Do you ever imagine that your midlife forgetting might actually be something more than too-much-stuff-crammed-into-too-small-a-space-midlife-forgetting?
And do you ever worry that all the forgetting you seem to be doing in middle-age might actually be your first traitorous steps on the slippery slope toward cognitive decline . . the slippery slope that will one day be the complete undoing of your awareness?
And do you ever wonder if all that prime of life forgetting might signal something far more sinister, not that far down the road in your life’s second half?
You know what I’m talking about. You’ve been forgetting, too, haven’t you?
Come on. You can admit it – if only to yourself.
Dementia, maybe? Alzheimer’s, God forbid?! Go ahead . . reach for the hard. As long as you’re imagining worst possible scenarios, you might as well head for the extremes. (It’s not like you haven’t mentally meandered the same road many times before.)
Besides, that way all the other possibilities are bound to seem so much better.
3 Steps To STOP The Forgetting Fears
Then again, if you’re feeling more than just a little afraid that your forgetting makes you a prime candidate for that sort of major mental decline stuff, here’s a recipe for climbing back out of the soup:
1 – Recognize your fears. We get ourselves into trouble when we try to pretend fears don’t exist. They Do. And they deserve to be recognized – even those swirling around your forgetting.
2 – Ask your fear why it’s there, and what purpose it’s trying to serve in your life. Okay. Okay. So it sounds a little foofoo. Do it anyway. The fact is, every single one of your fears has a purpose. Most are trying to protect you from something – either real or imagined. What is your fear trying to get you to do that could better protect you? (Gee, maybe a crossword puzzle now and then, a bit of exercise and a healthier diet, a little less fact cramming, and some serious relaxation. It couldn’t hurt, you know.)
3 – Listen for the answer, and welcome it. It will come to you – though perhaps not exactly as you would expect. It might be a feeling that links you to something you recognize. It might be a picture. Then again, it could well be a perfectly audible answer. In any case, it will come through the sense that has you most connected to that fear. (Think for a moment. What connects you most to what you fear from forgetting?)
The Facts of Forgetting Are That
A. We create our fears. They’re part of us. We create them to warn us of the things we’ve come to recognize as being dangers to us. And,
B. Forgetting is normal. So is an exaggerated sense of dread when the forgetting happens – particularly when it happens inconveniently.
Many of our fears spend their lives hanging out sipping lattes in their own little coffee house in the back of our conscious thinking. At the same time, we get on with life and completely forget we have a highly attuned fear (many highly attuned fears) keeping watch over us.
And time passes. And time passes. And one day, out of the blue, something happens that sends that fear into caffeinated overdrive inside us.
Can it be any wonder we respond as we do?
Yet, all that for a misplaced phone number? All that for a name you probably didn’t much care to remember anyway?
And that’s the fear that makes us wonder if we’re on the verge of the forever forgetting we dread most.
But – and listen very closely here: It’s highly unlikely the two are even connected! Midlife forgetting is midlife forgetting. It isn’t Alzheimer’s Disease.
It’s stress. It’s too much work, too much caffeine, too little exercise, too little sleep, and generally . . way too much stuff to remember. For gosh sakes, we live and age in total information overload!
Enough with the guilt already!
We’re ALL Forgetting
When we get right down to it: We’re all forgetting . . some more than others . . but all of us are losing things . . hiding from people whose names are just outside our reach . . bleeping on the disconnects . . FORGETTING.
And I mean, all of us.
I’ve been forgetting a great deal lately. Actually, I’ve been forgetting a great deal for several years now. (Okay, I’ve been forgetting for much of the last 30+ years. Then again, some of the stuff back then really wasn’t worth remembering.)
And there are plenty of times when the sheer volume of my forgetting scares me silly.
But it’s not so silly . . because, if I let myself sink into it, it really can be kind of scary . . especially since I actually can remember a time when my memory was rock solid. At least I think I can remember that time.
And sometimes, when I’m in rare forgetting mode, I wonder if just maybe the dementia my dad was slipping into the last couple years before he died might be genetic. No one else in the family ever had problems with such things, but maybe my dad and I are more closely attuned than I’d like to imagine. Hi Dad.
But I do imagine. And it’s those imaginings that get me into trouble with the rest of me.
Ahhhh, yes . . the rest of me . . that part that keeps saying it’s time to cut the melodrama and realize I’ve simply too much memory junk piled on my plate. Some of it has to go.
And some of it always does . . go. Of course, what slips into my mental cracks isn’t necessarily what I’d prefer to forget. And clawing my way through all that forgotten stuff to find the one silly lost memory I can’t live without can become a little scary, if I let it.
In any case, we all have way too much on our minds. And more stuff shoulders its way in every day.
Should we worry? I’m not a doctor. I can’t say.
But you know I will, and here it is: We need to relax more. We need to shut down all the extraneous noise and interference in our over-saturated lives and just breathe more.
Sure, midlife memory problems can and do lead to to some later life problems . . but it’s pretty rare.
Our brains weren’t created to be crammed full and asked to remember all the tons of gup we try to load into them every day.
And let’s face it, not everything is worth remembering. (Remember my 30 year forgetting? It’s just a few paragraphs up. You haven’t forgotten THAT already, have you?!)
Think of it this way: How much more can you forget before you’ve forgotten too much?
Answer: More than you can remember.
Just keep that thought in mind – if you can.
Keep growing my friend,
Gail
Tell Me: Have you been wondering – worrying – about your forgetting? What kinds of things do you tend to forget? Do you, just maybe, wonder why you forget certain things and not others? Tell me your forgetting stories. I love hearing from you.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Gail, this is a wonderful post. My experience is that as you age, the really important things burn ever more deeply into your memory. For example, the memories of the senses, the way things taste, or smell, or look or feel, these things grow richer with age. And, things of the emotional edge, dangers overcome, risks taken, small victories over our fears. These things ripen in our memories. The stuff that we forget, though sometimes embarrassing, is probably best forgotten.
I think, my friend, that you are right on target. How can we hope to remember all of life’s many interludes? Some are better forgotten – and good riddance. For most of us, though, those are the same ones we can’t seem to shake. At the same time, so much that we’d like to remember gets lost in the corners with the mind’s many dust bunnies. Ahh, well, if we’re lucky – and most of us truly are – it all evens out in the end. Would that we were patient enough to wait for that evening out to happen.
Perhaps, the answer is not to deliberately try to forget the painful memories but rather, to overwhelm them with new and important memories. And, that may be why evening (as in smoothing out) is called evening. That is a time for sunsets, a smooth glass of wine, a warm fire, a soft touch, the best time of the day or, for that matter of life, for evening out the memories.
.
There you go. You’ve caught the message I was trying to send. Far too few of us take the time to gently even out at day’s end. It’s a necessary part of a great day – Even-ing. If there’s something hanging on to your mind that you no longer need – or that just doesn’t support your becoming – forget it and make room of what matters to you. Some things are better remembered forgotten. Others are better caressed and treasured. Keep evening out my friend. You’re doing fine.