Psyche & Soul 58: SIGNING OFF

Psyche & Soul 58

SIGNING OFF

Jose Parappully SDB, PhD

sumedhacentre@gmail.com

Podcast Link:

https://anchor.fm/boscom/episodes/2-58-Psyche--Soul--123-e15hk6o

Hello, this is Jose Parappully, Salesian priest and clinical psychologist at Sumedha Centre for Psychospiritual Wellbeing at Jeolikote, Uttarakhand (sumedhacentre@gmail.com) signing off with the final edition of Psyche & Soul.

……..

Dear Listeners,

This is the final podcast in the series Psyche and Soul. For the 57 weeks, I have been able to present regularly some psychospiritual reflections on these podcasts. In these reflections I used insights from psychology, sacred scripture as well as the socio-political realities of our everyday life to help us enhance our emotional wellbeing and our spiritual life – our psyche and our soul.

Thank you very much for your encouragement and appreciation which kept me going, week after week for more than a year. A special word of thanks to PT Joseph, the www.donboscoindia.com  web master, and CM Paul of Radio Salesian for facilitating the uploading of the podcast, and to Yesudas Karakkattu for composing and performing the Psyche & Soul theme song and background music.

All the 57 podcasts will be available on www.donboscoindia.com webpage, and www.anchor.fm/boscom  for you to access whenever you want. May these podcasts enhance your psychospiritual journey, take you deeper and deeper into your psyche and soul.

In this final podcast, No 58, I list the weekly podcasts under 8 themes.

Theme 1: Psychospiritual Wellbeing (5 podcasts)

1.      1.Foundations of Health and Happiness.

2.      2. Childhood Foundation of Healthy Relationships:  Trust

3.      3. Childhood Foundations of Healthy Relationships 2: Secure Attachments

4.      4. Threats To Healthy Adult Relationships: Insecure Attachments In Childhood

5.      5. Need Empathic And Admirable People Around Us

Theme 2. There were four podcasts Related to the Corona Pandemic (4 podcasts)

Covid:  A Time of Massive Disruption (19)

6.      6. Self-Care During Covid

7.      7. Coping with Stress and Anxiety During Covid – Physical, Mental and Spiritual Strategies

      Transformation through Community & Compassion (20)

Theme 3: Emotional Wellbeing (11 podcasts)

8.      8. Need Fulfilment and Emotional Maturation

9.       9. Living with Meaning and Purpose

1010 .  Self-Knowledge

1111. .  Self-acceptance

1212..  Balancing Autonomy and Dependence

1313.  Emotions, Health and Happiness

1414.  Living Gratefully

1515.  Generosity

1616.  Hope And Optimism

1717. Resilience: Thriving Despite Adversity

1818.  Stress: Prevention and Relief

Theme 4: Spirituality (6 podcasts)

2121.  Psychology, Spirituality and Religion

2222.  A Splintered, Distorted Spirituality

2323.  Holistic Spirituality: Wholeness, Not Flawlessness

2424.  Spirituality of Simplicity – “Downward Mobility”

2525.  Spirituality of Embodiment

2626.  Moving into the New Year with Hope!

Theme 6: Mental Health (12 podcasts)

2727.  Mental Health and Wellbeing

2828.  Enhancing Mental Health and Wellbeing Through Grateful Living

2929.  Enhancing Mental Health and Wellbeing Through Meaningful Living

3030.  Enhancing Mental Health and Wellbeing: Some Simple Practices

3131.  Enhancing Mental Health: 7 More Simple Practices

3232.  The Burden of Mental Illness

3333.  Major Depression

3434.  Schizophrenia - 1

3535.  Schizophrenia – 2: Symptoms and Dynamics

36.36  Schizophrenia – 3: Roots And Remedies. 

3737. Anxiety Disorder 

3838. Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Theme 7: Personality Disorders (5 podcasts)

3939.  Personality Disorders: What They Are.

4040.  Narcissistic Personality Disorder. 

4141. Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder.  

4142. Borderline Personality Disorder., 

4343.  Paranoid Personality Disorder

Theme 8: Midlife Dynamics and the Spiritual Journey (14 podcasts)

4444.  Awakening to Midlife

4545.  Midlife Journeying

4646.  Emotional Awareness of Mortality

4747.  Time for Reassessment

4848.  Reassessment of “Dreams. 

4949. De-Illusioning 

5050.  Redeeming the “Shadow”

5151.  (Re-) Emergence of Sexuality and Intimacy Needs

5252.  Sexuality and Intimacy Needs: Women’s Experience

5353.  Balancing the Masculine and the Feminine

5454.  Moving Toward Integrity 

5555.Atonement (At-One-Men)t. 

5656. Aging Gracefully 

5757.  Spirituality for the Post-Midlife Years

 

I conclude with some significant quotes from the podcasts, something I would like to leave as a legacy from these podcasts.

“Acceptance of oneself is …the acid test of one’s whole outlook on life.” Carl Jung

“If you have a WHY to live for, you can live any HOW.” Nietzsche

 “If the only prayer you ever say in your life is ‘Thank you’, that is enough” Meister Eckhart

 “There are only two ways to live your life: as though nothing is a miracle, or as though everything is a miracle.” Albert Einstein

 “Split the wood, and I am there. Turn over the stone, and there you will find me.” Jesus, in the Gospel of Thomas, #77)

 

Thank you once again, for listening, for your support and appreciation. May your life be healthy and happy!

Theme Song “Listen to the Spirit.” Lyric by Jose Parappully SDB.  Sung by Yesudas Karakkatttu SDB

The Spirit is in us, around us!

Speaking to us…

Through all that happens to us

And around us.

Inviting and exhorting us

To health and wholeness.

Come let us listen to the Sprit

Let’s grow in our psyche and soul.

Background music: Composed and performed by Yesudas Karakkattu, SDB

Jose Parappully SDB, PhD

sumedhacentre@gmail.com

Psyche & Soul 57: SPIRITUALITY FOR THE POST-MIDLIFE YEARS

 Psyche & Soul 57

SPIRITUALITY FOR THE POST-MIDLIFE YEARS

JOSE PARAPPULLY SDB, PhD

sumedhacentre@gmail.com 

Podcast link:

https://anchor.fm/boscom/episodes/2-57-Psyche--Soul--121-e1570kc 

Hello, this is Jose Parappully, Salesian priest and clinical psychologist at Sumedha Centre for Psychospiritual Wellbeing at Jeolikote, Uttarakhand (sumedhacentre@gmail.com) with another edition of Psyche & Soul.

In this edition I present some salient features of a spirituality for the post-midlife years.

**********************

Let me begin with a true story. Thomas grew up in a devout catholic family. He was quite fond of his religion. He liked to go to Mass and serve as an altar boy. One of his brothers became a priest and a sister a religious nun.

However, after his college studies he became a staunch Marxist, distanced himself from his religious roots and began to disparage all forms of religious practices as foolish superstition. He even participated in anti-church rallies, denouncing the clergy. Years passed that way.

Now in his sixties he has gone through a re-conversion. He is again a devout catholic, joining in family prayers, a daily church goer and an active participant in parish activities. He loves especially the Benediction, with the ritualistic ambience of incense and candles. His erstwhile Marxist friends are flabbergasted and even make fun of him. But he does not care.

RE-EXPERIENCING THE SACRED

Re-conversion experience, like that of Thomas, is quite common in the post midlife years.

Often during the journey through adolescence and young adulthood the sense of the sacred recedes and sometimes disappears from conscious awareness and expression. However, as life slows down and one moves toward the sunset years, the sense of the sacred remerges.

Post-midlifers begin to ask some ultimate questions: What is the meaning of life? What happens after death?... A longing for the earlier connectedness with the Divine surfaces along with desire to enhance and deepen it.

The sense of the sacred is manifest in the sense of gratitude for the ways their life has evolved through ups and downs, the many ways their life has been blessed, in the sense of awe and wonder they experience in the nostalgic reminiscence of a long life and in the new openness to and enjoyment of sacred rituals and ceremonies.

Further, post-midlifers become more patient and forgiving, more accepting of vulnerabilities, theirs and those of others, more acknowledging of mistakes and failures.

They begin to see life’s hurdles as spiritual lessons, opportunities for growth and understanding. They discover in the mystical/spiritual realm a new kind of help and solutions for life’s problems and challenges.

 

SOME CHARACTERISTICS

Our spirituality is the way we live the existential realities of everyday life, with an attention to and reverence for the transcendental—that which is beyond us and the phenomenal world. It is not just one aspect of our life. It involves and embraces the whole of our life in the context of everyday living.

Our way of life and consequently our spirituality is conditioned by our life situation and environment in which we live. The post midlife years call for a spirituality keeping with the personal realities of those years: retirement, diminishing physical and mental capacities, emotional awareness of mortality. Below are some characteristics of a spirituality relevant for the post midlife years.

1.      Spirituality of Diminishment

As we grow older many things are taken away from us -- energy, vision, hearing, mobility, memory, mental sharpness. As we diminish in body, mind and spirit, our influence and involvement in the world around us are also lessened. We experience loss of power, status, influence that we once enjoyed.

We are called to find God in these painful losses and limitations. We are called to trust. We are called to engage in the prayer of “acceptance and letting go.”  We pray, “The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

We are challenged to learn to receive. In our more active days we were proud of our capacity to give, to contribute. Now we are called to receive than give. We are called to humbly recognise our limitations and dependency on others. We acknowledge and gracefully accept our dependency needs. 

2.      Spirituality of Slowing Down

The Spirituality of Diminishment is a “Spirituality of Slowing Down” – adapting our way of being in the world in keeping with our diminishment.

We are invited to free ourselves from all that is unessential and unimportant at this time of our life;

to focus less on achievements and accomplishments and to enjoy the process of living; to assess our self-worth less in terms of what we do, what we are able to accomplish, and more in terms of who we are, the persons we have become.

We were used to measuring our worth in terms of our capacity to accomplish things. Activity filled our lives. But now we can’t do much. Our limited energy is now spent in trying to get from one day to another. Our lives slow down and in that slowing down we are more able to be present to the here-and-now, to all that is happening in and around us. In that slowing down we have the opportunity to become more of a contemplative -- to take time to reminisce, to marvel at the daily miracles around us, to stand in awe and wonder.

3.      Spirituality of Contemplation

A spirituality of slowing down leads to a contemplative spirituality. To be a contemplative is to take a “long, loving, lingering look” at everything around us. We become contemplatives when we begin to experience the extraordinary in the ordinary, a deeper meaning in the mundane, when we focus totally on the here-and-now experience.

We are invited to make our prayer more and more contemplative. Contemplative prayer is simply being present to God, living in the awareness of God’s presence, saying nothing, doing nothing.

Contemplation is closely linked to a sense of awe and wonder — the ability to be moved by the daily miracles happening around us. Albert Einstein observed that a person “who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe is as good as dead.” In our post-midlife years we have ample time to stand in awe and wonder, especially as we engage in nostalgic reminiscence.

4.      Spirituality of Gratitude

A contemplative spirituality in which we are able stand in awe and wonder leads to a spirituality of grateful, appreciative living. As we reminisce over our long journey of life, we find so much to be grateful for. So many wonderful things have happened to us and continue to happen to us, even amidst the fragilities and vulnerabilities of advancing age. We express gratitude for the daily miracles that are part of our lives.

However, gratitude is not just saying “thank you” for the gifts received or for the good things that happen to us. Gratitude, as psychologist Robert Emmons defines it, is “the capacity to feel the emotion of thankfulness on a regular and consistent basis, across situations and over time.” We live gratefully even in the midst of pain and inconveniences. Gratitude is an appreciative disposition that we cultivate, an attitude that enables us to see the silver lining even around dark clouds.

Gratitude is a virtue that has been found to have enormous consequences for physical, emotional and spiritual well-being. As such it has also a utilitarian effect in the post-midlife years. Research has shown that grateful people fall less often sick, and even when they fall sick, they recover faster. More importantly, grateful people live significantly longer and happier lives than ungrateful people.

5.      Spirituality of Atonement

Post midlife years is a time to let go of past hurts and resentments which have such detrimental effect on our physical and mental health. Dr. Herbert Benson, Head of the Mind/Body Medical Institute at Harvard University, refers to the great harm that lack of forgiveness does to us. .“There’s a physiology of forgiveness,” he observes. “When you do not forgive, it will chew you up.” That is, it will destroy us from within. We let go of hurts resentments, and we reach out in forgiveness to others, so that we can look forward to death without fear and in peace.

6.      Spirituality of Surrender

As we recognize our limitations and lack of control over many aspects of our lives, we learn to surrender in faith and trust to a God who is in control of our lives. We pay heed to what Jesus told the Centurion: “Fear is useless, only trust is needed.” We trust that the Lord will take care of us. We do not need to worry. We practice a spirituality of surrender. We make our own the the prayer of Jesus in the Garden of Gethesmane: “Let your will be done, not mine.” Or like Mary of Nazareth, we say in faith and trust “Feat!” “Let it be as you wish.)

Introspection

• Is there anything in this podcast that touches me specially? If yes, what is it and why?
• How am I experiencing the re-emergence of the sacred in my life?
• Which of the post-midlife spiritualties are part of my life today and which do I need to practice a little more at this period of my life?

Prayer

Jesus’s assuring last words to us before he returned to his Father are: “I am with you always!” In the Old Testament God through his prophets repeatedly tells his people, “Do not be afraid, for I am with you.” We could stay a while in the presence of this God who accompanies us with love and care, who understands our inmost thoughts and feelings, desires and longings and talk to God about all that is going on in our lives at this period or what we experience when we look to the years ahead.. Or, we could Isaiah 43, 1-5, where God says: “Fear not… when you pass through the water I will be with you; in the rivers you will not drown; when you walk though fire , you will not be burned; the flames shall not consume you… Because you are precious in my yes… and because I love you.” And remain gratefully in the presence of this loving and protective God with whatever this passage evokes in us.

 

Have a blessed weekend. Stay safe. Stay Happy.

Thank you for listening/reading.

Pictures: Courtesy google Images

JOSE PARAPPULLY SDB, PhD

sumedhacentre@gmail.com

 

 

Psyche & Soul 56: Post Midlife -XIII AGING GRACEFULLY

 Podcast Link:

https://anchor.fm/boscom/episodes/2-56-Psyche--Soul--119-e14sa5v

Hello, this is Jose Parappully, Salesian priest and clinical psychologist at Sumedha Centre for Psychospiritual Wellbeing at Jeolikote, Uttarakhand (sumedhacentre@gmail.com)  with another edition of Psyche & Soul.

In this edition I present practices that help us age gracefully.

While I was in a neighbouring country for a Workshop I visited a nearby convent where there were a few nuns I knew. While taking tea the Superior of the community told me, “You must visit the youngest member of our community.” I was taken to an upstairs room where I met Sister Gladys (name changed). She had a beaming smile and her entire face had a glow of joy which lit up the room. She engaged me in pleasant conversation. She was 97 years young! She had been lying in her bed for a few months now. She had to be helped on to a wheelchair, for her to move anywhere. Despite her condition she appeared so happy and fulfilled and had the capacity to make others happy. I said to myself, “That’s what means to age gracefully!” My encounter with Sr. Gladys happened more than 20 years ago. But the image of the beaming, joyful sister who had aged so gracefully remains an inedible and delightful memory. There are countless others like Sister Gladys who have been able live happy, graceful lives and enjoy wellbeing even in old age despite many setbacks and limitations.

Post midlife-years can be difficult for a variety of reasons. The slowing down of metabolism and weakening immune system can lead to disabilities and illness. Loss of hearing, impaired vision, and limited motor agility can be particularly frustrating. There can be lack of feelings of self-efficacy for a variety of reasons. The negative attitudes expressed by family/community members, colleagues, and younger people toward the incompetence, dependence, or old-fashioned ways of older people can lead many of them feel quite discouraged about their self-worth.  Despite these challenges it is possible to age gracefully.

RESEARCH FINDINGS

Research on aging provides many insights as to what is required to age gracefully.

The MacArthur Foundation Study on Aging was undertaken by group of 16 scientists drawn from biology, neuroscience, neuropsychology, epidemiology, sociology, genetics, psychology, neurology, physiology, and geriatric medicine. Their conclusion on what leads to successful aging:  the ability to maintain three key behaviours or characteristics: a) low risk of disease and disease-related disability; b) high mental and physical function; and c) active engagement with life.

Mills Longitudinal Study compared cohorts of sick and healthy women at ages 41, 51, 61. This study too identified three characteristics of those who age successfully: a) increase in life satisfaction; b) reduced negative affect; c) increase in generative activities. Negative affect refers to emotions as such as anger, guilt, shame and so on. Generative activities refer to actions that express care for and attention to others.

The Harvard Study of Adult Development - “arguably the longest study of aging in the world” - consisted of three separate cohorts of 824 individuals—all selected as teenagers for different facets of mental and physical health nearly a century ago and studied for their entire lives. The first is a sample of 268 socially advantaged Harvard graduates born about 1920—”the longest prospective study of physical and mental health in the world.” The Second,  is a sample of 456 socially disadvantaged Inner City men born about 1930—”the longest prospective study of ‘blue collar’ adult development in the world.” Third is a sample of 90 middle-class, intellectually gifted women born about 1910—”the longest prospective study of women’s development in the world.”  

George Vaillant, a former director of study, writes in Aging Well:  “It is not the bad things that happen to us that doom us: it is the good people who happen to us at any age that facilitate enjoyable old age.” Successful aging is also facilitated by a capacity for gratitude, for forgiveness, and loving and being loved by a particular person. Alcohol abuse consistently predicted unsuccessful aging, in part because alcoholism damaged future social supports. Learning to play and create after retirement and learning to gain younger friends as one loses older ones were also significant contributors. Objective good physical health was less important to successful aging than subjective good health.  What is meant by this is that “it is all right to be ill as long as one does not feel sick.”

The Harvard Study also identified some significant characteristics of those who age gracefully: They care about others, are open to new ideas, and within the limits of physical health maintain usefulness to society and help others. They show cheerful tolerance of the difficulties of old age. They insist on sensible autonomy (doing for themselves and by themselves what they are able to) while willing to acknowledge their dependency needs and gracefully accept the help offered them. When ill, they are patients for whom a doctor enjoys caring. They are optimistic and look at the bright side of life. They maintain hope in life. They retain a sense of humour and a capacity for play. They are able to spend time in the nostalgic reminiscence of the past, yet they remain curious and continue to learn from the next generation. They try to maintain contact with old friends while making new ones.

The Nun Study, directed by David Snowdon and colleagues (originally begun as a study of Alzheimer’s disease) asked “Why do some of the sisters age gracefully, continuing to teach and serve, retaining their mental faculties into their eighties and nineties, even past one hundred? Why do others—who have lived such similar lives—appear to lose themselves, forgetting their closest friends and relatives and, in the end, becoming almost wholly disconnected from the world around them?” (Aging Gracefully, p.2)

The risk of death at any given year after age sixty-five is about 25 percent lower for the School Sisters of Notre Dame the subjects of the Nun Study than it is for the general population of women in the United States. What is it that helped these sisters to live dramatically longer (average age: 89; the youngest was 84; the oldest 106 years), and healthier, lives than their lay counterparts? The study provided the following answers:

1. Exercise: All the walking the sisters had done-- at a time when motorized transport was rarely available at the beginning of the last century—had helped them to live long and healthy. Exercise is one of the most reliable ways to preserve cardiovascular health. Exercise improves blood flow, bringing the brain the oxygen and the nutrients it needs to function well. Exercise reduces the stress hormones and increases the chemicals that nourish the brain cells. These changes help ward off depression and some kinds of damage to the brain tissue.
2. Education: About 85% of the sisters in the Nun study had bachelor’s degrees and about 45 % had master's degrees—“astounding statistics for any age group, let alone for women born in the early part of the [20^th] century.” Not only did the less-educated sisters have higher mortality rates, but their mental and physical abilities were much more limited if they did reach old age. These data are in keeping with earlier findings. As early as the 19^th century, British scientists had discovered a strong link between education and health.
3. Language: Language skills also had a significant impact on health and wellbeing in old age. The data from the Nun Study tended to confirm that healthy subjects were more proficient in sophisticated word use. They were apt at using multisyllabic words, such as particularly, privileged, and quarantined. In contrast, the sisters who later developed Alzheimer's more frequently used monosyllabic words, such as girls, boys, and sick.
4. Nutrition. What mattered was not just the quality of the food, the social environment of the meal also mattered. Snowdon wrote: “What I now know for sure is that nutrition for healthy aging is not just about eating certain foods or downing a certain milligrams of prescribed number of vitamins each day. It also depends on where we eat, whom we eat with, and whether the meal nourishes our heart, mind, and soul as well as our body,”
5. Positive Emotions: A positive outlook, especially early in life, contributed to longevity and wellbeing. In the autobiographies the sisters had written when they were an average age of twenty-two years old, positive emotional content strongly predicted who would live the longest lives. The sisters who scored the lowest number of positive-emotion sentences had twice the risk of death at any age when compared to those who were in the highest group. “This is a most extraordinary finding: A writing sample from early adult life offered a powerful clue as to who would be alive more than six decades later,” Snowdon observed.

Interestingly Snowdon refers to two factors that contributed to longevity and wellbeing which was not tested by the Nun Study design, “and yet after fifteen years of working with the sisters, I believe strongly in their importance” he observed.

6. Deep Spirituality. The first is the deep spirituality that these women shared. Profound faith buffers the sorrows and tragedies that all of us experience, Snowdon wrote. Moreover, evidence is now starting to accumulate from other studies that prayer and contemplation have a positive influence on long-term health and wellbeing. A Stanford Research Institution study, for example, has concluded “that the inner life, rather than externals, is central” to health and happiness.
7. Community. Convincing evidence is accumulating from other research, including those cited earlier in this article, that strong relationships as in marriage, membership in churches, clubs, or other social groups, and regular contact with family and friends all reduce the risk of death from the major killers such as coronary heart disease and stroke and enhance longevity. Community was a significant support system that the sisters shared.

A Summary

Summarising the data from research cited, here is a list of attitudes and behaviours that enable us to age gracefully:  Exercise of body and also of mind (through intellectual pursuits, maintaining curiosity and eagerness to learn), nutrition including a positive eating ambience, maintaining positive emotions, balancing independence and dependence, optimism and hope, sense of humour, thankful living, nostalgic reminiscence, helping others through generative activities, caring for and learning from future generation, healing from negative emotions, forgiveness, deep spirituality, and close relationships and community.

Introspection

• What do the research findings on aging gracefully evoke in you?
• Which of the factors that promote graceful aging are you practising? To which do you need to give greater attention?
• What are the implications for you personally, for your family or community?
• You may be aware persons like Sr. Gladys who have been able to age gracefully. Want van you learn from such persons?

Prayer

The Bible mentions a number of persons who have aged gracefully, remaining active and generative into ripe old age, such as the patriarchs Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Rachel, Moses and  David, Zechariah and Elizabeth… The Gospel of John (21, 18-19) has a scene in which Jesus describes what will happen to Peter in old age. We could read and stay with this passage or the stories concerning the other figures mentioned above and spend some time talking to God about what is evoked in us through this podcast and our reading and reflections.

Have a blessed and safe weekend.

Thank you for listening.

Pictures: Courtesy Google Images

\ Jose Parappully SDB, PhD

sumedhacentre@gmail.com