Life Transitions & Positive Ageing

Life Transitions & Positive Ageing
Helping you navigate life’s changes with confidence, resilience and a positive approach to ageing.

Change, change and more change!

For those in our 60’s, this change may have come as a surprise. Growing older is often portrayed as life becoming slower, more predictable and more settled. For many, the opposite is true.

Later life can bring enormous change. From the obvious physical ones such as how we see, hear, move, and even sleep! To changes in our own appearance (including body fat moving from where we’d like it to be, to where we don’t!) As well as many cognitive changes, especially around memory.

There may be career change, perhaps retirement, perhaps children leaving home, perhaps the arrival of grandchildren. Social change is also common, especially seeking out more emotionally positive relationships, often from a smaller social network. Some of these changes are exciting, but others involve loss – not just bereavement – but loss of good health, perhaps mobility, confidence, independence.

All require adaptation.

A helpful way to think about positive ageing is simply this: Living well despite life’s inevitable changes.

The great news is that later life can also bring perspective, wisdom and opportunities that were never available before.

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‘This isn’t where I thought I’d be…’

Or perhaps your version sounds like ‘ I never expected …’, ‘I always thought…’, ‘the older I get, the more I think…’ or ‘if you’d have told me twenty years ago that I would be ….’

Throughout our lives, most of us carry an image of the person we expect to become, and a story about ourselves that quietly shapes the way we see the future.

You imagine the career you might have, the relationships you hope to enjoy, the achievements you will celebrate, the retirement you dream about, the health you expect to have, and the life you think you’ll be living.

As the years pass, reality rarely unfolds exactly as you imagined.

Some of your dreams are fulfilled. Others quietly disappear. New opportunities emerge that you never expected.

Why do we think this way?

Fortunately, psychological and social research has long been in agreement as to what’s naturally occurring at this stage of our lives. As we grow older, most of us:

Spend more time reflecting on the lives we’ve lived * and
Become more aware of the difference between the person we once imagined becoming and the person looking back at us in the mirror today. **

You might be aware of these patterns of thought, or perhaps they’re bubbling away at a subconscious level. You may find yourself pondering questions like,

Have I lived a good life?
Did I make the right decisions?
What am I most proud of?
What opportunities did I miss?
Have I become the person I hoped to become?

Some people look back with gratitude and acceptance. Others become preoccupied by regret, disappointment or the feeling that life somehow passed them by. Most of us find ourselves somewhere in the middle.

How does counselling help?

Remember we talked about the importance of adaptation.

Counselling provides an opportunity to gently examine these reflections, understand where they came from, and decide whether they still deserve to shape the next chapter of your life.

This isn’t about reclaiming the past. It’s about helping you move forwards with greater clarity, purpose and hope.

This may include guidance and support for identity shifts (Who am I now?) purpose (What gets me out of bed in the morning?) evolving relationships (with partners, adult children and perhaps grandchildren) retirement, health concerns and general life stage adjustments… and perhaps later on, questions such as ‘What do I want to leave behind?’ (not simply money) and ‘How will I be remembered?’

Whatever has happened in your life up to this point, your story is still being written.

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* Erikson, E. H. (1982). The life cycle completed: a review. Norton.

** Higgins, E. T. (1989). Self-Discrepancy theory: What patterns of self-beliefs cause people to suffer? Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 22(1)