ACA Blog

Ever wonder what the profile of the person ‘least likely’ to seek out counseling is? Look at your client list. You will find that it is noticeably lacking in this population: the older, white male. Now get this: 73% of suicides are committed by, yeah, “older, white males.” Do they need us? You bet. Will they come to us? Probably not, even though their suicide rate is higher than older, black males and women put together.

In the 80’s, there was much ado about the baby boomers latest trend: cocooning. It was heralded that theirs would soon be a generation of stay-at homes, who wore sweat clothes and flip-flops instead of tuxedos and stilettos. No longer would they be out on the town, but instead at home watching movies on their VCR’s. And that is exactly what happened, but not just because the VCR had been invented, but frankly, because they were getting tired.

You don’t have to read War And Peace to know that Tolstoy sure had a handle on people. “Everybody thinks of changing humanity, but nobody thinks of changing himself,” he said. In fact, I’ll bet he’d have made one heck of a counselor. He certainly had the patience. Scholars say that he endured a 48 year marriage known as, ‘one of the unhappiest in literary history.’ Interestingly, he would die of pneumonia at a train station the very night he was finally making his escape, both from the marriage and his aristocratic lifestyle.

Interesting ride in the elevator this morning. As the doors closed, I went to push the UP button, but the four year-old next to me beat me to it, hitting the DOWN one instead. We headed down. “DADDY!” she shrieked, “Why aren’t we going UP???” “Because you pushed the DOWN button,” he said with a grimace of embarrassment.

I swim ½ mile everyday at the local pool. In the roped off area, there is usually an elderly water aerobics class going on next to me. You know, white-haired, wrinklies flopping about on noodles or lifting Styrofoam dumb bells. Most are women and most spend the entire class talking, not exercising. But that doesn’t matter. These are the last legion of the upward and still mobile and I admire their perseverance.

I don’t plan to mince words with you as I begin my first blog for the ACA. Time is just too short, even if you’re young. Speaking of which, if you are around age 25, grab a camera right now and take a shot of yourself. Don’t worry how you look. Forget the makeup or what you’re wearing. Truth is, you are not really going to age much beyond today for the rest of your life, at least in your mind’s eye that is.

When I began my internship for my graduate program, almost two years ago, with a company working within assisted living and skilled nursing facilities, I was excited to immerse myself in counseling older adults. My experiences throughout my internship working with older adults afforded me invaluable opportunities to learn and cultivate my passion for older adults. A great deal of my focus in my own research and writing revolved around the older adult population, and this blog has been driven by my experiences with my older adult clients

Over the course of my internship and now working as a professional counselor within a long term care and skilled nursing setting, I have been learning many strategies for navigating within a larger system. Furthermore, I have found there to be a great deal of need for mental health services; a need that requires mental health counselors within such a system to act as an advocate for our profession.

It is interesting that whenever someone asks me what population I work with, and I mention older adults, in my experiences the first thing many people then ask about has something to do with memory loss or dementia. It seems as though there is a widespread association between older individuals and memory loss. I have also encountered individuals who often assume that all of my clients have Alzheimer’s disease. In addition, in my experiences many people seem to then conclude that individuals with such memory loss, Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia could not benefit from counseling.

Through the major transitions, grieving of losses, onset of loneliness, and perceived loss of control, the relinquishment of roles typical of adulthood and acceptance of roles typical to later life become a great challenge for older adults. As I have worked with older adult clients, another theme that adds to the difficulties of adjusting to later life revolves around learning to navigate new roles. Many older adults worked for up to four decades in the same job, developing an identity that was very connected to that job. I have worked with female clients who identify as a mother before anything else; however, are still learning to adjust to having their grown children act as their caregiver, while they are left with no one to care for. These are just a couple examples of the role changes that I have seen in working with my older adult clients. Such role changes go deeper than simply getting use to a new way of living; they tap into the core identity of a person. When that identity is shaken, feelings of anxiety and depression are common symptoms of the struggle to adjust to the changing roles.