Personality Strategies During Aging

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

During the period of maturity, the signals of the inevitable physiological aging process that appear for the first time (decreased activity, including physical, attractiveness, sexuality, rigidity, etc.) are often psychologically rejected and rejected by the individual. The reason is simple: the passport indicates the real age person ("over 40 years"), and in the mirror he sees his own "25 year old reflection. This discrepancy between the external perception of oneself and real age-related changes is caused by the difference, reaching a critical level, of self-perception between "I-real" and "I-ideal". These two interdependent factors multiply their negative effects with any emerging negative life changes, leading the personality to internal contradictions (to problems with self-esteem), and these, in turn, to crisis phenomena (identity crisis), and to the inclusion of a person's subconscious fear aging.

The solution to all the aging problems faced by the personality is solved using three main strategies

Comfort strategy, during the aging process, realizes the goal: worthy acceptance of their age-related changes and themselves in them. To achieve this goal, psychoemotional adaptation of the personality to age-related changes is used, based on the awareness of the inevitability of physiological changes in the aging process, on rethinking and setting new life goals / values / meanings, on voluntary leaving the comfort zone, on creating new personal boundaries, on a calm and a worthy solution to new age-related problems arising with each stage of aging, etc. This strategy is a vivid manifestation of the basic life, active, strategy chosen in youth or maturity. Those who choose this particular aging strategy traditionally lead a rich life, in all its manifestations, including communication and relationships - this is the main factor in feeling satisfied with life and in a state of happiness. For these people, “the glass is always half full,” not empty.

In this strategy, all actions of a person after 40 are of a deliberate nature of a deliberate activity based on a voluntary and independent choice. Neither public opinion nor pressure from the immediate environment influences these actions and neither the choice, because there is already material independence, the necessary flexibility and life experience, objectivity (absence of aggression, hysteria, pity for oneself / for others) and the ability to listen / hear interlocutor (pleasant interlocutor), self-confidence, optimism and positivity, awareness of one's own desires, etc.

In this strategy, the person tries to create a harmonious balance between the material and the spiritual, between the external and internal sides, which is expressed in the formation of a new image of the person. A new personality image is formed on the so-called image composition, which is based on four main image "whales":

* on specific goals for a new period of life,

* on the existing real appearance;

* on the subject and content of communication;

* to the target audience to which the person will broadcast his new image.

When forming a new personal image that endows a person with a personal competitive advantage, two important factors must be taken into account: aging is an irreversible process and the correspondence of the updated image to the set goal. For example:

* respect for their appearance can be expressed in the use of medical or cosmetic Anti-Aging;

* in the demonstration of the existing personal value qualities (internal and external culture, intelligence, and good breeding, outlook);

* in the correction of existing and development of new behavioral models and reactions (methods and means of interaction and communication);

* in revising life strategy (worldview and attitudes), etc.

Little tip: use Swot analysis, which is actively used in business. This format allows you to appreciate the valuable personal qualities that come with life experience, which a person has every right to preserve, cherish and demonstrate to others.

In the "Comfort" strategy, relationships are viewed and revised from a different angle, in which a person is not only sure that he has a reserve of vital activity for about 30 years, but also a new level of his further happy life, corrects its new living standards in his new personality image, which, at times, require and suggest dramatic and radical changes in their own lives.

For example.

Sexual desire and the need for sex not only persist, but also intensify, delivering a different, highest, more tender and quivering pleasure, despite the decreasing level of sex hormones. It is enough to look at a man in love, 40-50 years old, and you can see how young, energetic he is and does not experience any problems with sexual desire. The secret is simple:

* verbal, speech-thinking functions, actively progressing, reaching their peak and resisting the general aging process (research by K. Blanc, V. Frolskis, D. Bromley);

* The sexual function of men becomes better than at the age of 30–35, because with age some disorders, such as premature ejaculation or neurosis, in the form of anxious expectation of sexual failure, go away, the female need for sex increases and sexual sensations become stronger and more vivid.

Lonely people build qualitatively new love relationships and connections, based on the emerging worldly wisdom and tolerance, changed attitudes. They are considering and actively using all sorts of options for new acquaintances, significantly expanding the format of building new love relationships: from cohabitation without obligations, from legal or guest marriage, to fleeting relationships, etc.

Married spouses often overestimate their own family life and themselves in it. They choose either a new format of family relationships, defining a new architecture for building family relationships, or they end family relationships, etc.

For example:

* If both spouses sincerely consider their marriage to be happy, if they feel happy in marriage, they strive to maintain a happy family relationship for many years to the end of their lives, they are quite careful about the established, habitual, marriage relationship. This category of spouses is psycho-emotional invested in family relationships, which allows them to successfully transfer relationships to a qualitatively new level. If necessary and with mutual desire, the spouses turn to a family psychologist.

* If one of the spouses considers himself not happy in marriage, he makes a firm decision to leave, often showing a demonstratively categorical refusal to continue living in the marriage, which has become painful and difficult for him. This spouse can no longer be held back by the reasoned opinion and desire of the second spouse to save the marriage.

According to available statistics, the couple breaks up, even after 20-25 years of marriage, which causes general bewilderment and misunderstanding, who considered the couple "ideal" and their marriage "ideal". Agree, it is very difficult and difficult, almost impossible, for spouses, dissatisfied with joint life, to slide smoothly, beautifully and gracefully in pair skating not on the ice, but on the football field.

Those who choose this aging strategy strive to make their lives interesting and exciting. They are filled with amazing life plans, creative ideas, creative projects, and sometimes find the most unusual opportunities for their implementation. For example, they can build a rush business out of a hobby, discover and enjoy their new or discovered opportunities, realize and fulfill the most intimate desires of their dreams.

Resistance strategy. The goal of the strategy: to prolong youth and stop the aging process. To achieve this goal, an open "war" is declared with age-related aging, with the use of the entire military arsenal of modern cosmetic and health-improving medicine (creams, vitamins, injections, operations, etc.), the transition to a correct lifestyle (gym, proper nutrition, rejection of bad habits, etc.), activation of sexual life.

However, in the war against the natural aging process, people always lose. Always. No matter how hard a person tries to feel young and no matter how much he wants to always see himself young, see his reflection in the mirror only for “25 years, and not a year more”, no matter how hard he tries to “keep” his youth, alas! irreversible physiological aging processes have already begun in his body. For example. In men: the number of spontaneous erections is significantly reduced, an erect penis begins to lose its firmness, the need for orgasm decreases, etc. In women: collagen is actively lost, muscles weaken, wrinkles appear, metabolic processes deteriorate, etc.

Despite the fact that at the age of 40-55 a person's need for love significantly increases, manifested in strong communicative and sexually intimate ties within the family and outside it, he has dissatisfaction with his sex life - this is one of the most common and most painful "Bedroom tragedy" (L. Tolstoy) Physiological changes lead to the appearance of problems with sexual self-esteem. Many people try to improve their sexual self-esteem with the help of the “novelty effect”.

For example: flirting at work or on social media; love affairs on the side; in attracting the attention of an unequal partner in age (traditionally, with younger and inexperienced, but with the important question "how am I in bed?"), etc.

It is sexual dissatisfaction and the resulting disharmony that are the most frequent causes of couples breakdown, divorce and nervous diseases. Moreover, according to statistics, women cheat on their sexual partners (husbands / cohabitants) more often than men cheat on them. Ce la vie.

According to the statistics of the registry offices, the number of divorces during this period is catastrophic: 700 of 1000 marriages break up. According to the medical statistics of neurologists, 66, 1% of neurological patients have sexual and family problems.

Strategy "Infantilism" / or strategy "Self-heating" … This is, in fact, a strategy of desperation, in which the entire arsenal of "self-heating" is applied. Goal: inaction in the "comfort zone". The physiological changes taking place under the “Infantilism” strategy lead to sexual dissatisfaction, sexual accusations and reproaches, to unreasonable refusal from sex with a partner or avoidance of it, etc. According to statistics, for example, sex in the "Infantilism" strategy ceases to bring the expected satisfaction for 51.8% of men and women

The main means of self-heating in the “Infantilism” strategy is the manifestation of active self-pity, which is characterized, for example, by a “suddenly” realized discrepancy between the real state of marriage (cohabitation) and the expectations of the individual from it; accusations and claims against a partner in unfulfilled dreams of their own, in existing problems (emotional, sexual, material and social), etc.; self-idealization and self-justification of one's own mistakes, mistakes and problems; overestimated requirements for a partner, not commensurate with his personality; careful accumulation, cultivation and storage of negative emotions (indifference to solving one's own problems, resentment, disappointment, aggression, annoyance); depressive moods (passivity, indifference, apathy); regret about the irretrievably gone youth and missed opportunities; exacerbation of existing, or the onset of new, disappointments, with the subsequent loss of respect for the partner / partner; alcoholization / addiction to alcohol, etc.

Refusal to solve age-related and crisis problems, from acquiring a new worldview and flexibility (mental, psychological and spiritual), leads a person to ignore them, to a weak-willed "flow along the river of age", to a refusal of activity, to "clinging" to the past, to the positions achieved, to weak attempts to strengthen their own authority and to envy, which, in some cases, leads to open hatred of young and energetic people who are viewed by the aging person as a threat. In fact, a person completely devalues himself: his Ego and his previous life, including love, experience, which leads to a feeling of hopelessness and problems with the nervous system, which become the main negative channel along which all subsequent life periods flow, often leading to life and personal tragedies and dramas.