How to help someone suffering from boredom in retirement?

Tips to help a retired person facing boredom at this stage of life.

Boredom is normal. It is a totally healthy emotion, no matter how much they insist on saying that we should be entertained and busy. Boredom is what allows us to reflect, calm down and be intimate with ourselves, without any distractions.

However, when boredom becomes our main companion every day, this emotion can lead to apathy, listlessness and laziness, evolving into psychological problems.

This phenomenon is very common in people over 65, who have just retired and do not know what to do with their free time. Today we are going to find out how to help someone who is suffering from boredom in retirementwith several tips.

How to help a retired person who is bored?

The word "retirement" comes from the Latin "iubilatio" which literally means joy. From this we can extract that when we reach retirement age, a period of joy, personal enjoyment and freedom begins. The time has come to dedicate ourselves to ourselves, and not to devote our time and energies to a job that, although we may have liked it, has also tired us out. Our well-deserved rest has come.

But retirement does not inject joy into our veins and magically we are happy. Contrary to what its name suggests, in retirement, as in any other period of our lives, we can feel a Wide range of emotions. We are still human: we can be happy, sad or angry, among many other emotions. However, the most common emotion, and the one that causes the most problems for newly retired people, is boredom.

Retirement is a situation in which, suddenly, our days lose structure because the thing that kept us busy, work, is no longer there.the job, is no longer there. Every job is different, of course, but as a rule people, who may well have been in the same job for decades, find themselves in the situation that from Monday to Friday they have more than 8 hours a day empty. What to do with so much time? Having so much free time brings new opportunities, but also risks.

Boredom is normal and healthy, but being chronically bored seriously damages mental health. In a society where being busy and stressed is perceived as a sign of success and unemployment as failure and uselessness, there are many retirees who, after leaving their jobs, become depressed, feeling that their useful life has come to an end. The first year of retirement is critical because so much mismanaged free time, far from being a liberation, becomes a living death sentence.

It must be said that adapting to the new situation, in which there are no longer fixed schedules or work obligations, is a question of attitude, but it also depends on the support you receive from those closest to you. depends on the support you receive from those closest to you.. If we have a father, grandfather, uncle or any loved one who has just retired, we should not believe that he or she will manage and take care of the dead hours. We run the risk of condemning him or her to the most unhealthy tedium. We must help our loved one who suffers from boredom.

Reactivating at this stage of life

To help someone suffering from boredom in retirement the first thing to do is to find out what their dreams and hobbies are. You may even be a little embarrassed to tell us, but no one in this life doesn't have unfulfilled dreams. Whether it's taking a trip, writing a novel, writing your memoirs, painting, learning a language.... there are many "I want to but I can't now" that, because of work and other obligations, they have not been able to do..

Many of these hobbies could be considered an individual thing. For example, we cannot learn a language for him or her, nor can we take a trip on his or her behalf, but we can accompany him or her along the way. If we also have the time, which we surely do, we can join him or her in the same hobby so that we can join forces and learn together. It's not just a matter of pushing him a little to fulfill his dreams and kill boredom, it's also about spending time with that person. He may still be healthy and agile, but let's not forget that he is in his last period of life.

It happens to many people that they retire from their work and their life.. As they leave behind a very long period of their life, which they may well have started at the age of 18, they run the risk of giving up absolutely everything in life. It happens that they give up any kind of social and personal responsibility, leaving behind friends, co-workers or even family members. If we are one of these loved ones, we must do everything possible to keep in touch and insist on meeting up, inviting them to all kinds of plans such as dinners, outings or simply meeting up to see each other.

It is not only good to learn how to help someone who suffers from boredom in retirement, but also to prevent them from having any health problems. to prevent them from having any physical and mental health problems.. Encourage her to go for walks, exercise, dance, swim... In addition to giving her books, motivating her to do Sudoku, crossword puzzles or try to learn something new is essential to delay the onset of age-related diseases. Not only does boredom cause depression, but also dementia, which can be avoided through physical and mental exercise.

But we must not neglect the emotional aspect of our recently retired loved one. Everyone has stories to tell that, although they may have been told in the past, it never hurts to remember them. Listening to them is essential to make them feel loved and to entertain them by telling their life stories. Their experiences may not be in the textbooks, but they are part of the family history.. Whether it is because we love him or out of respect, listening to him tell his stories is something that everyone in the family should do.

How to avoid it?

The ideal is prevention rather than cure. Whether it is we ourselves who are on the verge of retirement or a loved one, what we should do is plan for it before it arrives. Making a list of everything we would like to do or have tried to do in the past but couldn't because of work is highly recommended, but we should also be aware that many of the things we put on paper will end up being discarded.

The reason for this is that, as hard as it may be for us to recognize it, at 65 there are things that can no longer be done on a sustained basis. Everyone is different, but cognitive and physical agility are not the same as when we were 25, so we should focus on those activities that we can do. Failure to prioritize will result in little progress and much frustration.For this reason, there is a saying "he who grasps too much grasps too little" and at this age it is not convenient to waste time.

Bibliographical references:

• Aleixandre, M. (1993). Preparation for retirement: analysis of the variables that make satisfaction possible and their application to an intervention program. Doctoral thesis, Faculty of Psychology, University of Valencia.
• Aranda, C., Pando, M. and Aldrete, M. G. (2002). Retirement, psychological disorders and social support networks in the retired older adult. Journal of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, 29, 169-174.
• Belsky, J. (2001). Psychology of aging. Madrid: Paraninfo.