Facing Fate with Andrew Balfour

About this episode

Annalisa Barbieri and Andrew Balfour discuss the fears surrounding ageing and death, exploring coping mechanisms and the psychological aspects of these topics.

Hello and welcome to E3 of S11 of Conversations with Annalisa Barbieri. This one is a bit of a potentially scary subject: facing fate. But I’m here to hold your hand through it. I’ve certainly had to do my fair share of facing up to fate in the last year and when Andrew Balfour contacted me telling me about his book Life and Death, Our Relationship with Ageing, Dementia and Other Fates of Time, I rather jumped on it. There’s a lot of fear about getting older, but then there’s also a lot of fear about not getting older, ie dying. And with increasing rates of dementia, people are also terrified of getting older and losing capacity. Given that death and ageing of some form is a given why do we fear it so? It’s probably about loss of control, a vulnerability that none of us want and maybe having to rely on people around us. Who wouldn’t be scared. But, we want to help you think about these things in a calm way and maybe get some coping mechanisms. So, in this episode we talk about why we’re so afraid of getting older and dying and why that might affect some people more than others (perhaps not surprisingly, early life has something to do with it). Make yourself a comforting drink and…

People in this episode

Host: Annalisa Barbieri

Guest: Andrew Balfour

Topics covered

• ageing
• dementia
• fear of death
• mental health
• coping mechanisms

Keywords

• ageing
• dementia
• fear
• mental health
• coping strategies

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Tavistock Relationships

Books & works: Life and Death, Our Relationship with Ageing, Dementia and Other Fates of Time

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