[Verse 1]
A clinician sits across the room, a patient old and frail,
And somewhere in the silence lives an unexamined veil—
That age is merely withering, that loss defines the arc,
That slowness signals vacancy, that wrinkles dim the spark.
But prejudice embedded deep in gestures, words, and tone
Can calcify a practice long before we've even known.
We learned from culture, textbooks, and the media's careless hand
To see decline before the person—time to understand.
[Chorus]
Examine, recognize, and counter every day—
Ageism hides in hallways and in what we fail to say.
Internalized, systemic, lodged in how we frame the old—
Question every assumption you were never once told.
Examine, recognize, and counter what we hold—
Self, client, institution—break the mold, break the mold.
[Verse 2]
Dependency invokes a fear the therapist must name,
For if we shrink from frailty, we will amplify the shame.
What do you believe when someone needs another's hand?
Is autonomy extinguished, or does dignity expand?
Death fluency is clinical—the practitioner who flees
From mortality discussions plants anxiety, not ease.
Your countertransference breathes inside the session, uninvited—
The work begins with candor before patient meets provider.
[Chorus]
Examine, recognize, and counter every day—
Ageism hides in hallways and in what we fail to say.
Internalized, systemic, lodged in how we frame the old—
Question every assumption you were never once told.
Examine, recognize, and counter what we hold—
Self, client, institution—break the mold, break the mold.
[Bridge]
Clients carry ageism too, absorbed across a lifetime—
"I'm too old to change" is not a fact but an internalized crime.
The institution schedules short, refers them to a pill,
Assumes the psyche ceases growing when the body stills.
Three arenas call for vigilance: the self, the room, the system—
Counter each with evidence and ethical precision.
Geropsychology demands a reckoning transparent—
Age is not a sentence, and decline is not inherent.
[Verse 3]
So take the Aging Semantic Differential, sit and score,
Confront the subtle hierarchies you've cultivated before.
Supervision isn't weakness—it's the calibration tool
That keeps the unexamined bias from the clinical school.
Consult the literature on stereotype embodiment—
Belief in one's own fading can accelerate descent.
The elder who believes their memory is fixed to fail
May lose more ground to expectation than to age's scale.
[Chorus]
Examine, recognize, and counter every day—
Ageism hides in hallways and in what we fail to say.
Internalized, systemic, lodged in how we frame the old—
Question every assumption you were never once told.
Examine, recognize, and counter what we hold—
Self, client, institution—break the mold, break the mold.