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 have a listen.

Andrew Balfour is a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist, he was clinical director of Tavistock Relationships and is now its Chief Executive.

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Produced by Hester Cant. Art work by Lo Cole. Music by Toby Dunham.

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