:42:26 - 00:49:09:27
Dr Connmie Zweig
And for some, that's a shadow character. I didn't use it because I don't think it's true. It's so it's so nuanced, so, you know, we can look at celebrities who do that and understand that the ageism in their industry requires that of then. Or we can say, well, no, they're all these older women in the industry who don't do that.
00:49:10:20 - 00:49:44:26
Dr Connmie Zweig
And they still, you know, get jobs. So it's a very complex thing. So you go into the individual psychology and you begin to see is that woman or man in denial or in self rejection or self-loathing or in financial fear if they don't do that or and so what is underneath? And then you can kind of uncover who the shadow character is and what is that part that's leading them to this behavior.
00:49:45:24 - 00:50:20:21
Dr Connmie Zweig
And I think for every person, you know, it's a little bit different. There are communities that welcome and honor elders. There are families that, you know, revere grandparents, and those folks have different experiences of their shadows. And then there's, I think, the larger general population that's really struggling with this. And, you know, one another. One of the figures that came up in the book is the bag lady.
00:50:21:26 - 00:50:54:02
Dr Connmie Zweig
And you mentioned the poverty epidemic, poverty among older women and many people I interviewed had that fear of becoming homeless and poor and dependent and alone on the street, you know, in their eighties. And so it turned out I did some research and there was actually an insurance company that found that there's an epidemic of this bag lady, a shadow character in American women.
00:50:54:02 - 00:51:20:19
Dr. Selina Matthews
Yeah. And you know what? It doesn't only start when you're elderly. I have young women in their twenties coming in and have have such a fear of of pushing the shopping cart on the street. And so it doesn't I think it's for women. I don't I don't hear men talking like this, but I hear women right across the generations talking about this.
00:51:21:03 - 00:51:22:14
Dr Connmie Zweig
That's yeah, I.
00:51:22:14 - 00:51:23:10
Dr. Selina Matthews
Didn't get hits.
00:51:23:14 - 00:51:37:07
Dr Connmie Zweig
I mean, all kids through the life span. It's through the life span because we internalize it when we're young. Internalized ageism happens in childhood. And now they're looking for not only.
00:51:37:23 - 00:51:39:00
Dr. Selina Matthews
In childhood.
00:51:39:03 - 00:51:40:21
Dr Connmie Zweig
It happened readjusted.
00:51:40:21 - 00:51:45:01
Dr. Selina Matthews
Up in childhood, the way we think about age.
00:51:45:01 - 00:51:53:21
Dr Connmie Zweig
That's yeah, yeah. I didn't have a single positive model of an elder in my childhood. I don't know if you know.
00:51:53:22 - 00:51:54:01
Dr. Selina Matthews
I.
00:51:54:11 - 00:51:54:27
Dr Connmie Zweig
Don't know how.
00:51:55:04 - 00:52:11:13
Dr. Selina Matthews
I believe I, you know, because I had more of a pathological family. I think my, my psychological health to both my grandmothers who were angels and of course saved me. They they saved me and I.
00:52:11:20 - 00:52:38:11
Dr Connmie Zweig
Okay. Right. But not but not only in that way, Syleena, also because you internalize them as positive illness. And many people don't have that. And if you have that, it gives you some inoculation against the ageism. I interviewed one woman who said she couldn't wait till she was really old. She was so excited about it because she had, you know, all these great women in her life.
00:52:38:28 - 00:53:04:01
Dr Connmie Zweig
So that makes a difference. But the shadow forms right along with the ego. So if we're learning as our personalities are shaped, that young is good and old is bad, I mean, I asked my grandkids about this get in all this terrible, too, that we can't see anything good about it, you know? Yeah, they can't see anything good about it.
00:53:04:01 - 00:53:20:02
Dr Connmie Zweig
And then I show them my books and I talk to them about it and I, you know, but we learned this when we were very young. I remember watching All in the Family and Archie Bunker when I was growing up. You maybe you I knew.
00:53:20:02 - 00:53:22:15
Dr. Selina Matthews
I watched Archie Bunker, too. Yes.
00:53:23:02 - 00:53:50:07
Dr Connmie Zweig
But he is the most a just sexist character. And I watched that to my whole childhood. So these messages come early and they carry with us through the life span. And so, you know, these these shadow characters form along with those messages, and they're outside of our awareness and we're not we don't become conscious of them until they erupt in these comfortable ways.
00:53:50:24 - 00:54:23:19
Dr. Selina Matthews
Right now, there's we have a couple of women that I want to talk about, Nancy Pelosi, who is working through her eighties, Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda. And there's many more. I mean, we're talking political, there's more than this, but let's just stick to these. They're in a certain way trailblazers because in, you know, 3040 years ago there weren't these kinds of women doing that.
00:54:23:26 - 00:54:28:25
Dr. Selina Matthews
Have they changed the archetype or the myth of aging for us?
00:54:31:03 - 00:55:01:27
Dr Connmie Zweig
Well, I think for people who are observant and sensitive to what's happening, they can see the competence and creativity and brilliance of those three women. I think Jane Fonda is coming out with it like her fourth movie now. She's I mean, she's so prolific right now, you know. But then there's also Dianne Feinstein, who won't step down, although she's lost her confidence.
00:55:02:24 - 00:55:29:22
Dr Connmie Zweig
So there is a tension between how long do we work, how long do we hold on to power, How long do we stay in the public arena or the the corporate arena? And what happens when we start to deny our limitations? So you ask me about denial. And I think denial of limitations is really a big one.
00:55:30:11 - 00:55:30:27
Dr. Selina Matthews
Yes.
00:55:32:00 - 00:56:01:28
Dr Connmie Zweig
So, yes, there is this modeling that's positive now. And certainly those three women are incredible, as does Gloria Steinem. I mean, I could name a whole bunch of them, of course. And then there are people who are who are in denial that they reached a limit. Right. And that's what, you know, people are now saying about Biden, He looks very competent.
00:56:01:28 - 00:56:35:16
Dr Connmie Zweig
I don't know the story, you know, but there is this it's very tricky because the language doesn't have the nuance to really talk about AIDS in these ways, because as you said, we haven't had these kind of models before. We haven't had a president who at 80 is so compromised. And so it's very tricky. And I don't know how much it's seeping into the collective yet.
00:56:36:18 - 00:56:38:07
Dr Connmie Zweig
I really know that.
00:56:42:02 - 00:56:45:02
Dr. Selina Matthews
What is a completed life.
00:56:48:26 - 00:57:37:16
Dr Connmie Zweig
So very individual. All right. What's a fulfilled, completed life for me may not be the same for new. So the chapter on life completion seemed really important to me as a way to communicate and that we need a vision for this time. And each of us needs our own vision for fulfillment. So I use this story of Moses not getting into the Promised Land, and I asked, What is your promised land and what happens if you enter it or if you're not allowed to enter it?
00:57:38:26 - 00:58:18:21
Dr Connmie Zweig
And I got you know, different responses from different people, sort of different levels of response to the question. And for me, it's very much a spiritual question because my vision has been about attaining a higher level of consciousness, and that's been the meaning of my life for other people. It's about seeing their grandkids grow up or leaving some kind of creative legacy or working in service and volunteering and having an impact on younger people's lives.
00:58:19:14 - 00:58:38:12
Dr Connmie Zweig
So I think those kinds of questions can bring a lot of meaning at this time. And the question of what would you regret not having done on your deathbed?
00:58:38:16 - 00:58:40:28
Dr. Selina Matthews
Wow, that's pretty powerful.
00:58:41:19 - 00:58:43:21
Dr Connmie Zweig
Is a part of that question.
00:58:43:27 - 00:58:44:23
Dr. Selina Matthews
Very power.
00:58:44:29 - 00:59:12:04
Dr Connmie Zweig
It's a and if we sit with that, we can get a sense, I think, of what is a completed life for us. What do we really like? My friend Phil has been telling me for five decades that he has to write a novel and he's in his seventies and he's doing it and he's never been happier. So what is that for you?
00:59:13:14 - 00:59:27:18
Dr Connmie Zweig
You know, what is that? That one thing that you will regret if you don't say it or do it? For some people, it may be an apology giving or receiving forgiveness.
00:59:28:18 - 00:59:29:01
Dr. Selina Matthews
Wow.
00:59:29:16 - 01:00:12:07
Dr Connmie Zweig
For some people it may be a feeling, an experience of a feeling that they've never allowed or reimagining a belief. Like I had a client who said he was a Buddhist and he was practicing Buddhist meditation. But when we really uncovered his images of God in the in shadow work, he had this Catholic pulp figure telling him he was bad, shaking his finger at him, telling him he was bad, bringing sexual feelings.
01:00:13:26 - 01:00:51:16
Dr Connmie Zweig
And that was underneath all these Buddhist practices that were calming him down. And he couldn't figure out why he was so anxious. So in order to be able to, you know, have experience led completion, we need to dig and kind of excavate and explore our psyches in a way that allows us to find that completion, that piece, that piece of mind and that self acceptance that we were talking about and the contribution or the legacy that's just for us.
01:00:51:16 - 01:01:15:21
Dr Connmie Zweig
It doesn't have to be a big thing. I'm very aware now, as I said, I didn't have kids, but I have grandkids through my husband and I'm very aware when I'm with some of the impact that have having on the future. And one of the little boys is very anxious. And I sit with him and I breathe and it calms down and I go tell him what I'm doing.
01:01:16:00 - 01:01:31:20
Dr Connmie Zweig
But I can feel and calm down. And the other kids, I but they're we read together. So whatever it is, your contribution can be meaningful to the future. And your future delivered.
01:01:31:20 - 01:02:11:15
Dr. Selina Matthews
An incredible contribution through your wisdom, through your books, through your lectures, through your teaching. I am totally honored from all of my heart. I am honored to have you here to talk about this topic of aging. I mean, really organizing amazing work that you've done. Creative, amazing, brilliant. I have. There's so many words. Thank you for being on this show.
01:02:11:29 - 01:02:13:17
Dr. Selina Matthews
Really. Thank you. Thank you. Good.
01:02:13:24 - 01:02:14:24
Dr Connmie Zweig
Lovely to remember.
01:02:14:24 - 01:02:15:08
Dr. Selina Matthews
You, too.