As an elder, with the perspective gained from many years of successful living, you know there’s no point in worrying. No good ever comes from it—it usually makes things worse, not better.
While you know this on a conscious level, something may happen: an upset in the family, a health issue, an unexpected expense—and there you are, in the worry pit.
Some of you are better at handling worry than others. An article by Shirley Wang in the Wall Street Journal (based on research by Stephanie Brassen), suggests that some older people tend to be more emotionally mature than others, and have sound strategies they can apply.
As researcher Stephanie Brassen, (University Medical Center, Hamburg-Eppendorf) says:
“The elderly learn to disentangle themselves from feelings of negativity and seem to focus more on present situations that bring pleasure, rather than on the future. They also tend to process negative information less deeply than positive information. It seems to be essential for our emotional well-being to not look back in anger and to focus on the positive when we are older.”
The Negatives That Haunt Us
So some of us do learn to control our negative thoughts and end up worrying less, but some of us don’t. For those of us who don’t, here are some of the main things that worry us:
- Will I be able to live in my own home, and drive my car?
- Will I outlive my money?
- Will I be able to afford increased health care costs and, if I need it, long-term care?
- Will I lose my memory?
Loss of Independence:
Illness, memory loss, inability to get around, and financial problems, are the underlying causes of the worry around loss of independence.
- Illness, the costs of healthcare notwithstanding, is a major factor in an old person’s ability to live on their own. Seniors are well aware that a stroke, a heart attack or a broken hip can change their independent status overnight.
- As we age, we experience changes in our brain functions-we experience loss of short-term memory and it takes longer to learn and recall information.
- The home and yard may be too difficult to maintain or too expensive to pay for someone else’s assistance. Property taxes and home insurance may be increasing.
The end result, we fear, is having to move out of our homes into an assisted living facility. Most senior citizens want to age in place.
Financial Concerns:
Many retirees worry about their savings. Expenses increase as we age and we find our savings dwindling faster than we anticipated.
Meeting with a trusted financial adviser—someone you chose carefully long before your needs escalated—is the best thing you can do for yourself at this point. Keep in mind that you should instruct your advisor to design a portfolio that is diversified, conservative, and risk-adverse.
Things you can do:
These are huge problems, and frightening for many of us to address. You cannot foresee everything, but you can commit to a life-style that will increase the odds of having optimal health for a very long time. A basic regimen of a good diet and exercise program, moderation in alcohol consumption, and not smoking will do much to ensure this.
If you want to age in place, you will need to ensure you have the financial resources to obtain care and assistance. It goes without saying that you have to make these plans long before the need arises.
In the absence of having a close relative or partner to look after you during this stage, you may be facing moving to a care-giving residence. This is not a worst-case scenario—senior residences have improved of late, owing to growing awareness of seniors’ care needs. Affordability varies, and long-term care insurance should be considered, for those who can afford it.
Things That Don’t Really Worry Us
Surprisingly, in study after study, Researchers like Carstensen, Psychology and Aging, catalogue potentially devastating concerns such as the following which showed up rather low on the worry scale:
- Will I die a painful death?
- Will I be missed when I’m gone?
- Will my children and grandchildren be okay after I die?
- When I get older than I am now, will I have anything to live for?
Death did not rank very high as a fear for seniors. Each of us faces the inevitable one day. Yet as our time horizons become shorter, we appear to focus on more immediate goals that elicit positive emotions. (Carstenson, Psychology and Aging, 2013)
Researcher Karl Pillemer, in his article, The Most Surprising Regret of the Very Old reports,
“Over and over, as the 1,200 elders in our Legacy Project reflected on their lives, I heard versions of “I would have spent less time worrying” and “I regret that I worried so much about everything.” Indeed, from the vantage point of late life, many people felt that if given a single “do-over” in life, they would like to have all the time back they spent fretting anxiously about the future.
Their advice on this issue is devastatingly simple and direct: Worry is an enormous waste of your precious and limited lifetime. The elders conveyed, in urgent terms, that worry is an unnecessary barrier to joy and contentment.”
One project participant, John Alonzo, 83, didn’t think twice in giving this advice:
“Don’t believe that worrying will solve or help anything. It won’t. So stop it.”