On Ageing, Control and the Things We Learn to Let Go
With thanks to our member, Christine Schneider, for this article.
I recently chaired a discussion about ageing in a small group of experienced clinical supervisors. In this group we regularly step back from the normative practicalities of supervision and look at the process behind it and the broader themes running through our work and our own lives.
The topic of ageing turned out to be a much richer subject than we had initially expected. We ended up talking about our clients, their relationships with their parents, as well as our own personal experiences. We considered the expectations attached to different stages of life, the fear of running out of time, and the paradoxical fact that some of the changes we dread may eventually bring an unexpected sense of freedom with them.
Our conversation wasn’t always entirely comfortable, and perhaps conversations about ageing shouldn’t be too comfortable either. After all, ageing reminds us that time is passing and that we cannot retain control over everything. It also forces us to reconsider what control means, and whether holding on is always the same as living well.
When fear of death is really about life
In my clinical work, I regularly encounter younger clients who, given their age and circumstances, appear unduly frightened of death or dying.
When this issue comes up, it’s not usually connected to illness, bereavement or any immediate threat. For those clients, this fear has often appeared suddenly and seemingly out of the blue, without any obvious trigger. During sessions, this fear can present as an intense preoccupation with mortality which, in someone who at least statistically has much of their life ahead of them, can obscure the underlying causes that may have led to it.
Of course, every client’s experience needs to be understood individually, but nevertheless, I have often found it helpful to explore what else is happening in these clients’ lives, as an overwhelming fear of death is not always only about actual death itself. Very often it seems to appear when a person feels that they have lost control elsewhere.
At times, the source may be clearly identifiable: an unstable relationship, uncertainty about work, financial pressure, or a major life transition. For many younger people, these personal concerns also sit within a wider climate of job insecurity, political and social instability, and anxiety about climate change and what the future may hold for them.
Yet at other times, the loss of control is a lot more subjective and not as easily identifiable. From the outside, the client’s circumstances may appear secure, yet internally they feel that life is happening to them rather than being shaped by them.
Death represents the ultimate limit to personal control. When other parts of life feel unpredictable, our minds can fixate on mortality as the most absolute expression of that helplessness in an attempt to make sense of this uncertainty.
I’m not suggesting that we should explain away a client’s fear or reassure them that it is “really” about something else. Fear of death is real, and some anxiety about the finite nature of life is part of being human. However, gently exploring where our client still has agency can widen the therapeutic conversation. We cannot remove the reality that life ends, but we can often help someone feel more present and active within the life they are living now.
The timetables we carry
In the same vein, anxiety about ageing can begin remarkably early. Younger clients may speak as though their lives are governed by a timetable: the age by which they should have found a partner, established a career, bought a home, had children or become certain about who they are.
These expectations may be reinforced by family, culture and of course, the ever present social media, but they are also easily internalised. Once this happens, someone else’s milestone can feel like evidence of their own failure, and ageing can become less a of natural process and more of a series of closing doors.
Issues around fertility bring some of these pressures into a particularly sharp focus, as biological limits cannot simply be dismissed as social constructions. For some people, concerns about their biological clock are grounded in a genuine uncertainty. Yet their distress may also contain questions about identity, belonging, relationships and imagined futures. It’s rarely helpful to respond with either false reassurance or stark realism alone, especially when our therapeutic work can create space for both: we can acknowledge the real constraints a person faces, whilst continuing to explore the assumptions they may have made. Which part of the timetable belongs to the client? Which part may have been inherited, and from where? What would a meaningful life look like if it did not unfold in the expected order?
When a feared loss brings relief
One of the most thought-provoking parts of our supervisors’ discussion concerned the death of parents. There might be a certain amount of confirmation bias in this, since by the sheer nature of our work, we are more prone to hearing about family relationships and dynamics that are less than ideal, but a broader theme emerged that we had all encountered in our work.
The death of a parent is commonly discussed as an unmistakable loss. Even in adulthood, becoming a person with no surviving parents can trigger feelings of immense vulnerability.
Where the relationship with a parent has been chronically difficult, frightening or emotionally harmful, their death may bring complicated and sometimes surprising feelings. Grief may well be present, but so too may be relief. Some clients may discover a sense of lightness, safety or freedom that they had not expected. An added complication is that they may then also feel guilty for experiencing this relief.
In many of the examples we see the adult child remains psychologically affected by a parent long after childhood has ended. They may continue anticipating criticism, anger, rejection or emotional demands, and in some cases, they may still be living with their parents. And even in cases where contact has been limited, the relationship can occupy a great deal of internal space, and the anticipation of yet another confrontation, another crisis or another demand never entirely disappears.
When that parent dies, the adult child may grieve not only the person, but also the relationship they never had and the repair that can now never take place. Yet, at the same time, they may feel released from the continuing possibility of harm. These responses are not mutually exclusive, and relief does not invalidate grief, just as grief does not prove that the relationship was safe or loving.
It is important that we do not impose a culturally acceptable version of bereavement upon our clients. Not every death is experienced primarily as loss. Sometimes death ends a relationship that had remained a source of fear, obligation or vigilance for decades.
A different understanding of ageing well
Our discussion left me thinking that ageing well may have less to do with preserving youth than with developing a more flexible relationship with change.
There are genuine losses associated with ageing: bodies change, opportunities may narrow, people we love become ill or die, and time begins to feel more finite. With this in mind, it would be disingenuous to try and turn ageing into a relentlessly positive story of wisdom, confidence and liberation.
Yet ageing can also loosen some old expectations. Some people become less governed by imagined deadlines or by the need for approval, they may begin to question roles that they have inhabited for years, become clearer about what belongs to them and what they have carried on behalf of their family, profession or culture.
Perhaps then ageing well does not have to mean feeling positive about every change. It could simply mean being able to hold contradictory realities: grief and relief, limitation and freedom, continuity and change, recognising where control is possible and accepting where it is not.
Bringing this subject to my supervisors’ group reminded me of how valuable it can be to talk about uncomfortable topics with other practitioners. Our discussion moved well beyond clinical theory, as we considered how our own experiences of ageing, changing family relationships and bereavement may affect what we notice in our clients, and subsequently what we might find harder to hear. We also recognised that our own experience does not make us neutral. As we grow older, some aspects of a client’s story may feel more familiar, while others may challenge assumptions we did not realise we held.
