Resilience is a concept I was always very fond of as a working psychologist. I still am quite attached to the idea of resilience in my retirement. The problem is I’m losing it. I think we both are, Mrs Summerhouse and I. We seem to be more easily pulled out of shape by life’s, often…
Category: Mental health
Retirement blog : More not going gently
I don’t think I could be accused of going gently into that ‘dark night’ about which I waxed so eloquently a short while ago in these retirement blogs. If I were so accused I would simply present my accuser with this photo from my latest grand project. The more astute of you will realise this…
Retirement blog: A therapeutic response to bureaucracy
They say the Devil makes work for idle hands. Some people think that retired people have too much time on their hands and this leads to these retired people getting involved in unnecessary projects. Ones that raise their stress levels with little benefit overall to their well-being. The project below may well come into that…
Retirement blog : Life in large and small portions
They say don’t sweat the small stuff. Easy for you to say, I say. There’s Derby County two minutes from relegation, hooray, but they escape, boo. There’s the result of the local elections – I despair, I really do. I read that 45,000 people have entered a lottery to kill bison in USA – am…
Short Friday retirement blog about lockdown sanity
Staying sane during our second lockdown. At least two people of very different inclinations have told me the key to this is to have something to look forward to everyday. Who would disagree with this advice? Specifically, in their case, buying something from the internet. Every day? Sounds a bit extravagant but maybe it works…
Retirement blog : Humour in times of crisis
Hi there, is there anybody out there? If there is then let me tell you what I had in mind for this retirement blog. I had vaguely thought I would write a blog about humour in times of crisis. I imagined it would be easy to carry out some ‘proper’ research like I used to…
Retirement blog about resilience
Resilience is defined in the dictionary as ‘the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties’, also ‘toughness’. Seems like a fair definition although the word ‘capacity’ is slightly ambiguous in one sense. If one wonders whether ‘capacity’ means you either have it or you don’t, where does that leave a person? Or can the word suggest…
Retirement and being a 70 year old car
You know at my most pessimistic I feel like a 70 year old car. Unlikely I know but it will do as a metaphor or whatever it is for now. Let me explain. I feel like a 70 year old car with dents (or is it dints?). Each dent, I like this word better, represents,…
Being candid about my retirement
A while ago a friend suggested she was surprised at how much I revealed about our lives in the pages of this retirement blog. I admit it gave me pause for thought. Is it possible I’m being too honest* about our retirement experiences? My idea about the content of some of these blogs was that…
Retirement and the Big A (and I don’t mean apple, at least I don’t think I do).
Inevitable I suppose as you get older that the spectre at the feast of your retirement is your health, both physical and mental. And you know you’re in a bit of trouble mental health-wise when you start thinking Edgar Alan Poe. In the last couple of days Mrs Summerhouse went back to Specsavers to have…