Older adults

Is therapy really for someone my age?

It is for anyone carrying more than they want to carry alone, and that does not stop at a particular birthday. If anything, later life tends to bring a concentrated run of changes, and many of them deserve more than a quick word with a friend.

You may have grown up when the rule was to keep your troubles to yourself and get on with it. That rule got a generation through a great deal. It also left a lot of people holding things nobody ever helped them set down.

What kinds of changes can therapy help with?

Retirement, which can remove a schedule, a role, and a reason to get dressed in the morning all at once. Health changes, in your own body or a partner's. Caring for a spouse while trying to look after yourself. Grief for a husband or wife, for friends, or for siblings, sometimes several losses close together.

Also the quieter shifts: adult children whose lives have little room left in them, a move out of a home full of memories, friendships thinned by distance or loss, and long afternoons that feel emptier than they used to.

Can old memories come back later in life?

They can. With more time and fewer distractions, experiences from decades ago sometimes return with surprising force. That includes military service: memories that stayed quiet through a busy working life can surface once the busyness falls away. Sometimes they arrive as dreams, sometimes as a mood that settles in around certain dates, and sometimes as a story you suddenly want to tell.

I served 27 years in the United States Army, so if your service is part of what has come back, you will not need to explain the setting to me. Whatever has resurfaced, we approach it at a pace you set and no faster.

How would we work together?

Plainly and practically. We talk about what is going on, I ask questions, and we set goals that matter to you, whether that is sleeping better, getting out of the house twice a week, or finally having a difficult conversation with one of your children.

DBT, my primary method, offers skills that suit any age: getting through a hard stretch without making it worse, handling strong feelings, and staying present instead of living in old regrets or future worries. The aim is a life that still feels worth living, defined by you.

What about couples after retirement?

Retirement changes a marriage too. Two people who spent most of each day apart are suddenly together for all of it, with new questions about space, money, roles, and how to spend the years ahead. Even a strong marriage can find this stretch harder than expected.

Couples therapy can help you work out the rhythm of a shared day without either of you feeling crowded or sidelined. Two things are true: you have built a life together, and that life needs some rebuilding now that its shape has changed.

Changes worth talking about

• Retirement and the loss of a role you held for decades
• Grief that arrives in clusters
• Caring for a partner whose health is changing
• Feeling lonely, or out of step with your family
• Memories that return once there is more time to think

Questions people ask

Where to go from here

• Grief and lossFor a loss that is recent, old, or never fully spoken about.

• Life transitionsWhen a change you chose still costs something.

• Individual therapyAn hour of your own, at a pace you set.

• Couples therapyFor two people finding a new rhythm together.

• Online therapyThe same sessions from your own home.