Psychological guidance in retirement processes

When the retirement time, many people are lost and without knowing very well how to face this new stage in their lives. This can lead to a major identity crisis but, also, to be able to fall into depression or accelerate mental aging. For this reason, it is important for a counselor to be in charge of helping a person to accept this new stage and to face their future in a positive way. In this Online Psychology article we are going to discover how the psychological orientation in retirement processes.

Index

1. The current reality of society in the world
2. Representation of the evolution of the population pyramid
3. Coping with retirement
4. Orientation and retirement
5. Goals of Retirement Orientation
6. Exercises and proposals to work as counselors
7. Conclution
8. Aspects to consider

In the year 2000, 25% of the European population, that is one in four people was over 60 years old. Based on current social developments and demographic trends, in many of the so-called developed countries, the population pyramid is reversing. If until a while ago, people who were over 55-60 years old did not represent a high percentage of the total population and the largest number we found in childhood and adolescence, now the opposite phenomenon occurs, that is, the base of the population pyramid, the indicative of the percentage of the population occupied by children and adolescents begins to decrease increasing its peak, which is where people from older.

This is due to certain phenomena that are occurring in society, such as changes in the family organization system, logic incorporation of women into the world of work and their participation in the public sphere, technological and medical advances, as well as the appearance of services organized social

The result is the decreased birth rate and increased life expectancy with all the social repercussions that this entails.

As can be seen in the attached graph, over the years society ages. When talking and reflecting on the stage of aging we are presented with a social problem, older people as a different and important group in the demographic field, with specific cultural traits, their own interests, are demanding that society be guaranteed an increase in their well-being, that they can play roles that give meaning to their lives, develop attitudes different from the current ones with which to end the lack of integration social, insecurity, low quality of life and all the prejudices, myths and stereotypes that surround the retirement process and the aging.

It is necessary for each adult to reflect on what the aging process means for himself. In order to reflect, you must know what is understood by aging and what are the expected and normal changes that you will have to face. Only by knowing can you prepare and educate yourself to face this process, in an adaptive and healthy way.

Evolutionary development, the passage of time, is seen more clearly in others than in ourselves, that is why it generally begins more clearly when the evidence of end of work activity, This stage will be identified as the change that makes us aware of the inexorable passage of time and that is identified as loss and the beginning of old age.

The person ultimately begins to wondering more about your identity and he does not find a satisfactory answer that diminishes the anguish that sometimes the shared ideas about the end of the professional stage and the aging process produce. All this can cause people to feel a loss of roles and activities that can damage their self-esteem, leading to states of demotivation and even depression. When the person retires they must face more with who he is, with time and with relationships. It could be either a moment of imbalance, or an opportunity.

It would not be adequate to characterize a person in his "getting older" with a generic pattern, each one will be in his retirement process and in process of aging, a little as he has lived and learned, as everything human will always bear the stamp of the singular, of the unique, of the idiosyncratic.

The degree of conflict that the end of the professional performance stage represents for each one and the defensive behaviors that are adopted will be determined by the personal history, experiences and representations that habitually condition ideas, emotions and behavior.

An answer that has been given from the social sciences in this regard is the relatively recent studies of disciplines such as Psychogerontology, which attempt from an interdisciplinary perspective think about aging from a non-fatalistic, but preventive perspective, starting from the belief in the potentialities of people who require circumstances that favor personal development and quality of life, in which projects and wishes.

The search for the victory of science over vital processes, the long-awaited prolongation of life, finds that there are more who grow old, but the prestige, status, the recognition of the group, which was once granted to the elderly and which made reaching that moment more desirable, is lost before an ideal of eternal youth, the "value" of the young, the beautiful, the harmonious and the malleable becomes the benchmark for consumerism, which will be the fundamental social value in the present.

Retirement is a strong imbalance for many people. Today it still seems natural to think that retiring implies losing well-being, losing purchasing power, losing social function and losing activity.

We are going to see throughout this article some ways of working to eliminate these disturbing and harmful conceptions and to be able to face this stage in a positive and vitalist way.

Guidance seems an integrated theme adapted to educational contexts, however lately it is more in demand in the business context. At this point we must ask ourselves if at the end of the professional career it is interesting for the company and the person invest human and material resources, as well as time to carry out this orientation or preparation.

The answer from the perspective of quality of life, quality of jobs, quality in human resource management, quality in the development of career plans is yes. To the extent that a person can know the real job expectations of him, he will be able to better cope with the last period of professional development, In addition, in this way, they are a better transmitter of their experience and know-how to other professionals, feeling more secure and comfortable.

Many professionals when retirement finally comes they are overwhelmed by uncertainty and questions such as whether they will have enough money to maintain the same rhythm of life are raised, if they will get bored, their usefulness and even their identity are questioned by losing such an important defining role. These approaches can generate insecurity and anguish in the person about the future.

The change that your life is going to undergo, in terms of habits and customs is very abrupt and, to try to reduce its effects, it is convenient to prepare for this moment.

Retirement concern

Concern for retirees is growing in society and companies are also increasingly aware, although this attention must be increased. There are organizations and companies that offer people who are going to retire, either of their own free will, or because they are affected by age or by early retirement plans, the possibility of receive advice from professionals specialized to adapt to this new situation. These programs are tremendously useful to bring the new reality closer to workers.

According to various studies people who have planned their retirement have a very positive adjustment (Goudy, Powers and Keith, 1975). Given the importance of this vital process, it is essential to develop a series of initiatives that favor the adaptation of workers to the new situation, a process that must be attended and focused, thus the figure of the counseling psychologist in retirement processes will be of great value and usefulness to favor the experience of this vital transit with success.

The fundamental advice will be given regarding the attitude that the person should have about how to approach this stage successfully which will imply a review of experiences, accumulated knowledge, experiences, and the role that has been played as professional or fundamental roles played throughout these years, from there to analyze with the person the feeling of loss that makes this stage is perceived as negative, as well as, planning the new stage from the motivations and potentialities of the subject.

Orientation arises from a series of regular individual sessions and if possible also in groups where to work on fears, uncertainties, losses and that the person, based on their work of personal reflection and sharing identifying who they are, regardless of a position or professional function and what to do with time management in this new stage free of schedules and activities fixed.

Aspects to work on in orientation

• Roles played
• Fears
• Activities - Interests
• Time management - Planning
• Information (Resources, physical and psychological changes, greater self-knowledge ...)

• Provide sufficient information that allows to face with more knowledge and with specific tools the orientation in the transition in retirement processes.
• Encourage reflection on that reality and that vital moment to be able to guide promoting the quality of life of future retirees.
• Understand retirement as another moment of the evolution of the subjects, with their own particularities. Another, neither more nor less, than another moment of development, with great possibilities for development and personal growth.
• To know, to be able to face, psychosocial aspects of aging, disassociating the meaning of retirement to the prejudicial cultural characteristics of aging, such as passivity, inactivity, loss of status and power, likewise, confidently face possible fears and uncertainties, of people who live this stage.

The counselor's job

The counselors will support people in the final process of their professional career and in the beginning of a new life cycle:

• Informing and facilitating the discovery of personal advantages that retirement can entail.
• Disassociating retirement to myths and prejudices.
• Knowing the psychosocial changes associated with aging to facilitate coping and eliminate prejudices.
• Training to guide the acquisition of healthy habits and planning for the years to come.
• Developing strategies to promote self-knowledge and personal growth associated with this stage.

It is important for the counselor to ask himself certain questions and to reflect in order to position yourself and identify your own difficulties Faced with this issue: Is it necessary to prepare to face retirement? Can it mean retirement, like the Latin term indicates, joy, or on the contrary represents an “End” with capital letters with all that that does it entail?. Can you prepare for this event? How would I feel about my retirement? Does it mean that you are getting old? How can you guide someone in this vital stage?

The data tell us that there are a series of psychological and social alterations in the face of the fact of retirement and possibly we all have experiences of someone close or known about the experience of their retirement. We know that you are going to have more time after retirement and that you are full of data and experience, and the question is: What does this period mean for each one and how can it be oriented? personally and socially.

Here are some interesting reflection exercises to carry out with the people to guide in their retirement process:

• What am I retiring from / what am I not retiring from? The person should indicate these data trying to specify as much as possible, giving clear examples of her daily life.
• Develop your own life project.

In general terms, developing a life project implies, after informing ourselves and reflecting, thinking, planning and deciding how we want to live those years of the aging process, preparing ourselves, choosing which activities (that are a source of pleasure, recreation and personal development) we are going to include in it, developing self-care habits, participating in the society. It has to do with the meaning that each of us give to our life and to our independence, understanding that it is always partial, and to our potentialities.

The key is in find out what the motivations are, the engines to continue living with intensity. Cultivate your own hobbies that you have forgotten, or to which you have not been able to dedicate yourself sufficiently before.

The long-term goal when developing our life project is improve our quality of life, that is, to come to experience a feeling of psychophysical and socioeconomic well-being that is influenced by both personal or individual factors (health, independence, life satisfaction, self-esteem) as factors socio-environmental. Said life project must also be flexible enough to allow adding changes in based on our expectations regarding the project and its contrast with the reality that we surrounds.

We take care of ourselves to the extent that we know the changes that we are going to face in this process and we prevent with our attitudes and behaviors the processes of an aging pathological. The reduction of our fears and fears of not knowing how to handle ourselves in complex situations improves our bio-psycho-social health, so that we contribute life to the years and not years to life, as the WHO.

To the extent that the experience of this process is positive and the life project itself can be fulfilled, strategies and mechanisms can be developed of social participation in order to become agents of change in society, generating new retirement models different from the current somewhat deficit.

• Make a list of nutritional places, nutritional activities, nutritional people. This exercise will help in the elaboration of the Life Project.
• Make a new Curriculum. SWOT Analysis: Weaknesses, Threats, Strengths and Opportunities. Establishing the objectives that you would like to achieve
• Encourage social relationships. Enjoying the relationship with others is a guarantee of mental health: cultivating the bonds of the family, of the friendships, it is a good way to feel alive, to verify that for others we have a value and a significance. Maintaining our ties with the environment and people is also a way of clinging to reality and relativizing difficulties. The importance of relationships with the environment has been underlined by research related to social support, and the level of stress and quality of life. The conclusion is clear: there is an inverse relationship between a person's social network and physical and / or psychological dysfunctions; the smaller the social networks, the greater the pathologies, (Albarracín and Goldestein, 1994).
• Participation in all those activities that, in addition to assuming a social bond, activate and maintain intellectual capacities and emotional: cultural or artistic activities, studies, cultural visits, trips, use of new technologies (Internet, mail electronic).
• Carrying out individual or group activities: Video Forum: "In the golden pond", (Universal, 1981) with Henry Fonda, Katharine Hepburn and Jane Fonda as protagonists, where the theme of Retirement and physical decline appears. "The Whales of August" (Alive Films, 1987), with Bette Davis, Lilliam Gish and Vincent Price, in which the subject of dependency and two different ways of approaching aging are presented. Readings: The red leaf: Miguel Delibes.

Ace up his sleeve: Rita Levi Montalcini (Drakontos. Ed. Criticism. Barcelona, ​​1999) The orientation will also be information, advice on doubts, on aspects of the person that she herself did not know, about resources, about psychological processes, it will be a learning process that can generate great enthusiasm and motivation to the person who is going to retire. It can be a very rewarding experience, a beginning and also a meeting from which the counselor will also benefit, being able to greatly enrich the experience of these people.

As we have seen throughout this article, it is necessary that counselors identify with whom they work and that they can reflect on the problems they are going to face. It is in the movement of approach to the other, in the attempt to locate ourselves in their situation and problems where the actions and also the limitations of the technicians are put into play.

It's fundamental that the counselor believes in the life project of the person who retires, clearly discriminating the life project from the idea of ​​the plan, that faces the evolutionary development in this stage and that he does not see him with the distance of his age but with closeness, with authority and with confidence in the potentialities mutual. Responsibility and acceptance of the precariousness of all projects, at all ages, is necessary. It is necessary for the counselor to be clear from where and for what he is carrying out the interventions.

If we think that the objective of working with adults in retirement or early retirement is to collaborate with them in the task of taking responsibility for their own livesBy generating a new project, a multitude of possibilities are opened for the integration of proposals in a process where the capacity for reflection and criticism are shared. Understanding that there will be aspects, emotions and critical moments that must not be denied and that must be adapted to each person. Emphasizing that, in being a person without playing any professional role, without occupying any position or position in a certain company or job.

The relationship with the other from oneself, without work occupation. The counselor should not be affected by the position or previous occupation of the person because that no longer plays an important role, except in their experiences and in their "having", but not in their "being", in Erik Fromm's terminology.

Perhaps, from here on, we can work on issues such as his place in his family, his identifying models, his fears and insecurities. In short, on the different supports of his personality, which will allow him or not to deepen his intervention and vital projection by doing an intense and valuable joint work.

We cannot think that we cannot help a person with a lot of experience and who is in a decaying cycle, we must trust, not infantilize or trivialize, we must be able to propose a life project I laughed. Likewise, this work supposes an important role as agents of social change influencing with our attitude and proposals on the social imaginary, helping to break prejudices and excessively rigid molds that society has been generating regarding this vital moment.

As we have been seeing all preventive measures to achieve a good adjustment on the road to retirement, we have to look ahead trying to plan for the coming years, it has also It is clear that individual differences will be evident in this retirement process and therefore the orientation cannot be static, but will be dynamic actions, which guide people to conceive their future situation as something important that must be planned and that there are several aspects that will influence the different way of facing the retirement.

We will always take into account individual differences in terms of needs, values ​​and objectives of people who are retiring.

The counselor will work on the orientation taking into account:

• Retirement as a continuous transit. To do this, they will jointly plan activities: at home, recreational activities, independent professional actions. As well as vital objectives that they want to achieve, in addition to favoring joint planning with the rest of the members with whom they live and make up the social and affective system.
• Equal action planning between men and women, but attending to the differences of desires, needs, objectives and values. Counselors should be as free as possible from cultural stereotypes regarding gender roles and the social values ​​and prejudices, equally characteristic of our culture, regarding retirement and aging.
• The development of personal skills and psychological development: Raising personal communication skills, prevention strategies for psychological problems, stress, dysthymia, instability, favoring greater self-knowledge at this stage and conceptualizing the new situation. New personal, family, social goals. Giving techniques of self-control, relaxation, planning and time management.
• Acceptance of the new physical and mental reality. Informing and facilitating preventive measures of physical and psychological health.

Eric Fromm says that “the rhythm of night and day, of sleep and wakefulness, of growth and old age, the need to sustain ourselves with work and to defend ourselves, are factors that force us to respect time if we want to live; but one thing is to respect time and another is to submit to it and that time becomes the master. The current mode of production requires that each act be exactly programmed and most of our life is governed by time and its course. Only in our free time does it seem that we have a certain opportunity to choose ”.

Retirement can be that opportunity to choose from yourself, from the meaning of life itself, from desires, producing, acting, living, in short, being.

This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

If you want to read more articles similar to Psychological guidance in retirement processes, we recommend that you enter our category of Social psychology.

• Albarracín D. and Goldestein E. (1994). Social support networks and human aging ". In J. Buendía (comp.) Aging and Health Psychology. Madrid. XXI century. pp. 373 to 398
• Aranguren JL. (1992). Old age as personal and social self-realization. Madrid. Ministry of Social Affairs
• Bozton, M. (1985) Psychology and business, Barcelona, ​​Hispano Europea
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• Conde Salas, J.L. (2001) Living old age positively. First Virtual Course of Education for Aging. Complementary reading.
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• Fromm, E. (1978) To have or to be. Madrid. Fund of Economic Culture.
• Levi Montalcini, R. (1999). The ace up your sleeve. Barcelona. Ed. Criticism. Drakontos.
• Madrid García, A. J. & Garcés de los Fayos Ruiz, E.J. (2000) Preparation for retirement: review of the psychological and social factors that affect a better emotional adjustment at the end of work performance. Annals of psychology, vol 16, num 1, 87 - 99.
• Monchietti, A.; Krzemien, D. (2000) Social participation and lifestyle. Its relationship with the quality of life in old age. Electronic magazine Tiempo nº 6 November. psychonet.com/tiempo