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There is often a reduction in the resources available to cope with anxiety.
Many people deal with stress, threats, and conflicts by moving away from them, exhibiting avoidant behavior. A hassled teenager runs away from home, a quarreling lover drives off, a pressured employee quits his or her job.
This strategy may have paid off many times, not necessarily by solving problems but by providing time outs and preventing more extreme behaviors.
Elderly adults tend to have fewer opportunities to move away from sources of anxiety. Limitations on physical mobility and finances often reduce the ability to put distance between oneself and a frustrating or abusive situation.
Furthermore, a complex web of mutual dependencies may keep people together in stressful and destructive relationships. Forced proximity, especially without the opportunity for respite, can intensify anxieties around privacy, empowerment, and a variety of other issues that mediate quality of life.
An extreme example came to public attention recently in Arizona when a 94-year-old man shot and killed two of his mobile home park neighbors.
Other neighbors reported that the two victims were unpleasant people who had enjoyed tormenting the old man by playing music at a very high volume despite his continual protests. The old man himself was seen as a “crusty” fellow.
Feeling that he could neither tolerate the abuse nor move away from it, he armed himself and shot them dead. Less extreme and violent, but also highly stressful, examples can be found in many geriatric facilities where elderly residents may be forced into close and regular contact with people they dislike or fear.
Within the family circle, a senior adult may feel stressed and outraged by the behavior of others, yet consider that he or she has no viable residential alternative. Mrs. L., a woman recovering from a stroke accepted her daughter’s invitation to move in with her.
From the older woman’s standpoint, the situation soon became a living hell as “two bratty kids” did whatever they wanted, and she herself was treated like a child.
Worst of all, her daughter, still legally married, would bring men home and disappear behind the bedroom door with them. Mrs. L. wept tears of anger at her perceived helplessness to do anything about the situation.
One does not have to assume that there is anything fundamentally different about the elderly person whose high level of anxiety has been provoked or maintained by constant exposure to stressful people and circumstances. Young people feel pretty much the same way when they can neither readily resolve nor escape from a problem.
