Research demonstrates that one-third of retirees suffer psycho-emotional stress as they disengage from their career identity and struggle to establish and adjust to a new normal in retirement.
Adding to the challenges of adjusting to retirement is the fact that effective transitions typically take more time, psycho-emotional-spiritual energy, and commitment than people generally perceive. Especially those retiring from fast-paced employment. Consider this:
• Making significant change is a two-stage process, each of which entails three phases. The second phase begins only with psychological acceptance that the past really has ended.
• Each of these phases is psycho-emotionally laden. A particular challenge for many men.
• The transition to retirement compounds, and may extend, the challenges of an incomplete mid-life passage. This is a particular challenge for people who have (or believe they have) successfully dealt with, avoided, or have not yet arrived at this normal life stage.
• Each person’s response is subjectively unique, and specific to their own history. Therefore, each must do her or his own work for it to be successively life-enriching.
• Since some degree of behaviour change is typically mandated in the transition to a satisfactory retirement, simply accumulating knowledge about the topic is insufficient
