Counselling in later life — why it is never too late to begin

There is a quiet assumption, particularly among people who came of age in the middle of the last century, that counselling is something for the young. For people sorting out who they are, choosing a career, navigating early relationships. By seventy or eighty, the thinking goes, you should have things worked out. You should be at peace. You should not, at this stage, be asking someone for help with your inner life.

I have heard a version of this from many of the older clients I have worked with. It often surfaces in the first session — a slight apology for being there at all. As if needing to talk about your life at seventy-five were somehow embarrassing, an admission of failure, an indication that you have left things rather late.

I would like to say something about why this is wrong, and about the particular and valuable work that becomes possible in later life — perhaps more possible than at any other stage.

The myth that we should be sorted

One of the things that older clients sometimes carry is the belief that the rest of the world is moving serenely through later life, and they are the only one finding it complicated. This is almost never the case.

The truth is that later life brings its own set of substantial and largely unanticipated challenges. The body changes. People die. Roles shift or disappear. The future, which used to feel endless, becomes finite in a way that demands a different relationship with time. Memories that have been quietly filed away for decades begin, sometimes for no obvious reason, to surface and ask for attention. Children become adults with their own opinions, and not always opinions that include you. The world you grew up in is no longer the world you are living in.

None of this is failure. It is just what the later decades involve. The idea that one should have it all "sorted" by sixty-five is a peculiarly modern and rather unkind one, and it bears very little resemblance to how human lives actually unfold.

The themes that tend to arrive

Older clients bring an enormous range of concerns to counselling, but certain themes recur. Recognising them can sometimes be the first step in feeling less alone with whatever you are carrying.

Bereavement and accumulated loss

Later life is, among other things, the decade in which many of the people who knew you longest begin to die. Parents, partners, siblings, lifelong friends. The losses arrive sometimes one after another, and there is rarely time to fully grieve one before the next is upon you. The cumulative weight of this is often underestimated, even by the person carrying it.

The transition into retirement

Retirement is often celebrated as a release, and for many people it is. But for others it brings an unexpected loss of structure, identity, and the daily sense of mattering. The difficulty does not always announce itself for several months — there is often a holiday-like first phase, followed by a slower recognition that something significant has changed.

Changes in health and mobility

The first time the body refuses to do something it has always done is a small and quiet event with large psychological consequences. The grief of a body that is changing is real, and worth taking seriously, even when there is no diagnosis to point to.

Looking back, and the question of regret

Later life often brings, unbidden, a long look backwards. Things done and not done. Choices made and unmade. Conversations that might have gone differently. People who were not properly thanked, or not properly apologised to. This is not morbid; it is part of how the mind makes sense of a life. But it can be unsettling, and it is rarely something that benefits from being sat with alone.

The surfacing of older memories

One of the more surprising aspects of later life, for many people, is the way memories from very early decades — sometimes things one has not thought about in fifty years — begin to surface with new vividness. This is well documented, and it has reasons in how memory works. But it can bring with it old feelings, sometimes painful, sometimes tender, that ask to be looked at.

Family relationships in later life

The relationship with adult children, in-laws, grandchildren, and step-family can be one of the most rewarding parts of later life — and one of the most fraught. Misunderstandings, conflicting expectations, distance, perceived favouritism, the particular pain of feeling excluded from a family event. These are not trivial concerns, even though older people are often expected to absorb them without complaint.

Why later life can be a particularly rich time for this work

There is a quiet advantage to coming to counselling in later life that is rarely talked about. By this stage, there is usually less to prove. The career is no longer being built. The reputation is no longer being made. The desperate scramble of mid-life — getting the children through, holding the marriage together, paying the mortgage, climbing whatever it is one was climbing — has often settled into something quieter.

What this means in practice is that older clients are often able to be more honest in counselling than they have ever been in their lives. The performance is not required in the way it once was. There is permission, perhaps for the first time, to look at things as they actually are.

It also means there is an enormous amount of material to work with. A long life is a rich text. There are decades of relationships, decisions, losses, loves, mistakes, and quiet triumphs — all of which can be considered and made sense of in a way that was not possible when one was inside them. The reflective capacity that comes with age is itself a therapeutic asset.

What the work tends to look like

Counselling with older clients is, in my experience, often slower-paced and more reflective than work with younger people. There is less hurry. Sessions can take their own time. There is space for stories to unfold, for memories to be turned over, for thoughts to be considered without rushing to conclusions.

The work might involve processing a recent bereavement. It might involve making sense of a long marriage. It might involve thinking about how you want to live the rest of your life — whether that is a clear ten years or an uncertain thirty. It might involve unfinished business with people who are still here, or with people who are not. It might involve simply having a regular conversation with someone who is interested in you and what you think, which can be unexpectedly nourishing in a phase of life when the daily structures that provided that have often fallen away.

There is no expectation that you will arrive with a clear sense of what you want to discuss. Often the most useful early sessions begin simply with "I'm not really sure why I'm here," and unfold from there.

The practicalities

Telephone counselling has particular advantages for older clients. There is no driving to be done, no parking to be found, no journey to make on a difficult day. You can be in your own home, in your own chair, with a cup of tea, and have a conversation that is just as deep and useful as any face-to-face session. For clients with mobility difficulties, hearing aids, or who simply prefer not to leave the house, this can make the difference between counselling being possible and not.

For those in or near East Devon, occasional face-to-face sessions are also possible. But there is no requirement to come in person, and many older clients work entirely by telephone.

A final word

The older clients I have worked with have, almost without exception, taught me something. Not because they came with all the answers, but because they came with a depth of life that they had often not yet found the right space to look at. The work has often been some of the most quietly moving I have done.

If you are in your sixties, seventies, eighties or beyond and have been wondering whether counselling might be of any use to you, please consider this an invitation to find out. The first session is free, can be done by telephone, and is a chance to talk without commitment. There is no question that is too small to bring, and there is no past so settled that there is nothing left to look at.

It is, genuinely, never too late.