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by Deborah A. Banazak, D.O.
Improving one's self-esteem as advancing years approach is a real issue
that affects all of us. Adults often overlook the realities of what increasing
years will bring. Most people live well into old age. The life expectancy
of men at age 65 is 79 years and of women at age 65 is 84 years, leaving
them much time beyond retirement to enjoy.
We can construct the foundation of how we will live out those years and
the emotional health we experience during them long before retirement.
Integral to positive aging is positive self-esteem. We'll look at what
self-esteem in aging means, how to assess it, and how to find weak areas
that require bolstering.
Assessing Your Self-Esteem
A quick cure for poor self-esteem is non-existent. Because self-image
has taken years to develop, change can be challenging. Unlike Freud's
view that after age 40 psychological growth through therapy becomes impossible,
many modern theorists believe that late life is not a stagnant time, provided
an individual is motivated to grow.
To begin the task, assessing self-esteem through a personal inventory
may be helpful. This exercise requires taking stock of all aspects of
your life. Do you use your emotional life constructively? Is your spiritual
growth keeping up with your financial or family success? Often weak areas
appear with this assessment and, once identified, may respond to concerted
effort to balance self-esteem.
Most of us are so preoccupied with day-to-day events that taking time
to reflect on our lives is challenging. A personal inventory requires
setting aside specific time to reflect on your current situation. Retreats
or vacations are great times for thinking. It is important to find this
time. Unless you structure time for this purpose, it will usually not
happen.
In this personal reflection, spend your time examining the spiritual,
physical, social, and emotional parts of your life. First, identify those
areas that are going well. These strongly contribute to a healthy sense
of self-esteem. Create a list of the strong and weak areas. This will
allow you to reexamine them in months or years to come.
Don't neglect the help of family and friends. They may provide helpful
feedback about strong and weak areas in your self-esteem. Therapists,
pastors, and other professionals can also be an invaluable source of help.
To more easily understand how to bolster your self-esteem, we'll look
at the components of self-esteem as one ages. Although there is no one
way to age successfully, certain positive trends have been identified.
Aspects of Self-Esteem
Erik Erickson, a pioneer in psychological development, interviewed healthy
octogenarians about their religious faith. He found much variability in
religious practices from strict church attendance to little outward evidence
of faith. Many of those interviewed took comfort and improved their self-esteem
from the heritage and principles of faith they learned as children. Those
who evidenced maturity in faith had opened themselves to struggle with
their beliefs in order to grow. Although their bodies grew frail, they
continued an active faith stance by intellectual challenge, an active
prayer life, and maintaining fellowship within the church.
Dan Blazer and his colleagues at Duke University discovered that with
increasing age, religious attitudes maintained stability. Strong religious
attitudes were associated with increased feelings of happiness, usefulness,
and adjustment.
To improve your spiritual life and achieve these gains requires concentrated
effort. Begin now to enrich your faith. Go beyond weekly church attendance
to take an active role in study, prayer, and community fellowship. Volunteer
to meet needs in your congregation or the world. Lillian Carter, long
past retirement age, joined the Peace Corps and went to India to minister
to others. No one told the former president's mother she was too old to
take such risks.
Many people are terrified of growing older because they immediately associate
aging with overwhelming crippling infirmities. This fear can impair their
self-esteem. While it is true that more than 80 percent of those 65 or
older have one chronic physical problem, often these conditions of arthritis,
hypertension, or heart disease may be managed medically, causing little
impairment.
If you feel helpless over health issues and neglect good health practices,
the feelings of powerlessness, fear, and depression that result can injure
your self-esteem. Although "willing away" disease is unlikely,
making good health choices is possible and will bolster your self-respect.
If your health is a weak area of the personal inventory, begin now to
correct this. Do you exercise regularly? This can greatly improve your
stamina. Is your diet balanced? Substances such as sodium and cholesterol
may contribute to blood vessel diseases. Do you routinely get a physical
examination to find silent diseases such as hypertension or to detect
early cancer? Taking an active stance to work on your physical health
gives you a psychological feeling of empowerment.
The importance of social support in late life cannot be overemphasized.
Spouse, family, friends, and coworkers often play a vital role in reinforcing
your self-esteem. They often provide encouragement and strength when self-respect
is traumatized. Because of the previous life experiences we share with
them, they offer us a sense of personal history. In addition, their perspective
may offer a different angle on difficult life situations.
As loved ones move away or die, the danger for social isolation with
increasing age grows. Often older people are left without many personal
resources unless they make an active effort to develop new relationships.
To ease this transition, many years before late life occurs, make acquiring
the ability to make new friends a goal. Join clubs, church groups, or
social organizations now to reinforce your social support network. It
doesn't matter what your age is, it's never too late to start. The experience
of giving to others in a social context aids in your self-worth. It gives
purpose and meaning as well as establishes friendship networks that can
be longlasting.
This relationship between emotional health and self-esteem is complex.
Clearly, if an aging person suffers psychological trauma, they may come
to be discouraged, disheartened, and have poor self-esteem. Although one's
"golden years" are often looked upon with anticipation, the
loss of job with retirement, death of spouse and friends, or changes in
physical health or attractiveness can be overwhelming. Successful aging
requires that we grieve our losses through venting our thoughts and feelings
about the event. The challenge of aging is to create new ways of reinvesting
the emotional energy we once directed toward the lost person or object.
Some people never come to terms with these losses and choose social isolation
in their later years, becoming overwhelmed with grief, anxiety, and loneliness.
Maintaining good emotional health and thus self-esteem involves recognizing
the warning signs of loss and stress and dealing with them appropriately.
Any life change, even one seen as positive, creates anxiety. If possible,
try in advance to recognize the stressful event/loss before it occurs.
Plan for it. Talk about it. Seek the advice and companionship of others
who have gone through similar experiences. As one example, when the physical
needs of the older person increase, nursing home placement may become
the only option for care. If possible, allow time for this move. Let yourself
grieve over the loss of your home through talking about your feelings.
Giving yourself as many options as possible can overcome the feelings
of powerlessness that are often associated with poor self-esteem.
Sometimes, despite one's best efforts to ward it off, emotional illness
may affect the aging person. Born in a generation unaccustomed to aggressive
treatment for mental illness, some older people view seeking help outside
the family as weakness. Social attitudes may reinforce this stance, saying
that because of the overwhelming losses of aging, depression is simply
to be expected. Often people find a major step to improved self-respect
is in ignoring these prejudices and seeking help. Emotional illness in
later life can often be treated.
Self-esteem does not have to diminish with increasing age. Its components,
however, should not be neglected or taken for granted. It's realistic
for you to set as a goal to live your later years with dignity. To achieve
it, you must employ active effort in earlier years. Regardless of your
age, setting the foundation for healthy self-esteem should begin today,
not "When I retire" or "When I have more time." The
efforts you spend today helping develop respect for yourself and others
will be fruitful in later years.
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