go to therapy Of course, it doesn’t have to be related to the type of mental health issues that require an official referral. Another convert to psychotherapy in her old age is Mandy Farthing*, 69, a recently retired lawyer, whose main goal in seeing a psychotherapist is to get help dealing with the difficult relationship she has with her mother, who is still alive. and she turned 100 earlier this year. “It’s not that I was ever opposed to therapy,” she says, “in fact, I wanted to go, but I was always so busy with work, kids, and life, that I never prioritized myself. “Now I’m retired and can focus on myself a little more.”
Mandy describes her childhood as challenging, with two brothers, one of whom was autistic, and parents who couldn’t cope. She has spent her life listening to her mother, but she has never felt any empathy from her and she has never felt heard. “From a very young age I had to be a mother to my mother and also to my brother, and now, although she still lives in her own apartment, I am busy cooking for her, visiting her, looking for caregivers and talking to her twice a day. and she is still very demanding.
“I know I can’t solve the problems or have the conversations with her that I would have liked, but when she dies, I don’t want to be full of anger and resentment. And of course, despite everything, there will be a big hole when she leaves.”
Mandy finds therapy very helpful. “I’ve talked to good friends about some of this over the years. But this is different. A therapist is there for you and only you and he does it because he wants to and it is his job and he gets paid for it, and you expect him to have the skills to facilitate the client to better understand themselves.”
According to integrative psychotherapist Joanna Holroyd, one of the barriers for older people who enter therapy, without ever having talked about themselves in a therapeutic capacity, is the fact of having lived a long life. They feel intimidated by questions like: “Where do I start? What will happen when it starts? Will it be overwhelming? How will you feel after the session and between sessions? What will the therapist think of me? It will be useful? And while these are all understandable obstacles that the client may want to discuss with the therapist, ultimately the most important aspect of any therapy will be the therapeutic relationship and whether you truly feel comfortable talking to that person. You may have to try one or two therapists before you decide,” she advises.
I have certainly faced all these problems. Sometimes I start a session saying I don’t know what to say, but I soon gallop off. It could be something about childhood, or it could be something that happened the day before or a dispute with my partner which triggered a surprising emotion that I want to explore. The therapist can reflect what I tell her and sometimes highlights contradictions. I am learning to recognize that we are contradictory by nature and that it is perfectly possible to love and hate at the same time, to be resentful and empathetic, trusting and full of uncertainty. Accepting those contradictions is something I find particularly challenging. I cried in therapy and I laughed too. Sometimes I come out of the 50 minutes feeling moved or shaken, sometimes relieved.
“I was so angry about my wife’s affair.”
For Steve Stanway*, 80, his entry into therapy came through a grief group. Six months after the death of his wife of 45 years, he was still struggling to cope. “I left the house less and less, I told my children not to visit me because I didn’t feel up to it, I had stopped painting in my small studio at the back of the house and I was living off deliveries of crappy frozen dinners. It was my daughter who insisted that I attend a grief group and I was quite reluctant. I’m ex-military and, according to her, my middle name is button-down.
The group was the beginning of a transformation for Stanway. “During the first session I barely said a word. However, I was later able to share that she was not only depressed, but also angry. Angry at the 45-year-old wife who confessed to me a long time ago that she had had a lover for 25 years during our marriage and that when the love of her life emigrated to Australia, where her family was originally from, her life was barely worth living. living. And yet, for the last 10 years of our lives, I was her caregiver.
“After her death, I kept thinking that I had wasted my life, that I should have left her, but I didn’t share this with my children because they loved their mother and I didn’t want to disappoint them. Sharing it with the group that had so many stories of their own to tell was somewhat humbling. When my wife died, I didn’t cry. I did it in the group. And when the group ended, I decided to do private therapy. These days I paint, swim and socialize. Life is not as I would have liked, but it is still worth living.”
For Dr John Prentice, a consultant clinical psychologist whose PhD examined older people (aged 66 to 91) with no previous mental health problems and how they presented their lives when they were first referred to mental health services, says the theme is “loss of meaning.” He came out very strong in his interviews. “Everyone felt,” he says, “that the younger generations avoided them because they considered them old and irrelevant.”
It is not yet known how much benefit I will get from the therapy, but it is turning out to be an interesting journey. Sometimes I feel like I’m just telling stories. At other times, encouraged by my therapist, I feel filled with emotions that I have repressed for decades. I’ve spent most of my 71 years so busy ignoring those emotions that reflecting on my life has always taken a backseat. It was Socrates who said, “an unexamined life is not worth living,” and I am finally willing to examine mine.
