It is generally accepted in our country that life stops with retirement: the grandchildren have grown up, the children are all in business, there is not enough money, health is no longer the same … What kind of life is there? Psychotherapy sessions will help change attitudes, which will prove that old age is given to us in order to live it, and not live it out.
“Daddy, why do you need to go to a therapist?” asked my 86-year-old patient’s daughter. Such questions are born from common ideas that old age is a time of survival, and not of life. Carl Whitaker, the famous family therapist, when he turned 70, said: “What a blessing it is to be an old man!”
Weird? Well no. You no longer owe anything to anyone and you can just be yourself. Expectations from life are more modest, and for joy you don’t need as much as before. The body — the “home of the soul” — is, of course, not the same anymore, but the soul itself does not know age.
I am currently working a lot at a senior day center in Dallas (USA). Often they come literally through the physical “I can’t” — here they have a lively and diverse life.
A couple of years ago, I took a 12-year-old granddaughter to a collective birthday party and saw her first reaction — cautious wariness at the sight of many old people. But after half an hour she was chatting, singing and dancing with them animatedly. On the way back, already dozing in the back seat of the car, she said: “Grandfather, you yourself do not understand what you are doing for them. You prolong their life. To be included in life is to live.
Talk about everything
Life doesn’t stop when you retire. An 80-year-old patient says: “My husband and I are having such a sexy Indian summer. How to explain to children that sometimes we need to be alone? On the other hand, old age is a time of preparation for departure. But it hurts the children to listen to this: “Come on, Mom, you will live to 120!” My patients often admit: «Only with you I can talk about everything.» We calmly and openly discuss really everything — sexuality, and death, and other things that you can’t talk about with relatives and friends.
My oldest patient Sophia is 97 years old. We started working about five years ago, shortly after the death of her husband. Then she ended up in a nursing home due to a hip fracture, weakening more and more. She dreamed of dying … Once, when her great-granddaughter was expecting her first child, I asked: “Don’t you want to hold your great-great-grandson in your arms?” She replied: «You are cunning … I would like to.» And she started to get out.
The task of therapy is not to change life, but to change the attitude towards it, to what worries
Three years have passed. Of course, it is very difficult for her, sometimes I find her in tears. But this is no longer the old depression, but rather fatigue from the current difficult life. When she has the strength, she cuts through the corridor in a wheelchair, looking with pleasure and interest at what is happening around.
A month ago, we celebrated her birthday: I arrived early and found her with her great-granddaughter and second great-great-grandson — she was completely happy. And then we quietly drank a sip of wine with her from the staff. At 97 years old! Yes, she is waiting for death, but in a different way — not in the cold pit of depression, but at the warm sunset of life.
The soul can do a lot
Age numbers by themselves mean little. It is hard when they multiply by diseases.
Elena and I met when she was close to 80, and her Parkinson’s disease has been for more than a quarter of a century: she could not get up from her chair on her own. After six months of work, she and I did two or three circles around the huge house and did therapy on the go. And then she and her husband flew to their native Odessa, which they yearned for, and after returning, she said that there for the first time, freezing in the rain, she tried vodka: “How good it turns out!”
Even the seriously ill have a huge potential, the soul can do a lot. And the opportunity to use this reserve is much greater if a psychotherapist helps.
It’s never too late
Often, young people are also afraid of the changes that may come to them through psychotherapy. But the task of therapy is not to change life, but to change the attitude towards it, towards what worries.
One of my patients came to me after the death of her husband and for eight sessions she talked about … her military childhood. About how one day she looked at the sky — sunny, with beautiful silvery airplanes, and then it turned out that these were German bombers. “I stood with my back pressed against the post, I see everything, I hear everything, but I can’t do anything — neither scream, nor move…” I asked her: “Is this what you feel now, after the death of your husband?” She replied: «Yes.»
It took her eight sessions to understand her feelings. And after that, she began to get out of the depression, which she experienced very deeply after the loss of her husband.
The task of a psychotherapist is to help a person cope with life. Do not defeat it, do not change it, but discover in yourself the ability to see all its many possibilities. And allow yourself to use these opportunities. We cannot make life infinite, but we can make that part of it that we have yet to be happier. We can and must.»