INFLUENCE OF PERSONAL STYLE ON THE AGING PROCESS. PART 2

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

Schizoid. Aging often exacerbates characteristics in individuals that are similar to those of schizoidism. For example, older people reduce the number and frequency of contact with other people due to their tendency to emotional detachment and in order to optimize positive emotions. It is easier for an aging person of a schizoid nature to endure retirement, the death of friends and widowhood. One aging divorced schizoid man after retirement told his son so bluntly: “You don’t need to come to me often, you don’t need to call, others need it all, but I’m finally fine, I can be alone, I’m happy. All my life I suffered from the fact that I was forced to contact people who weighed down on me. Leave me alone, I do not know how long I have left to live and I want no one to touch me. Aging people of this kind can find it very difficult to cope with situations such as hospitalization or moving to a nursing home.

Hysterical. Aging softens some hysterical manifestations (for example, sexualization), but infantilism, egocentrism, increased attention to the body, hypochondriacal fears, reactive depression and anxiety remain unchanged. Hysteroid people complain incessantly, behave childishly, and act out scenes in which they play the role of poor wretches. If they don't get the attention they want, it can lead to feelings of abandonment, which can turn into depression.

74-year-old N. competes with her oncologically ill spouse and the symptoms of his illness that bring him suffering, continually inventing new diseases, disorders and suffering for the attention of children, terribly offended by the family's inattention to them, including her seriously ill husband.

It is especially difficult to come to terms with the change in appearance, so the hysteroid continues to struggle to preserve youth in all available ways, resorting to all kinds of anti-aging procedures and plastic surgeries. This circumstance is so depressing for the aging hysteroid that the inability to prevent aging can cause severe and prolonged depression, which in turn provokes a rapid decline in cognitive abilities. Thus, 66-year-old O., who was expecting a paid series of rejuvenating procedures from her children as a gift, and received instead a robot vacuum cleaner, after long tears fell into depression, which ended only when her son, who knew the nature of his mother, did not pay her procedures.

In another case, the aging S. (60 years old), who throughout her life was overly concerned about her appearance, suddenly becomes a fierce fan of body positivity, trying to captivate everyone around with a new idea, embarrassing her children, who know their mother very well and understand that what happened the inversion of the category of beauty is nothing more than the same hysterical desire to draw attention to one's "unique" person.

Paranoid. The paranoid style is characterized by distrust, suspicion, doubts about the loyalty of a partner, colleagues and friends. With age, in all people distrust and suspicion increase, paranoid traits intensify and with a paranoid personality style. This is facilitated by the weakening of sensory, motor, cognitive abilities, which lead to a loss of control. Paranoia increases the aging person's distance from people and the desire to avoid relationships. Mistrust and fear of being deceived do not allow an aging person to overcome the difficulties that are inevitable in old age. Such people are afraid to accept help from other people and seek support. Hospitalization, like medical procedures, is terrifying, a person seeks to control medical personnel, double-checks the results of diagnostics and is afraid of taking medications.

Sadistic. Experts who interviewed sadistic individuals reported anxiety, unaccountable restlessness, a sense of creepiness, and overwhelmed with intense negative feelings. Researchers point to goose bumps, a feeling of hair standing on end, and other atavistic reactions to a predator-prey situation. According to Segal, emotional abuse knows no age limit. Thus, cruelty and sadistic pleasure, enhanced by cognitive and physical impairment, can gain momentum with age.

Borderline. Aging borderline individuals retain an inability to regulate their emotional responses to stressful situations, but the behavioral patterns of this inability can change. So, instead of self-damaging acts, refusal to eat, or substance abuse can become. The literature indicates (Zanarini) that in older people, chaotic behavior caused by impulsivity and acting out is less pronounced than in younger people. Other traits, such as defensiveness, emotional responses to stressful events, feelings of emptiness and fear of loneliness, remain unchanged throughout life. In general, the borderline personality style in an aging person is associated with a low quality of life, with resistance to medical and psychological interventions, with substance abuse, and with difficulties in adaptation.

Obsessive-compulsive. People with obsessive-compulsive personality styles, emphatically called "living machines" by Reich, are extremely reserved and disciplined. They are overly concerned about rules, schedules, timetables and order. Aging provokes an increase in these characteristics. In old age, a person with an obsessive-compulsive structure begins to control all the events and space (objects) that surround him. So, obsessive-compulsive features do not allow a person to part with long-unnecessary and non-functional things, if loved ones begin to insist that some things have no meaning, an aging person reacts with anger and depression. In some cases, delirium or paranoid fear (deception, robbery, assault, persecution) may develop. It is difficult for such people to change the rhythm of life, they experience suffering if they have to leave their usual environment.