Finding Meaning in Later Life Janet Anderson Yang, Ph.D. Krista McGlynn, Breanna Wilhelmi, Heritage Clinic, a division of the Center for Aging Resources
[email protected] 1 Helping Clients develop Meaning • Meaningful roles in family & the community • Meaningful activities in the community and/or individually at home • Meaning as an attitude • Meaning & Hope intertwined 2 Later life’s losses can make it harder to find meaning: • Can make it harder (physically & mentally) to follow past meaningful pursuits • Can make it harder to develop new meaningful activities/roles • Can make it harder to find hope 3 Existential Meaning in the face of loss How can we help older clients build meaning and hope when faced with loss or decline? 4 Existential Meaning in the face of loss How can we help clients improve their mental health and quality of life through development of altered perspectives, existential meaning, wisdom, integrity, spirituality? 5 Viktor Frankl (1980) stated that there are 3 avenues to meaning 6 Existential Meaning • Victor Frankl (1980) stated that there are 3 avenues to meaning: – Creating a work or doing a deed; – Experiencing something or encountering someone; – Attitudes: “Even if we are helpless victims of a hopeless situation, facing a fate that cannot be changed, we may rise above ourselves, grow beyond ourselves and by so doing change ourselves.” 7 Existential Meaning in the face of loss Developing meaning is one approach which may help. 8 Meaning • Robert Neimeyer counsels helping bereaved clients develop and internalize sense of attachment security with newly constructed meaning. • Martin Horrowitz recommends following trauma, helping clients create new meaning in a world which allows/permits such trauma to occur.