AGING RELATIVES. THE TRAGISM OF TIME. PART 1

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-01-12 20:57

And you did not know how old age sets in - when all the piles smell like corvalol, when you cannot laugh at all, so as not to provoke a severe attack of coughing, when glasses are for near and for distance, one then, in order to find others.

Vera Polozkova

Aging is a multidimensional process, but more often the focus is on the medical aspect of late aging changes. However, for family members, the aging of relatives is a much more difficult problem than the physical ailments and diseases themselves. Relatives often find it difficult to cope with feelings of irritation, guilt, and overcome alienation. Aging of relatives is not only part of their life cycle, but also part of the family life cycle. Aging relatives require special treatment, care and love.

The situation of aging relatives is normal, all families meet with it in one way or another, and each family must get out of this crisis. How? Depends on a number of factors: the previous relationships of family members, their tolerance, selfishness, empathy, maturity, anxiety, the family's material condition, the characteristics of employment, etc.

It is important that family members are aware of the very phenomenon of old age, its physiological, emotional and existential nature. Without knowledge of this problem, it is difficult for relatives to build functional, caring relationships with aging relatives.

Old age is characterized by some features of the internal and external order, one of which is the proximity of death. This is a stage in human life, after which there will be no next. The world of an aging person is not expanding, but narrowing. This period of life is characterized by the fact that the question of the attitude towards death is transferred from the subtext into the context of life itself. With the loss of strength, the growth of weakness, feeling helplessness and uselessness, a person's space is more and more filled with an intense dialogue between life and death. Reflections on death are actualized not only by involutionary processes, but also by the way of life of the old person. Subjectivity, detachment from momentary social stimuli, weakness or complete absence of motives in achieving success, comfort also concentrate a person's consciousness on death. This is the time for all family members to realize the tragedy of temporality.

The nature of aging is individual and should not be overshadowed by the general similarity of the changes taking place with all people.

With aging relatives, a thoughtful and heartfelt approach is necessary. In the body and psyche of each person, aging processes occur at different rates. In addition, aging does not have to be associated with degradation and disease.

Old age brings not only negative emotions. For many people, old age is a time of well-deserved rest, the realization of a well-lived life.

Children of aging parents are often acutely affected by aging parents. While a person is growing, his parents appear to him as omnipotent people on whom he can rely in everything. In the future, the illusion of omniscience and omnipotence is frustrated, children lose confidence in parental power. The change that old age brings is a blow to the feelings of family members.

In some families, the topic of old age is not touched upon at all, the idea that parents can grow old is missing in the mind. Children whose parents are getting old gradually begin to become orphaned with still living parents, and must become parents for their parents. Not everyone is also ready to accept the idea that the same state awaits them in the future. This is the time to reconsider your attitude towards life and take on more responsibility.

At first, adult children go through a period when, before their eyes, parents, who have recently been full of life, begin to lose strength, intellectual adequacy and self-confidence, become anxious, touchy and picky. The children's reaction to all these manifestations is anxiety and sadness. With a lack of love and respect in the family, children develop anger, irritation and sometimes even hatred towards aging parents.

Joseph Hlardo describes the emotions that are typical of children whose parents begin to age before their eyes. At first, the signs of aging surprise and amaze loved ones. The mother of one of J. Ilardo's clients, who in the recent past carefully monitored her appearance and made caustic remarks about the toilets of other women, for some time began to appear in public casually dressed and unkempt, which led her daughter to extreme confusion. Such indifference is explained, as a rule, not by the fact that a person loses observation and does not give an account of his own actions, but by the fact that he loses his taste for life.

Sometimes children are unable to internally accept the real and bitter fact that their parents have grown old. There is a reaction of denial, an unwillingness to accept reality, and children prefer not to notice the manifestations of old age in their parents and behave as if nothing has changed.

Someone stubbornly refuses to admit that parents are no longer the same as before, and continue to demand that they reproduce familiar and comfortable behavior for themselves, ignoring the needs of a loved one who is losing strength. Such reactions appear in the early stages of aging. The loved ones need time to adapt to the changes that are taking place.

Behind the irritation of children at the loss of physical strength, energy, intellectual adequacy often hides fear, fear of the death of the mother and father.

Behind the calls of children not to give up, to be cheerful, to be optimistic, not to succumb to the blues, it is disguised: “Don't you dare grow old, don't you dare die, I'm scared!”. Fearfully. It's scary to be orphaned, to be left without mom and dad. And it's scary that while the parents are alive, they stand between their child and death. When the parents are gone, the person realizes that there is no one else “in between”: you are next, your turn.

The subsequent group of reactions arises after the realization that the parents have actually become old people. A whole range of negative emotions may arise here - resentment, discontent, impatience, devastation. Such reactions more often occur in cases where in the past there was no mutual understanding between parents and children.

A possible reaction of "intellectualization" is that children, being unable to withstand the acuteness of their experiences, begin to replace the natural feeling of compassion with an in-depth study of the literature on old age, the search for good specialists and pharmacological agents.

Adult children are not able to cope with their emotions, nervous breakdowns may occur. They can yell at their aging parents, treat them with disdain and show aggression.

The family is a system, and every system seeks to maintain balance. Accordingly, J. Ilardo considers different types of family reactions to new life circumstances either as corresponding to this goal (i.e. functional, healthy), or as contradicting it (dysfunctional, unhealthy). The author's main idea is that in the changed conditions, when the older family members cease to play their former role in it, become helpless and require increased attention to themselves, sometimes the unconscious preservation of the existing family structure, the desire to preserve the role relationships unchanged is destructive. The author calls for flexibility and openness. It is advisable to distribute responsibilities among the younger members of the family in such a way that everyone uses their strengths.

Another conflict is associated with the fact that a child becomes a parent to his parent (bears responsibility, cares, cares, neglects his own interests and needs), but at the same time, the parents still remain parents, and the children are their children, the parents “do not give up their positions” require to be considered with their opinion and desire, to obey parental authority.

For people of the most advanced age, entering the last phase of their lives, it is necessary to carefully plan further actions for caring for them. It is necessary to take into account all the options for the further development of events. First of all, it is necessary to take into account the desires of the relatives themselves (if their reason is clear enough).

In most cases, elderly people want to stay in their home as long as possible - everything is familiar and comfortable in their home, the house gives a feeling of confidence and security.

Older people do not tolerate change well. Living together with an elderly person is associated with great responsibility. It is necessary to carefully consider everything that can be done in the house in order to ensure its comfort and safety. It is necessary to make changes related to the diseases of the relative: for the hearing impaired - set a loud door and phone call, for the visually impaired - bright light and, if possible, use contrasting colors in the environment.

The easiest way to understand exactly what changes need to be made is if you take the place of an elderly person, try to look at the environment. HIS eyes.

When old people can no longer do without help in taking care of themselves, it is difficult for them and for those close to them. The parent's body is taboo, especially if it is the parent's body of the opposite sex. Here the prohibition on incest and feelings about the fact that the most intimate manipulations with a withered body are carried out by another are also triggered. Borders are crumbling. It is important to understand the natural shame of the old man, to be delicate but also natural.

Old age ends, a person enters the last phase of his life - the last days before death. People who are on their deathbed are in dire need of sincere human contacts, they need honest and open communication. An important condition for the normal flow of emotions during this period is the openness of family members to each other.

If close people are open to genuine, not distorted by psychological defenses, contact with their aging and dying relatives, they begin to realize that there is something previously hidden from them, which has significant and deep meaning.

This difficult process, ultimately, enriches, sweeps away the superficial and trivial from those who continue their life path.