[Verse 1]
Before you enter through the elder's door,
Sit with what your own reflection holds in store —
What does aging conjure in your chest?
A flicker of dread, a quiet unrest?
Structured reflection is not self-indulgence here,
It's calibrating the instrument you steer.
Map the terrain of your private aging fears
Before they leak unchecked into your client's ears.
[Chorus]
Regarde-toi, regarde bien — what do you carry in?
Ascolta il silenzio — hear the weight beneath the skin.
Name the dread, chart the edge,
Every clinician makes this pledge:
Your unexamined ghost will haunt the room within.
Regarde-toi — examine, begin again.
[Verse 2]
Now press play on the session you recorded —
Listen past the content you've rewarded.
Elderspeak creeps in on soft, condescending feet:
"Good girl," "sweetie," "isn't that so neat!"
Simplified vocabulary dressed as care,
Slow exaggerated vowels hanging in the air —
These are not affections — they diminish the mind,
A scaffolding that leaves the soul confined.
[Verse 3]
Rephrase with precision, rephrase with respect:
"What are your thoughts?" restores the intellect.
Not "Do we want our medicine today, dear?"
But "Have you taken your prescription — shall I make it clear?"
The plural pronoun infantilizes, note it down,
Exaggerated pitch dismantles the grown.
Every catch you make in playback is a gift —
Awareness is the lever, not the lift.
[Chorus]
Regarde-toi, regarde bien — what do you carry in?
Ascolta il silenzio — hear the weight beneath the skin.
Name the dread, chart the edge,
Every clinician makes this pledge:
Your unexamined ghost will haunt the room within.
Regarde-toi — examine, begin again.
[Bridge]
La coscienza cresce lenta — consciousness grows slow —
You don't hear your own elderspeak until you let it show
On tape, in transcript, through a supervisor's ear.
Your aging anxieties distort what you hear.
The 80-year-old in the chair is not your mother's ghost,
Not a mirror of your future that disturbs you most —
She is exactly who she says she is today.
Your self-assessment keeps projection away.
[Verse 4]
So write the structured reflection, be precise —
Which aging marker triggers your avoidance, which your sacrifice?
Cognitive decline, dependency, or death?
Name the one that shortens your clinical breath.
Then return to the recording, pen in hand,
Mark each softened patronizing reprimand.
Two tasks, one compass: honest inward sight,
Rigorous playback in the unsparing light of critique.
[Chorus]
Regarde-toi, regarde bien — what do you carry in?
Ascolta il silenzio — hear the weight beneath the skin.
Name the dread, chart the edge,
Every clinician makes this pledge:
Your unexamined ghost will haunt the room within.
Regarde-toi — examine, begin again.
[Outro]
La pratica è continua — the practice never closes.
Self-assessment blooms wherever humility proposes.
Not once, not at licensure, not checked off and filed —
But session after session, reconciled, reconciled.