Last week I wrote about my wedding anniversary.  This week what’s on my mind is a different kind of anniversary, the anniversary reaction.  I was hesitant to write about it because I’d written a post about it before, but then it occurred to me that repetition is exactly the point!  An anniversary reaction, or as Ellen Hendrickson, PhD refers to as “the echo of a trauma or a loss,” is a repetition of a date or month or even a season during which a significant or traumatic event occurred.  And for me, today being my deceased sister Sarah’s birthday, and the smoke of wildfires causing my daughter’s school to close, the echoes of multiple losses are whispering loudly.

As research shows is common, although an anniversary reaction is predictable, the intensity and quality greatly varies.  Some years on my sister’s birthday or the anniversary date of her death I find myself sad and cranky, waking up in the middle of the night until I remember.  Other years I anticipate the date, often with a mix of dread and bittersweet nostalgia, appreciating that I still care and remember my sister reflexively. As I walk around our city today, with a deep smell of smoke and the sight of people wearing air filter masks, the topic of conversation is a collective sense of traumatic recall, people triggered by the similarities with a year ago’s tragic events.  Even the checker at my grocery store shared with me her evacuation story from last year’s fire.

If you are lucky enough to live a long time, the anniversary dates will stack up.  Each season may bring the anniversary date of the loss of someone or something important.  We can have reactions to a loss of a job, an accident, or even a move from far away. Any big change, especially if sudden and unpredictable, will be stored in our psyche, ripe to be triggered by the association of the time of year it took place.  Depending on your current stress or life circumstances, the awareness and the reaction will ebb and flow.

Two big steps I’ve found helpful are preparation and ritual.  If I note the date ahead of time in my calendar and create some kind of commemoration, as small as lighting a candle or reading a poem, or visiting somewhere that has pleasant memories, it gives my feelings a container and a space to be experienced.  It also helps to tell people. Even if it has been a long time since the actual event, trauma lives in our minds and our bodies, and the best healing for trauma is sharing our stories and finding comfort.

WIth the holiday season coming, filled with all of the traditions and memories, it’s important to remember that life is rich and complex.  We can have both pleasant and distressing memories at the same time, connected to the same event. An anniversary can make us feel sad that so much time has passed since we were last with someone we loved and we also can cherish and have gratitude for the person we lost and the new love we have found.

And lastly, for most people, an anniversary reaction usually is a finite period of time.  It helps to remind myself that once the date passes, I usually feel better within a few days or weeks.  And if you don’t, it may be a good opportunity to reach out for some help. Our grief changes as we change, and even when we think we have worked through something, it just may need to be revisited again.  There is nothing wrong with you if sadness or trauma resurfaces. In fact the best anniversary gift you can give yourself for old trauma might just be some new support and compassion.

If according to tradition the first anniversary gift is paper, the 10th is tin, and the 20th is china, what should the 23rd  be?  Just recently,  my husband and I decided to go with technology. On sale at half price, we gifted ourselves a robot vacuum cleaner that would help with the dust and fur that collects on our great room floor.  While I joked about it being the most unromantic gift we could find, little did I know how that black and silver bot would grow on me, winning over my heart with its can-do attitude and its daily offering of perspective and inspiration.

Each morning at the programmed time, our little bot buddy heads out to work.  It ventures ahead doing its job until it bumps into something. Not in any way deterred, it turns slightly, proceeds, until it bumps again. Bump and slight turn, bump and slight turn, it continues on for hours, eventually traveling around our entire floor. Then, when it begins to run out of power, it takes itself “home” where it rests and recharges, preparing for the next day’s efforts.

My black bot buddy never gets upset, never blames itself or anyone else for its mistakes.  It follows its path, faces an obstacle, slightly adjusts and tries again. It never needs to hide its errors or recoil with embarrassment or shame.  It stays in the moment, adjusting to experience and feedback, not getting hung up on the past or worrying about the future. It rests and recharges, never a sleepless night.  Bump and turn, bump and turn.

What would it be like, I wonder, if I could be more like my roomba?  How would it be if I let myself try, bumping into life’s roadblocks, without the self critical voice or the generalization of one little bump meaning more than it has to.  In fact, the bumping is part of the process, a natural state of going forward without knowing in advance what the journey looks like. If I could view every bump I encounter as guiding feedback, a message for adjustment, how much calmer would I be?  How much less would I worry about my daughters and feel energized instead of stressed?

What a great metaphor for a successful life as well as a successful marriage:  Wake up each day with purpose; let experience be your guide; then go home for rejuvenation.

I was e-mailing a friend and colleague that I hadn’t talked to for a while, trading our “How have you beens.” Her response was not what I expected, however, and made me stop for a minute to re-read. “I am no longer the busiest person I know,”  Rossana shared, and described the deliberate changes she’d made to slow down, do less, and make space for quiet. As I thought about what surprised me, it occurred to me how rare it is, and actually refreshing, to hear somebody so pleased and proud to be less busy.

It’s much more common to hear the opposite, I think most of us would agree.  So frequently when you ask someone how they are, you’ll hear them go on about how busy their lives are, between work, travel, and social engagements. And especially people who are retired, I’ve noticed, will tell you how so very busy they are, even when they have no professional obligations and set their own schedules!   What is it that makes us overstuff our lives, making a plan for every moment? It almost seems that being busy is a badge of honor that proves we’re important or popular. While most everyone, myself included, say they long for more free time, we fill up our calendars the first chance we get.

I can’t help wonder whats driving our obsessive need to do so many things and then post about it on social media.  In fact, I often discover with people I work with in therapy, and for myself, that NOT being busy brings up fears of being unworthy or unloved. We may fear losing respect or connection if we miss out on an opportunity or worry we may let someone down if we don’t live up to an expectation. We, as a society, are addicted to feeling productive, it seems. Sitting still or doing nothing feels like wasted time, and makes people uncomfortable. And cell phones are the greatest tool to help us hide, both as constant entertainment that distracts us or as a way to instantly reassure ourselves of our importance.

I also notice that in a busy culture that values achievement over affiliation, we tend to feel that “time is money.” With this pressure, time feels more and more valuable, which, ironically, makes us try to squeeze more and more into every moment.  And the more we shove into our schedules, the more harried we feel, and paradoxically, the less we enjoy what we’re doing. Even Google has noticed how impatient we’ve become. Their research shows that most people now will abandon a video if it takes more than five seconds to load!

Perhaps it’s just human nature to mistake quantity of engagement for quality.  Writers and philosophers throughout history have worried about squandering the brief time we have on this Earth.  And they didn’t have to contend with binge watching Grey’s Anatomy. So for me, Rossana’s wise example (thanks for allowing me to share it) made me reflect on the difference between being with people versus truly feeling connected, and doing something versus actually being fulfilled. The former experiences can only become the latter if we offer both our time and full attention. Because the truth is, when it comes down to living a full life, we actually need to do less to experience more.

In my last blog post I wrote about the quality of “certainty” – the benefits of being “certain” to having confidence and the benefits of being “uncertain” in terms of a growth mindset.  In the days following this post, I kept reading about this quality and the  consistency in the findings about the differences between males and females.  Research shows a confidence gap, that women not only lack confidence compared to men, but that they will hold themselves back from taking action as a result.

An example of the findings regarding the gender gap in confidence is a series of  studies by Cornell psychologists David Dunning and Joyce Ehringer. After examining women and men’s performances and perceptions in a large number of different ways, they concluded, “Men overestimate their abilities and performance, and women underestimate both.  Their performance however did not differ in quality.” So even though men and women actually score the same, men assume that they did better than they did. Ernesto Rueben, a professor at Columbia, points out that men are not trying to fool anyone, they really believe it. He came up with a  term called, honest overconfidence, backed up by his study in 2011 in which men consistently rated their performance on a set of math problems to be about 30 percent better that it was.

When men  do have self doubt, it is not as repetitive and intense as women and they do not let it stop them as often as women do.  For example, in a study at Columbia Business School, women applied for a promotion only when they met 100 percent of the qualifications, while men applied when they met 50 percent.  Women, on the other hand, tend to paralyze themselves with perfectionism, supported by a large body of research in a number of arenas. We won’t turn in a report, answer a question, or take a risk until we are sure we are perfectly prepared.  Unfortunately, while we strive to be perfect, we miss out on the learning and confidence building we would gain if we tried. In her 2018 study, Kaitlyn Cooper, at Arizona State University, found that women students believed they were far less intelligent than others, even when their grades were equally as good.  She embarked on the study after noticing when advising both male and female students, that female students would frequently say they were “afraid that other students thought that they were stupid. I never heard this from my male students,” she said.

To be honest, I can’t help thinking  about this confidence gap in light of recent political events, and the education of our nation in terms of why women don’t report sexual assault or harassment.   It also struck me in the demeanor of both Judge Kavanaugh and Dr. Blasey Ford in their testimony and I wondered how our differences as men and women not only affect the way we present ourselves, but also in how we perceive one another. If men honestly believe in themselves more than is warranted and are willing to take action based on this, how will they interpret a woman’s hesitancy in speaking out? I think despite our political divide, the courage that it takes for a woman to share her experience, and the respect she deserves when she does, is an area we might all learn to agree on.  

“Are you sure?”  This is a question we get asked or ask ourselves all the time.  How we answer depends not only on the content of the information, but also on our relationship with certainty.  Some people feel quite at home with being certain, while others are more comfortable with a certain amount of self doubt.  How we relate to certainty is an element of our personality that we rarely think about, but it may have a big impact on our well being and on our capacity for change.

Appearing certain gives us an air of confidence, which often attracts other people to us, especially people who are not so sure.  We prefer our leaders to be certain, as it makes us comfortable. But “certainty” can lead to self righteousness. If we believe we already know the right answer, we close ourselves off to new information.  We also tend to rely on stereotypes or assume we know things that may not actually be true. And in a strange way, certainty can lead to insecurity, as we look to affirm our certainty.  In fact, the pursuit of certainty can actually breed more insecurity. Have you ever been tempted to read someone’s e-mail or peak at someone’s phone to “prove” what you “know” is true? Certainty can lead to entitlement, as you feel you deserve to get your way or cheat a little, or that other people deserve to be punished because we are so certain of our right-ness.

Certainty is also the enemy of growth.  The more we can admit to what we don’t know, the more we’re willing to learn.  Uncertainty also allows us to be open to experience. Rather than assuming we know how someone will respond or how things will go, we live with an openness to the present and to newness.  In order to make a change, we have to be able to tolerate possibly being wrong or being in need of a new path. The root of all progress and growth is a willingness to be uncertain and give something new a try.

But there is an opposite extreme to entitled certainty. Some people live their life with a pervasive sense of uncertainty.  They are afraid to know what they know and have difficulty committing to an opinion or action. If we are too identified with our uncertainty, it can paralyze us with self doubt or indecision.  Without some internal sense of what we know to be true, we cannot take a stand or define ourselves.   We are vulnerable to passivity and in letting others dominate us with their agenda.

How we hold our certainty can be an important factor in how we relate to ourselves and the rest of the world. Like holding something delicate, we must do it with care;  firm enough to be a supportive structure of our identity, but gentle enough to allow change and growth. As in most things in life, finding a healthy balance of knowing your truth and being open to new experience is best.  If you are either too certain of your certainess or too certain of of your uncertainness, you will stay stuck.

I had a session with a young man that really touched me this week.  He was driven to our clinic by his boss, who noticed that he was having a hard time.  “Are you ok?” his boss asked. After considering his answer, the young man decided he needed to be honest. A half an hour later he was in my office, sharing with me about the wave of feelings he was experiencing that made him fear he would take his own life.  

It reminded me of a man in a documentary I had seen, regarding suicide prevention. He had miraculously survived jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge.  He shared his story of great ambivalence and pain, standing at the side of the bridge, wondering what to do. He was desperate for a sign of hope. “If anyone reaches out,” he thought at the time, “if anyone asks if I’m ok, I won’t do it.”  Somebody walked up to him and he felt a rush of relief. But instead, they asked if he could take their picture. He did, waited until they had gotten far enough away, and went over the side.

In thinking about both young men, the one in my office and the one on the bridge, it makes me wonder how often there are people around us that just need us to ask them, “Are you ok?”  They may not be suicidal, or in deep distress, but could use a sign that they are not alone. Often, when people feel burdened, they withdraw. Trapped within their own heaviness, they don’t want to be a burden to others.  Yet, most often, they welcome an invitation out of their isolation.

I am grieving my mother’s death and I am often wading through a deep pool of feelings and memories.  It feels good when someone asks me if I’m ok. It is a touchstone and a hand out of my inner world. Depending how I feel, I may share something or simply say I’m fine.  Either way, the gesture is greatly appreciated.

As I write this post I’m in New Jersey, preparing for my Mother’s funeral.  After many years battling Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, she very recently passed away. Fortunately my prayers of late were answered and she died peacefully in her sleep. It is a mix of feelings, as anyone can imagine:  the sadness when I think that I will never again kiss my mother good night, but relief in thinking she will no longer decline. But the one surprise I truly feel is how much it means to me now the relatively short time I spent being her caregiver.  What came about because of misfortune was truly a blessing in disguise.

Shortly after my mother moved to CA permanently, I was laid off from my job when our clinic closed its doors.  I felt lost and that my life was out of control. But then, as I began to put my professional life together with a patchwork of part time jobs, I decided to include a few shifts a week as her caregiver.  For six months, until I was offered something full time, I fed my mother, dressed her, took her shopping, and did her morning and bedtime routine. As clearly I am not a trained professional, it was hard for me.  But I know it must have been even harder for my Mom. I did most things wrong, especially anything involving transferring her and balancing her weight.

But what I think about now that I am so grateful for is the intimacy it provided us.  When you care for someone, even inefficiently, there is a lot of touching. And there is also a lot of vulnerability and a need for trust that is a big responsibility.  Thank God my mother had a great sense of humor and could laugh off most of my errors, overgrinding her meatloaf and overfilling her small mouth. But I was by far the worst at getting her into bed.  In fact, more than a few times I managed to swing her well enough across the bed, but with too much force that I landed smack on top of her. Boy did we laugh.

And that is what makes me smile now and gets the tears flowing.  Although anyone else would have fired me, in fear for their life, my mother loved every minute of it.  And that is what I will miss most about my mother. No one else but your mother thinks your scribbles are art, your mess of words poetry, or the cake you try to bake her a culinary masterpiece.  No one but your mother remembers with such joy when made your first Halloween costume, went on your first date, or walked to the podium to get your diploma. There is love, but now that I am one and no longer have a living one, I absolutely understand there is no purer love than a Mother’s love. 

I love you and miss you already, Mom.  Your memory will always be a blessing.

As I’ve entered my fifties, I notice I’m worrying less and appreciating things quite a bit more. Concern about aging, however, has become a new anxiety, as the stereotypes and social conventions of being “over the hill” creep in.  Will I be lonely, grumpy, or even bitter? Will I feel like a burden and long for my younger days? So I was quite relieved to find a book called The Happiness Curve, which gives me a scholarly foundation of hope that my increasing contentment will most likely be a continuing trajectory, in contrast to my fears of decline.

Author Jonathan Rauch, a Brookings Institute senior fellow and Atlantic contributing editor, reviews a large number of multi-country, big data studies on happiness conducted over the course of the last few decades.  The results, coming from authors in a range of disciplines, including economics, psychology, biology and epidemiology, consistently shows that life satisfaction when graphed across the age span is a U-shape, with contentment high in the 20’s, plunging at mid-life, and rising again after 50.  Most coincidentally, the graph of this phenomena looks like a rye smile. In our youth oriented culture, this comes as a bit of a surprise, and I must admit, a bit of a relief! The notion of a mid-life crisis leading to a slowly diminishing sense of vitality and value is just a myth. Rather than a crisis, most people experience a natural shift away from competitiveness and achievement (which creates the stress of comparing ourselves negatively to others) to more of a relational and compassionate mentality that enables us to feel more connected with the world.  We simply feel happier with who we are and what we have accomplished.

Interestingly, there seems to be a biological component to it.  The same curve appears to be true for apes, according to a fairly large (or what I think is large for an obscure topic of rating the moods of apes as they age) number of biologists and comparative psychologists.  One theory is that while individuals are capable of procreating, it is best for the survival of the species if they are driven and competitive to achieve more status. Once past the age of procreation, it benefits society if older individuals of a group are interested in caretaking and supporting others.

The most interesting part of the book for me is Rauch’s proposal that on a societal level our outdated social conventions need to be updated to reflect the insights and realities of our new understanding of aging.  As people are living longer, there appears to be a new stage of life emerging. Much like when young people began to need longer schooling and more support in becoming an adult in a complex industrial society, the concept of adolescence emerged (with all of the accompanying social supports, such as college, internships, and mentoring), a new stage is also developing that needs attending to.  In fact, it is already becoming noticed, and referred to as Encore Adulthood. Rauch posits that society is starting to respond to the needs and potential of the people in this life stage and develop structures to support them. The AARP in fact has shifted its services to offering “life re-imagined” and career services rather than just renting RVs. And a organization called Encore.org was founded as “an innovative hub tapping the talent of people 50+ as a force of good.”  Check out their site if you have a minute. It is full of great opportunities and even fellowships!

With the notion of the second half of life being a long, slow, downhill slide, we create a fear and disrespect for aging.  We unnecessarily create a script that as we age, our best years are farther and farther behind us. In this way, we are setting a trap in mid-life of feeling gloomy about the future.  While we can’t be sure this will happen for everyone, because it’s based on statistical averages. for the most part, profiles of everyday people around the world chart a return to enjoyment, wisdom and an increase in overall fulfillment once past midlife.  So, rather than imagining our life as a hill we descend after we peak, we can re-imagine it as a smile we get to climb!

We often hear the refrain, “trust your gut.”  Unfortunately, doing so might just increase your gut, literally!  It happened to me this past year when I underestimated the amount of weight I let myself gain, assuming I could judge it by how my clothes felt.  What I didn’t take into account was the clothes I’d avoided because they felt a little snug. Without the reality of stepping on the scale, I could fool myself into believing what I wanted to believe, that it was just a pound or two, which I would easily take off in the following month.  When I finally did step on the scale, it snapped me out of my illusion and taught me a lesson I seem to keep needing to learn. When it comes to judging myself and my habits, I am not terribly accurate.

Then I saw a study in the New York Times last week that made the sting of my misery a little less with company.  It was actually an article about the effects of exercise on weight loss. The researchers in this experiment compared two levels of exercise, one group burning 1500 calories a week and the other 3,000 calories a week.  What they found was that the higher exercise group did lose some weight, but that the lower calorie exercise group did not lose any weight, and some even gained a little! What they also found was that both groups ate more calories as a result of their exercise, about 1,000 extra calories. The difference than being that those who had exercised more had maintained more of the calorie deficit. But what got my attention (and my sympathy) was that each group had no awareness of their extra eating. According to the study, “Their food intake recall did not show differences in how they ate before the study and at the end,” states Kyle Flack, one of the researchers.  He concludes, “I think they just did not realize that they were eating more.”

Apparently our judgment tends to be skewed when it comes to our own perceptions of our behavior and from our desire to look good to ourselves and others. This is actually called “self-reporting bias” in the scientific literature. We tend to under-report behavior deemed negative (unhealthy eating) and over-report behaviors viewed as positive (such as exercise).  In order to compensate for this bias, nutritionists actually have developed a technique to more accurately reflect our eating patterns. It is called the 24 hour dietary recall method. It involves asking a respondent to recall everything they ate within the most recent 24 hours, typically from midnight to midnight.  Then, after the free recall, a structured set of follow up questions prompts the individual’s memory for foods they may have forgotten (the soda after work, the snack after dinner), and for more detailed information about ways in which the food was prepared and portion size. Through this method, much more accurate accounts of people’s food intake is obtained, and often explains why people had not been losing weight or bringing blood sugar levels down.  The only bad news for us at home is, the technique can take as much time as a half an hour!

24-Hour Food Recall Forgotten Foods
There are some foods that people tend to forget they ate.
 Did you have any crackers, breads, rolls, or tortillas that you may have forgotten about?
 How about any hot or cold cereals?
 Cheese added as topping on vegetables or on a sandwich?
 Did you have any chips, candy, nuts, or seeds?
 Fruit eaten with meals or as a snack?
 What about coffee, tea, soft drinks, or juices?
 Any beer, wine, cocktails, brandies, or any other drinks made with liquor that you may have forgotten?

I know, who the heck has that kind of time, let alone patience!  But the lesson for me, in looking into this issue, is the importance of objective tracking and feedback.  There are piles of research showing the inaccuracy of our memories, even for events we swear we could never forget.  So why would it be any different with food? So, if I want to keep from being a victim of my own self report bias, I’m just going to have to get real.  Indeed, I bought a scale and I’m going to remember to use it!

I found a letter on my desk, hidden between a few books.  My younger daughter must have placed it there before she left on a month long science adventure to Greenland (a wonderful opportunity with the NSF, while it still exists, for chosen high school students). The letter was such a sweet surprise and made me so happy to open it, read it, and carry it with me to help when I miss her. I’m rendered oh so sentimental as I review her characteristic loopy a’s and the pinpoint exactness of her dotted i’s.  It makes me feel close to her, even though she is so very far away. It reminded me how seldom we all write letters these days with how convenient it is to text and e-mail. But letters have a historic tradition and offer multiple benefits to both the writer as well as the receiver.

Studies have revealed an association between writing by hand and brain development, increasing neural activity more than typing can.  (This is why it is often better to handwrite things you are trying to learn.) When you write in your own hand, you are more reflective and your words stay stored in your memory.  Letter writing requires sensory integration and visual spatial skills, causing us to think more holistically. Research also shows letter writing, especially when giving thanks or appreciation to someone, actually boosts our mood.  With letters, we can say exactly what we want to say, as we tend to take our time and be more selective in our word choice. It also enhances our sense of intimacy and connection to the people we write to. It is much harder to multi-task while writing a letter, so chances are you will be more focused and give it your full intention, noticing how it looks as well as how it sounds.

For the receiver, a letter carries a lot of weight.  It indicates that someone took the time to take pen to paper, address a letter, affix a stamp and mail it.  There is an authentic feel that has a timeless essence. Compared to a text or e-mail, letters give us something to hold on to and reflect on for years to come.  When someone writes you a letter, you know that you are important to them and the words are more powerful as a result. It is by far more personal and meaningful.  And if you are like me, you have a special box where you place the cards and letters that you cherish. I can rarely think of a time when I placed an e-mail or text in the box!

And then there are the letters you can write, but choose to never send.  Regardless of what you do with it, the act of writing a letter is almost always cathartic.  It helps you get clarity about what you think and feel, vent your emotions, and clarify what is most important to you.  In this way, it can actually help you prepare for a conversation that may be challenging, adjusting your words to express yourself in the most effective way.  

There is something sacred about communicating in the time honored way that generations before us once did. Whether it was a letter from a family member from across the ocean, a love letter to a soldier, or words of encouragement during dark times, letters capture our attention and our imagination.  They are romantic in the broadest sense and give us the smell, the touch, and the artistic sense of someone dear. And from my experience in trying to reach my daughter who is ever so close to the North Pole, if you are trying to reach Santa, you are best off writing a letter.  The internet is not very reliable in the Arctic Circle! Not a lot of bandwith up there.