The question Last year I turned 65 – even writing that number seems unbelievable – and while I can appreciate that I have managed to get to this age and can see the merits of life experience, I still mourn for my younger days. I spend a fortune on face creams and often sneak off at work to apply even more makeup. When I look in the mirror, I just see ugliness. Recently, I overheard a man calling me a hag. I have put on more than 3st. Now I cannot go out apart from work. I rush home. My home is lovely and safe, my three grownup children and husband try to reassure me, but look on helplessly as I just sit in silence.
I did go to the doctor, but she just offered me antidepressants and then told me that I could not turn back the hands of time and should live in the moment. I just can’t. I’m even dreading going on holiday.
Philippa’s answer You can get unstuck from your present mindset, but the process of doing so is unlikely to be passive. There are misogynists in this world. A misogynist sees a woman as a thing, an object, something they want to do things to, or look at like a work of art. Or a thing to reject, disdain and generally tread underfoot. And misogynistic culture is so prevalent, and sometimes so subtle and denied, that it even creeps into the mindsets of girls and women.
An example of misogynist thinking might be: unless a woman looks a certain way, up to the standard of models used to advertise cosmetics, then what is the point of her? It’s nasty, isn’t it? This creeping tide of misogyny would have us believe that unless our skin and figure look like we are about 19 years old, we are less than we should be. So what are we to do about it? Buying miracle face cream is not the answer.
Very often, our value systems – our beliefs and our personal philosophy of life – go unexamined, but if we were to examine them, we would probably change some aspects. So, unpack your value system: lay it all out in front of you, look at all the messages you have been overtly or covertly told. Only put back what serves you and what serves humanity. This won’t be as difficult as you might think.
Youth and beauty can be prized and admired, but that does not mean that our worthiness as human beings rests on our outward appearances. You may have been an epitome of conventional beauty in your youth and perhaps you are under an unconscious illusion that this is why your husband married you, or why you are loved. But you’re holding on to beliefs and values that are not serving you any more – and they may even interfere with the relationships that sustain and nurture you.
Without doing it consciously, you may have associated aspects of your life – your good fortune, your lovely family, your job – with how conventionally attractive you feel you used to be. You seem to have equated the inevitabilities of age (added wrinkles and extra pounds) with a lack of worthiness. Do you only love your daughter because she has retained her beauty? You want to be her, but she will change as she grows older. Will her soul wither at the same time? Or will she become wiser, more curious about others, more loving and more able to be grateful for the life she has?
How did your mother feel and talk about the process of her ageing? Are hers the values you unknowingly adopted? Do you want to pass them on to another generation? To cure your self-consciousness, instead of imagining what other people think about you, switch your focus and instead be curious about them. What makes them tick? What are their concerns? For example, the man whose comment you overheard feels better about himself by deriding women. Wow! What an ugly mind he has!
You are indulging your monomania by holding on to thoughts about how you believe you appear to others. We have thousands of thoughts a day. They become thinking when we grab hold of them. But instead of grabbing hold of them, watch them float away. Don’t be the thoughts, merely observe the thoughts.
The point of being obsessive, whatever the obsession may be, is to distract you from something you don’t want to face. Find out what that is and face it.
I’ve said this before and I’ll probably have to say it again: what you say to yourself feels true, but it isn’t true, it is merely familiar. You are mistaking the familiar refrains of your internal monologue for truth, so when you replace those refrains with different messages, they won’t feel as true – and the more you practise the new messages the more familiar they become and the truer they begin to feel. You do not look worse than you did when you were 20, you look different.
If you cannot face doing this homework that I’ve set you, then do it with a counsellor and/or take up your doctor’s offer of antidepressants.
Philippa Perry’s The Book You Want Everyone You Love* To Read *(and maybe a few you don’t) is published by Cornerstone at £18.99. Buy it for £16.14 at guardianbookshop.com
Every week Philippa Perry addresses a personal problem sent in by a reader. If you would like advice from Philippa, please send your problem to askphilippa@guardian.co.uk. Submissions are subject to our terms and conditions
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