How to Improve Short Term Memory

Lisa [: 00:00:00

Hello, listeners. Thank you for joining Aging in Full Bloom with Lisa Stockdale. I'm your host, Lisa, and today our guest is Angie Dorch. Angie, welcome.

Angie Dortch [: 00:00:11

Hi. Thanks for having me.

Lisa [: 00:00:13

Oh, my gosh, it's absolutely our pleasure. And you are going to teach us some tips to help improve our short term memory. And I watched one of your videos last night and utilized it this morning. Are you proud of me? It works.

Angie Dortch [: 00:00:27

I, I'm very proud of you. Now, which one of these, which, which video did you implement today?

Lisa [: 00:00:33

I watched the one where you were talking about object recall.

Angie Dortch [: 00:00:38

Oh. Oh, yeah.

Lisa [: 00:00:39

Yes. And so I needed something this morning before I left. And last night I put it in a certain place. And this morning I was able to not lose my mind because I couldn't find it. And so I went and got my, my little peanuts, a tablet. It's, you know, got Charlie Brown and Lucy and all of them on it. I'm so grown up over here. But anyway, I used one of your techniques and it worked.

Lisa [: 00:01:07

And I do definitely want to talk to you about those things. I also am very curious about this idea of learning how to age, so I want to talk to you about that as well. Tell us about yourself. Our listeners always are interested in who is on and what, what they're about, how you got here, where you come from, where you live. Tell us as much as you're willing to share.

Angie Dortch [: 00:01:30

Okay. Just a little bit. Well, I am in Kentucky. I am the mother of two adult children and I was an educator. And after I finished graduate school, I worked as an adjunct professor so I could be home with my kids when they were little. And I was the caregiver for my mother when she was in her early 70s. She has passed now, but she actually was my inspiration for developing this program. Okay.

Angie Dortch [: 00:02:03

She was a lifelong wellness person long before wellness even had a name. She had type 1 diabetes for over 50 years. She had literally no health complications from it because I believe, because she was so focused on being well, not being sick and functioning and keeping her function in her life going for as long as she could. So she was just a great inspiration all growing up. So as I looked at this and as I was spending a lot of time with her, I asked her, what do you think about something specifically for an active aging adult, sometimes wellness program, but not, not wellness. Like, here's what you can eat or let's go lift some weights or how much, you know, there are. There are seven, I think most people will say seven dimensions to wellness. I've seen.

Angie Dortch [: 00:03:10

And it Was pretty clear when I looked at that, that this aging population, the baby boomers, basically there was a lot of talk several years ago when we developed this, there was a lot of talk about this huge cohort that was going to be retiring and how they wanted to retire, what they wanted to do. And so I thought, what is available for them? There was tons of stuff and there should be for younger people and for children, but there was literally nothing for aging adults. And I thought, now I'm an aging adult, I'm going to be quickly an aging adult. What would I want? And so it became obvious to me that there were some areas of wellness that were kind of being neglected, probably because they were hard to track. And there'd never been anybody who really tried to track them in a systematic way. It was easy to watch somebody's weight or check their blood pressure, not so easy to get age, their mental flexibility or how their, their perception of themselves in the world changed. And of course that happens when you age. So.

Angie Dortch [: 00:04:22

So I sort of took my background, which is the performing arts. I have a master of fine arts degree and I had, as I said, taught from 5 years old to. Well, now I've talked to 95. At the time it was 5 to 50 was what I used to say. But it became clear to me that I was getting a really well rounded, holistic kind of education about myself and that that same approach could be applied to anyone and could improve their life, could improve the quality of their life. So what I was wanting to develop was something that was not about extending the quantity of your life. I'm not a doctor, I'm not a scientist, but I did feel like I had some training and some, some experience with improving the quality of your life. So my mom was also an educator.

Angie Dortch [: 00:05:19

Sorry, I'm probably. This takes me a long time. I, I can't really put this all in a nutshell, but, but real quickly, she. My mom was also an educator. So she and I together worked on this, developing this. We decided to focus on three areas of more of a psychosocial wellness program. Mental flexibility, physical perception, and kinesthetic awareness were the three areas that I felt like I had training in and could speak to. As I said, my mom was also an educator.

Angie Dortch [: 00:05:48

So she helped me put it in a format, kind of structure it. And then she actually went with me early on to all of the assisted living and retirement communities where we kind of beta tested these exercises.

Lisa [: 00:06:01

Oh my gosh. Well, that. It's amazing that your mom got to. His mom gone now.

Angie Dortch [: 00:06:07

Yes. From this realm.

Lisa [: 00:06:09

She's, she's passed on. But what a fun thing for you, the two of you to get to do together. And you're still doing it, which is awesome. And I was really captured by this notion because I do think there's a misconception out there that by the time I get old, I'll know what I'm doing. I don't need anybody to tell me. I don't need to learn how to be old. I will have figured it out when the time arrives.

Angie Dortch [: 00:06:39

Wrong.

Lisa [: 00:06:40

It's not how it goes.

Angie Dortch [: 00:06:42

Right.

Lisa [: 00:06:43

You will, you will need to learn how to age. Just like you learned how to come of age. You learned how to be a teenager, you learned how to be a young adult, you learned how to be a parent. Um, the learning.

Angie Dortch [: 00:06:56

Exactly.

Lisa [: 00:06:57

It doesn't stop. Right. Um, even though maybe you're on the last third of your journey right, you.

Angie Dortch [: 00:07:05

Still gotta learn how to do it right. I often say that this is like, this is no different from when you learn how to walk, learn how to drive a car, learn how to balance a budget. This is the next stage and you have to learn how to do that too. And that should be welcomed, not shunned.

Lisa [: 00:07:24

Yes.

Angie Dortch [: 00:07:25

I will say that is that kind of approach to you don't have to tell me how to age where I'm aging. You don't have to tell me how. And I kind of keyed in on that pretty quickly because it wasn't about, are you aging? We're all aging. We are all growing older. Everything ages. The question is not are you, are you aging? It is, how are you aging?

Lisa [: 00:07:48

Yeah. Yeah.

Angie Dortch [: 00:07:49

And so once I sort of zeroed in on that and I actually turned that into an acronym, which is why that, how I kind of have those as three capital letters. Yeah. To help people kind of understand what the program was about. And it's about honoring the past, not dismissing the past, not saying that it doesn't matter anymore. That's old fashioned. That doesn't work. So you want to honor the past, open the present, be open to the presence, pay attention and, and be present now. And then having those skills will help you to welcome the future as opposed to dread the future.

Lisa [: 00:08:36

Yes.

Angie Dortch [: 00:08:37

Yeah.

Lisa [: 00:08:37

Honor the past, be open.

Angie Dortch [: 00:08:40

Honor the past, Open the present, open to the present. I think I actually, I think I phrase it honor your past, open to your present, welcome your future, welcome the future.

Lisa [: 00:08:53

And what's implied there, you should be looking forward to it.

Angie Dortch [: 00:08:57

Right. And that you're, you're going to be more than Equipped to handle it with everything that you've learned, all your life experience, as well as these new skills that you're helping to. That I'm hopefully helping you to be able to develop and hone and can use. And those things are going to make you enthusiastic about the future, not dreading the future. So.

Lisa [: 00:09:24

And I just want to touch on these dimensions emotional, such as what's included there.

Angie Dortch [: 00:09:36

The emotional impact primarily is from the social connection. This. This program is designed to be person to person, face to face. It's designed to be in small groups, 10 people to one facilitator, so that you can build a team, you build a group, a social connection group. One of the things that I. Right, yeah. One of the things that I discovered as I was looking into researching this, how this program would work and how what I was able to bring to it was going to be beneficial was that loneliness and social isolation are like the top concerns for aging adults. And the effect that that has on their mental stability, their emotional stability is huge.

Angie Dortch [: 00:10:37

So I very early on decided we needed to develop something that would encourage people to come together now understand you. This was happening right as Covid happened. So. And that was right when, you know, do not get together, everybody, isolate everybody, be alone. No, no. So. So I continued working on this, and that's when I started posting things online on YouTube was because I thought, okay, even if we can't meet face to face, and I can't encourage people to meet face to face right now, there may be people who are still interested in this and can benefit from this. And so then, sure enough, after those restrictions kind of eased, St.

Angie Dortch [: 00:11:22

Paul United Methodist Church had a group called St. Paul Adult Ministry for Seniors. And so the president of that group contacted me about starting a group. And St. Paul is my home church. So. And I was very excited that she did that. She was very anxious to get back in touch with Face to Face.

Angie Dortch [: 00:11:47

A lot of the members of St. Paul Adult Ministry for Seniors, obviously they lost touch with some people during all of that. Some people had passed away during that. Some people had just gone to other places during that. It was just, you know, it was just a tough time for everybody. But so I was very enthusiastic when Glenda called me and said, I want to do this, and I think I've got enough people that want to do this, too. And this might be a good way to reignite interest in. They call it spams, this.

Angie Dortch [: 00:12:21

This ministry for seniors. Do you. Are you interested in doing this? And I said, yes, absolutely.

Lisa [: 00:12:26

Wonderful.

Angie Dortch [: 00:12:27

So that's how. Yeah, that's how I started. So I started that group. It's about eight people, I think. And then there was a. There were a few people that came in and out of the group. I kind of had. Had it structured.

Angie Dortch [: 00:12:41

So there's a five week introduction to this approach. And then level one is about. About 30 weeks. About. About 30 lessons. Yeah. And we meet twice a week. And so I had about a core group of that initial introductory group that wanted to continue and just keep on going.

Angie Dortch [: 00:13:05

And I thought, this is great because I was able to then get so much great data from them. Yeah, I was. I was assessing them every 10 weeks and we would track the progress. And I. I tried as best I could to make it objective. I wanted it to be based on what I could see or based on a number. Counting the number of steps, counting the number of times, the number of objects you retrieved. Whatever it was, I wanted it to be an objective criteria so that this could.

Angie Dortch [: 00:13:43

Anybody can take this and then go, okay, it's a yes or no. They're either doing it or they're not doing it. And. Or it's a amount of time that it takes them to do something. And the more data you gather, obviously you know this, the more statistics you have and the clearer picture you get about what works. And.

Lisa [: 00:14:04

Yeah, clarity comes.

Angie Dortch [: 00:14:06

Yeah. And I. And I got such good information back from that. So that's kind of.

Lisa [: 00:14:12

And so now you offer these workshops.

Angie Dortch [: 00:14:16

Well, I do some, but primarily right now I am trying to focus on going to conferences in aging and wellness and trying to present this, because what I would prefer to do is to train other people to do this.

Lisa [: 00:14:37

Okay, makes sense.

Angie Dortch [: 00:14:39

So existing staff members. I can train an existing staff member at a retirement community or at an independent living group, and they can then take that class. And a lot of people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So. So that would be my preference. I mean, I can. I can definitely do that, and I enjoy that so much.

Angie Dortch [: 00:15:04

You know, you get so much back when you are working with people. That communication loop that starts to set up is so rewarding. No, but for sure, if I want this program to impact as many active aging adults as I can, I want to train the people who are already working in this space.

Lisa [: 00:15:25

Makes sense. Makes perfect sense. And so I do want to ask you about one other component of wellness. Spiritual, obviously. I've gathered that you are a woman of faith and you have spoke of your church. What about, like, groups that involve people of different kinds of faith? How would that work?

Angie Dortch [: 00:15:46

Well, one of the one of the things about establishing a group, a little social group, a social network, is that a lot of the specifics about what the direction things go in are based on what the group decides. So, for instance, in this, in this first group that I was with at St. Paul, we use a verse from Galatians for part of the mental flexibility game that we do called Baltas. Well, if there were people who were not Christians in that group, then it would be whatever the group decided. It could be the pledge of allegiance, it could be a nursery rhyme, it could be a passage from another sacred text.

Lisa [: 00:16:36

I see.

Angie Dortch [: 00:16:36

But yeah, it would, it would come out of the group. So it's not imposed on the group. It comes out of the group.

Lisa [: 00:16:42

Okay, makes sense. And that definitely addresses my question, because I saw that one and I thought, wonder how that would work. Okay, makes perfect sense. So now the reason, the reason I supposedly wanted to talk to you, but I, But I got so interested in all this other stuff was because you have some tips to help us improve our short term memory. So talk to me about that.

Angie Dortch [: 00:17:08

Okay. This is what I call object recall. And I started this about the third week of the wellness group. And it first began with. As they came into the space where we were, the studio where we were working, I had several objects laying on the table, just random things. A pin, some keys, cotton ball, just random things. And so I said, choose something from the table and then I'm going to take it and put it somewhere else in the room and then come back. So they did that.

Angie Dortch [: 00:17:52

And then we came back together and we did a regular practice. We reviewed some of the things that I had showed them the week before and kind of previewed some of the things I was going to be showing them in the future. And then about the last 15 minutes of the class, and a class lasts about an hour, about the last 15 minutes of the class, I said, okay, now I want you to think about the object that I had you get from the, from the first class, from the beginning of the class, from the table. And I want you to see if you can recall where it is, and I want you to go and retrieve it and come back. So that's how that started. So they did that, and then they came back to the table and they did exactly the way I prefer to teach, which is I prefer people to discover the answers and the, and the rules in the doing of the activity, in the experience, not me telling them, here are the rules. This is what you can and can't do. So, and what happened was sure enough, they immediately began to say, okay, well, I would think it would be easier if I did.

Angie Dortch [: 00:19:04

And they were right. So we started incorporating their ideas. They all came again from the group, and we started channeling all of their ideas about the ways to focus their attention on this particular activity. And so then next week, I posted a sign outside. And then as they entered into the studio space, I would say, take a personal object, something of your. That you have, a key, your keys, your phone, and place that object somewhere in the room, and then come back, and then we'll start the regular practice. And I shifted to making it from general objects to a personal object, because that raises the stakes for them. If it's their personal object, they have more invested in it, and they.

Angie Dortch [: 00:19:51

And they know it better. They know how it feels. They know the shape of it. They know the importance of it. And so we did that a few times, and then I encouraged them to. I also have a journal, a guided journal that goes along with the program that kind of gives a question, a prompt for each lesson. Because another thing that I was very, maybe more committed to than a lot of the participants, honestly, was the importance of handwriting and writing things down and what that does for your memory and how that enhances your memory. So I had the journal, and I said, okay, so now today you're going to place your object somewhere, and then you're going to come back, and I want you to write down in the journal where that object is.

Angie Dortch [: 00:20:47

And then we would do that for maybe five minutes, and then we would continue the regular practice. And then again at the end of the practice, we came to the table, and I would say, so do you remember where your object was? Is anyone. Does anyone not remember where their object was? And I just kind of would try to encourage some conversation about that. And they always had it written down. If they couldn't remember it, they had it written down in their journal. It was also encouraging them to write. And hopefully they're going to begin to see the fruit of writing things down like that. And then several weeks later, and I also always do this, I kind of increase the cognitive load every time something new is introduced, is practiced, and becomes habitual.

Angie Dortch [: 00:21:37

And once that happens, then I increase the cognitive load in that same area. You don't want to do that too soon, obviously, because you don't want to have that cognitive overload that kind of freezes everybody up, myself included, and you don't know which way to turn. But you want to continue to challenge participants even as they are building those Skills and learning the ways to go about whatever the exercise is. So after five or six weeks, then we could increase it to two objects. So now you're going to place two objects in two different spots in the room. And then after that we increased it to three objects. And then after that I kind of started breaking up. They would have an object at the beginning of the class, they would place that object in a place.

Angie Dortch [: 00:22:34

And then in about the middle of the class, I would stop and I would say, now go and retrieve your object and move it to a new location. They would do that. Then we go for another 30 minutes on other things and then we come back together. And then I would say to them, now, now, where is your object? Where do you remember that you put your object? And of course, there's the, the difference between, wait, first time I put it in one place and the second time I put it in another place. So which, now what? So you have to start juggling a lot of those kinds of things mentally, which is a great mental flexibility exercise. And that's the other thing I also tried to be really careful about always was to say, look, we're all, myself included, we're learning and we're exercising. We're not going to get it all right. We're not going to have something that's absolutely no stress or no struggle.

Angie Dortch [: 00:23:33

Obviously, if you can do it immediately, then you're not, you already have the skill. You know, you know, we're trying to develop new skills. So. Which is a, which is part of why I'm, I try really hard not to increase the cognitive load too soon. Yeah, but I want to, but I don't want them to get bored.

Lisa [: 00:23:52

Right, right.

Angie Dortch [: 00:23:54

They're not, you're not learning. If you're bored, you're not learning. So I want to keep working at the Outer Limits without overloading everybody.

Lisa [: 00:24:02

But, so, but Angie, let me see if I'm getting this right, but you are literally suggesting that if you do this like I did last night with just my one object, it will sharpen your short term memory, it will improve your short term memory skill.

Angie Dortch [: 00:24:20

Yes, yes. And there, you know, it's, it's basically, I think what we're talking about is attention paying attention. We're talking about being open to your presence. Yeah, back to my acronym there. And if you pay attention, you would be amazed what is there and can be recalled. But you have to practice that.

Lisa [: 00:24:44

Yeah, it's intentional. It doesn't just happen.

Angie Dortch [: 00:24:47

Yes.

Lisa [: 00:24:48

You have to make it happen. You have to make it happen.

Angie Dortch [: 00:24:50

That's right.

Lisa [: 00:24:51

Yeah, that's right.

Angie Dortch [: 00:24:52

And it may take more effort now, but it doesn't matter. Do you want to put forth the effort or don't you? And people who are involved in this kind of work and who want to come to these wellness classes, you want to put in the effort.

Lisa [: 00:25:08

Yeah, yeah. So what this means is when you get ready to leave the house, you won't have a full on meltdown because you can't find your keys or you can't find your notebook or you don't know where your phone is, or you don't have the directions or whatever, you know.

Angie Dortch [: 00:25:26

Right.

Lisa [: 00:25:26

Because I. I mean, I have to be honest, I've gotten in the car so exhausted from getting out of the house. I gotta sit there and take a deep breath and collect myself because my stuff, I couldn't find it. I couldn't find my stuff.

Angie Dortch [: 00:25:42

Yeah.

Lisa [: 00:25:42

And I don't think I'm alone in that.

Angie Dortch [: 00:25:45

No, you are not. In fact, I think one of the things that I said in that video was right off the bat, if that happens, you do not have Alzheimer's. Probably just. That is the greatest fear.

Lisa [: 00:25:57

Yeah.

Angie Dortch [: 00:25:58

That many of us have. And statistically, you. That's not what's happening.

Lisa [: 00:26:05

Right.

Angie Dortch [: 00:26:07

You know, a process, there's a mental process to remembering things. That mental process slows as we age, but we can keep it sharper and keep it flexible if we keep using it.

Lisa [: 00:26:20

Yeah.

Angie Dortch [: 00:26:21

It's simple, intentional about it.

Lisa [: 00:26:23

It works. And I just love you, Angie. Am I allowed to say that I just love you now?

Angie Dortch [: 00:26:29

Well, I love you too.

Lisa [: 00:26:30

I do. I do think you are from Louisville. Am I right? Did I see that?

Angie Dortch [: 00:26:35

Yes, I am.

Lisa [: 00:26:35

Yes. And that is.

Angie Dortch [: 00:26:36

I'm from Louisville.

Lisa [: 00:26:37

That is where my family is from. So maybe.

Angie Dortch [: 00:26:40

Oh, really?

Lisa [: 00:26:41

Yes. You sound like my mother. At first I was like, oh, no, she doesn't have an accent at all. And then I started listening. Yeah, you kind of do.

Angie Dortch [: 00:26:50

Kind of. I'm actually from central Kentucky, so.

Lisa [: 00:26:53

Okay.

Angie Dortch [: 00:26:54

And Mommy's from Louisville for several years.

Lisa [: 00:26:56

From eastern Kentucky, but. But she grew up in Louisville. Parting thoughts. What do you want to leave our listeners with?

Angie Dortch [: 00:27:06

Just that there's a lot to be enthusiastic about when it comes to aging. And you don't have to simply resign yourself to sit down and read a book. If you want to sit down and read a book, that's wonderful. But you can choose to do other things as well. And. And that's what you should do. And if you need to develop new skills, develop those new skills. Yeah, it's never too late.

Lisa [: 00:27:40

Never too late. We're all constantly learning. Thank you so much, Angie. This has been wonderful.

Angie Dortch [: 00:27:45

Certainly.

Lisa [: 00:27:46

I hope you have a beautiful afternoon.

Angie Dortch [: 00:27:49

Oh, thank me. Thank you. You, too. I do want to say just real quickly, I'm not real good at this, but if you. If there's anybody who would like more information about this, they can contact me. It's angie@learnoage.org or they can go to YouTube and it's at Expressive Avenues.

Lisa [: 00:28:10

Okay. And we will be sure we post that stuff when we post this podcast as well. Listeners, till next time. May the road rise to meet you? May the wind be forever at your back.