Retirement stress then. It’s funny because I know all this stuff both from the viewpoint of a consumer and an adviser. You can’t be a psychologist for thirty or more years and be a big fan of cognitive behaviour therapy etc. and not know all about (well maybe not all but a lot) how our thoughts affect our emotions and even our perception of the ‘facts’
In fact there is one theory that there are no such things as actual facts, simply the interpretation we put upon them. So it was no great shock to read a book review (The Expectation Effect: How Your Mindset Can Transform Your Life by David Robson) in this weekend’s Guardian about, in effect, what makes stress stressful is not the actual stressful events but rather the view we take of it.
I take the review to say if we put the ‘right’ interpretation (I’ll come back to what ‘right’ means in this context) on the stressful event then stress can be actually beneficial to our well-being, our attitude to life and even, the review suggests, to our physical (as well as our mental) health. And even our longevity.
So you can imagine it might be worth paying attention to this view of psychology. It would seem to have a lot to offer a person who believes they are stressed. So the question is obviously then why the bloody hell aren’t you doing so?
Let me quote a bit more from the paper just to reinforce the message
“A growing body of research suggests that it is our beliefs about our feelings, as much as the feelings themselves, that determine their effects on the brain and body. Negative views of stress and anxiety often exacerbate our problems and by learning to view these uncomfortable feelings more positively we may even be able to use some forms of stress to our advantage.”
So very sensible and so how does that apply to the stress I’ve been experiencing of late? Briefly I’ve been feeling that everything I touch has turned to dust. Quite dramatic and definitely debilitating. I could however simply reframe this by having the thought it’s not a problem that things have been going wrong because each problem is an opportunity to prove my mental strength to show my problem-solving skills. Not to mention a topic for this blog.
Or that without these ‘challenges’ (important to use the best word) I will be missing a chance to grow (pardon the clichéd word and I know that line, every problem is an opportunity is the most tired of self-help cliches but that doesn’t mean there isn’t at least a grain of truth in it).
And back to the review. It says, with the ‘right’ attitude towards stress we are more likely to seek out and notice the potentially positive aspects of any challenging situation. Or that when people are ‘taught’ that stress can enhance their performance in a situation (sport is a common example that is used), and without a degree of stress our motivation to be successful is reduced, they welcome it rather than fear it.
In my meeting with our planning consultant and architect about which I wrote recently, it is possible that no feelings of dissatisfaction, even anger as I was accused of having, would have meant that I would never have expressed my concerns and would have left the meeting feeling even more angry and pissed off.
So far so good, I think the ‘only’ difficulty, and it is a big one, is that knowing all this and channelling this thinking at the time is by no means easy. It’s why people have (maybe written) mantras as reminders or better still, a willing associate to remind us what we’re aiming at. I find preparation is a good thing. To prepare before the stressful situation, if you know it’s coming and what it’s likely to be like, about the importance and plus points of feeling a degree of stress. Balanced stress of course, but stress nevertheless.
Retirement stress summary
I’ve called this retirement stress so in all fairness I need to address the question is stress in retirement more damaging than at any other time of life? As always there’s an upside and a downside to this answer. The potential upside, bearing in mind what I’ve already written about balance, is that when we are retired it’s somewhat easier to say to oneself, relax, you’ve proved all this years ago, now you’ve earned the right to feel more laid back.
The downside is that you substitute a feeling which goes something like, you’re old and nothing really matters, so chill out. That sounds to me like the balance is wrong. But there is a context of being retired that definitely affects, for better or worse, your view of what’s stressful.
In my case I think I haven’t quite got enough of the ‘relax, you’ve proved all this before’, quotient in my day to day thinking. I need to bear that in mind in the future.