Inappropriate ways of social communication with the elderly

In today’s culture, which avoids pain and crises, there is a particular attitude toward aging and old age. Pain and crises are denied, and the period of old age is in the best case minimized, in the worst case perceived by younger people as hostile, and this life stage is repellent to many. During the peak of one’s work career, personal achievements and intense engagement in life, there is little, or in the end no, room for the possibility of one’s own old age. It seems outdated.

The crisis that accompanies the transition to senior age causes many people an unpleasant awakening, fears, and anxiety. Mental health, however, depends on whether people are able to face life crises and cope with them. As M. Scott-Peck (1993) has written, only through crises can we grow as a person.

The challenges of exploring one’s personality in senior age can be understood in the context of the social and societal situation of seniors and in the context of their personal situation. C. G. Jung expresses the social situation of seniors as follows (1994, p. 286): “A person is convinced that we are at a significant threshold of ages, yet believes that the cause of this threshold was the splitting and joining of the atom, or cosmic rockets. As usually happens, this overlooks what is simultaneously happening in the human soul.” It seems that this way of seeing also influences people’s attitude today (called the postmodern age) toward the life period of senior age.

The personal situation is reflected in the life-feeling of people in senior age, in which loneliness comes to the fore. It does not arise because “a person lacks people around him, but rather because he cannot share with them things that seem important to him”... (C. G. Jung, 1994, p. 300). The life-feeling of people in senior age can also be expressed in the words of the thinker Lao-tzu: “Everything is clear, only I am unclear.”

So what then is life transition in senior age? How are people prepared for the path into the intimacy of being and, often, for the path of their psychological and social isolation?

Many people enter the second half of their lives entirely unprepared. This is a careless attitude toward one’s own life. The afternoon of life can never be lived according to the same program as we lived it in the morning... The aging person should know that their life does not widen, but that an uncompromising process of living imposes a narrowing of one’s life field. Too much self-involvement is for a young person almost a sin. But for an aging person, it is a duty and necessity to consider one’s own total being with full seriousness. (C. G. Jung, 1994, p. 103.)

Old age is limitation, as C. G. Jung states elsewhere: “The less certainty I had about myself, the more strongly within me grew the feeling of kinship with all things. Yes, it seems to me that this estrangement, which had long separated me from the world, moved into my inner world and revealed to me how unexpectedly I know myself. The afternoon of life must have meaning and purpose; it cannot be some kind of attraction point. A goal-directed life is richer and healthier than a purposeless life. It is better to go with time than to go against time.” (C. G. Jung, 1994, p. 104.)

Inner isolation can be experienced differently by different individuals: as a blessing or as a punishment. It is a blessing for people who consciously and voluntarily withdraw—that is, who isolate themselves inwardly from much of life’s burden and, within their own life situation and circumstances, forgo everything that in those circumstances and situations is not important to them. “Inner emigration,” withdrawal into the core of one’s being, gives a person the possibility to build and protect the intimate psychological space of the self. It allows a person to feel inner silence, without which one cannot spiritually develop or psychologically mature, which is true for people throughout life and even more so in senior age.

People who experience their solitude as loneliness and punishment are only those who, in despair over their own mental emptiness and mental laziness, blame themselves and others and succumb to tormenting themselves or others mentally. Feelings of guilt and mental emptiness, or loss of meaning in life, rob people of mental, physical, and social health. This appears differently in different individuals, from depression to aggression directed at oneself or the environment, to collapsing into despair and hopelessness, passive behavior and inactivity, ending in somatization, that is, the development of various psychosomatic diseases. Is it by chance that the number of sick adults and seniors in our society is increasing so sharply? What have people done and what are they doing with their lives? One must always begin with oneself.

Self-attention is a necessity for the aging person, dictated by life developmental tasks of the age stage in the unique and unrepeatable course of one’s life path (Machalová, 2010). The meaning of directing a person toward their own person in senior age lies in the fact that, unconsciously and consciously, one follows one’s own natural process of maturing and of achieving psychological authenticity and personality and social integrity. The process of personality development of a person under certain necessary conditions and circumstances proceeds throughout life. Even in senior age, developmental laws of mental functioning operate in this sense, that a person is engaged throughout life in the process of self-organization and self-regulation of their personality. Otherwise, psychologically and de facto physically, a person could not survive. As we have stated elsewhere (Machalová, 2006, 2013, 2014):

  1. Self-organization of the person is associated with psychic movement from less developed toward more developed. It is an evolutionary drive to fulfill the individual potential of a specific person and to build pressure to move from the past into the future.
  2. Self-regulation of the person is associated with maintaining the psychological balance of the person, which keeps them in equilibrium at the life point they occupy. For personality in senior age it is therefore necessary to have a stimulating social and psychological organizational field for social interaction and communication. Only then are conditions created for the individual process of optimal psychological and social adaptation in life. A person cannot develop in any other way. If a person’s relational and communication network in senior age is in harmony with their spiritual, psychological, and social development needs, that person is able to adapt and develop mentally and socially in an active way.

Working with seniors requires high humanity and professional maturity from experts in helping professions. These workers organize and create a social and psychological environment that can elevate seniors’ personality, or conversely, can destroy the personality of seniors (under especially ignorant conditions in the social or domestic environment). It is important to highly value the ability and willingness of relatives and social workers, or caregivers, who are in tune with seniors’ needs and support the human uniqueness and value of a relative’s or client’s personality. Especially today, when society is dominated by the culture of youth, health, and wealth and, simultaneously, both hidden and overt discrimination of seniors based on age. It is no secret that social surroundings often behaves toward seniors in a way that prevents them from living with dignity and according to their own needs and values. The same applies to social opportunities or, more precisely, social barriers to self-expression and self-realization of people in senior age. Contributing to this state of age discrimination is also an inappropriate way of social interaction and communication with seniors in families and in social institutions. (Machalová, 2013, 2014.)

In human communication, two forms of unsatisfactory social interaction occur: communication intrusion and communication deprivation (Boadella, 1997, p. 6).

  • In the case of communication intrusion, something is imposed on a person that they do not want and did not request. A person is forced and coerced to accept what is imposed—this is the psychological phenomenon of introjection. In such a case, the person usually reacts, though not always immediately, also by invading someone or something—this is the psychological phenomenon of projection.
  • In the case of communication deprivation, a person is not allowed to communicate or be in relationship with someone who is important to them.
  • Finally, a healthy form of interaction, which is neither communication intrusion nor communication deprivation, is called dialogue—interpersonal communication.

In the counseling and therapeutic approach to clients, the wholeness of each person must be respected—of their spiritual, bodily, psychological, and communicative aspect. Given the development of people’s communicative competence, it is necessary to pay attention to important “channels” of mutual contact between people, which are:

  • gaze (i.e., eyes);
  • sound (i.e., voice);
  • touch (i.e., feet as contact with the ground and hands as contact with other beings and things).

The organizational field in which social interaction and social communication occur can facilitate or hinder personality development in every life period, including senior age.

The theoretical framework of the forms of socio-psychological interaction below was taken from the publication of our Swiss teacher, founder of somatic psychotherapy and biosynthesis, D. Boadella (1997, p. 7), who stated that in therapy it is important to know and diagnostically decode “channels of contact.” Through them, a person builds a relationship with people and the living world from birth to the last breath. And this is based on a mode of interaction through gaze, voice, touch.

Figure 1: Contact channels and mode of interaction

The issue of somatic and psychological comfort and health of people in senior age is closely linked to the way social interaction and communication with seniors takes place. This does not concern only interaction and communication with seniors, but similarly persons of any age period.

Invasion and deprivation are inappropriate modes of interaction because they are linked with psychologically disrespectful communication. Dialogue is the optimal mode of interaction and communication, because it is linked with psychologically supportive communication. Inappropriate interaction and communication are manifested by a disrespectful approach to persons in senior age. Such ways of communication are a serious obstacle to fulfilling the life need of seniors for self-expression and self-development. At the same time, they are a serious barrier to seniors’ social and psychological adaptation both to specific tasks of senior age in families and to optimal adaptation to major lifestyle changes after their placement in senior facilities.

Inadequate self-expression of one’s own personality can be a serious cause of reduced self-esteem of a specific person and also a reason for experiencing helplessness in situations of communicative intrusion and deprivation. From a psychological perspective, self-expression consists of involuntary, natural, and spontaneous body activities and movements. In this sense, according to A. Lowen (1992, p. 196), self-expression is not a conscious activity. “Naturally, we may be aware of our self-expression, but it is still us, regardless of whether we are aware of it or not... We address others by our existence and sometimes affect them more when we do nothing than when we try to be especially impressive or expressive... even self-awareness can interfere with our self-expression. The essential feature of self-expression is not awareness, but spontaneity.”

Conditions that are favorable for seniors’ social relationships and communication support the development of their personality. This means they are allowed to spontaneously express their personality in a circle of considerate relatives and other people. Optimal freedom and optimal possibilities for seniors’ self-expression help them not to lose sensitivity to themselves and to others. At the same time, this supports the physical, psychological, and social motility (mobility, liveliness) of seniors, which is visible in their bodily movement, in lively nonverbal communication and in verbal communication.

Therapeutic approaches aimed at harmonizing the “channels of self-expression,” which are movement - eyes and looking - voice expression - touch, are based on the fact that “under normal circumstances we express ourselves through all these communication channels simultaneously. For example, if we are sad, our eyes tear, we speak in sobs, our voice breaks, and the body shakes. Anger is likewise expressed through body movements, the gaze, and voice intonation. If one of these communication paths is blocked, emotions weaken and the possibility to express them is reduced.” (A. Lowen, 1992, pp. 199–200).

In people in senior age it is especially useful to pay increased attention to the psychologically and health importantly important interrelation of movement, life energy and communication. Attention is drawn to the fact of a direct connection between an individual’s self-expression and their physical and psychological energy. We express this in the following chain: _energy ↔ motility ↔ emotions ↔ spontaneity ↔ self-expression._According to the outlined causal chain, it is clear that if a person’s self-expression is blocked, simultaneously blocked are: their spontaneity; their emotions; their movement activity; their bodily energy.

We also express it in the following causal chain: blocked self-expression ↔ inhibited spontaneity ↔ reduced emotional level ↔ reduced bodily motility ↔ suppression of energy. (Inspiration: In A. Lowen, 1992, p. 199). According to the outlined causal chain, we assume that if a person’s self-expression is blocked through inappropriate invasive communication, or through deprivation in interpersonal communication, the blocked communication reduces that person’s emotions and life energy. This can be understood as a basis for possible psychosomatic symptoms and psychosomatic illness. Such a person may unconsciously choose illness as a way to satisfy an important need to communicate with people and be cared for. It is a way of unintended, and for the most part unconscious, expression of the psychological need for social contact.

Working with seniors consists primarily in cultivating mutual psychological resonance and communication, which are expressions of mutual understanding of seniors and their significant others in the social environment in which they live.

Concluding words: “As long as we live, let us learn how to live.” (Seneca)

Author: Prof. PhDr. Mária Machalová, CSc.

Bibliography

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