Strategies of coping with existential concerns in educationally active older adults

Abstract

Objectives

Old age is the stage of life when people are the most vulnerable to existential experience. These concerns intensify in late adulthood when individuals become increasingly prone to reflection and inclined to evaluate their lives. The study aimed to explore how older people who are active learners dealt with their existential concerns.

Method

The study was based on the qualitative approach and grounded theory. The data collection methods were narrative interviews and semi-structured interviews. Eighteen interviews were conducted. The narrators were students of Universities of the Third Age.

Results

An in-depth analysis of the collected empirical material revealed three themes that helped us understand how study participants differentiated their ways of dealing with self-perception of aging, effectiveness, and performing developmental tasks. This also allowed us to distinguish three main strategies educationally active older adults used to cope with existential concerns: repression, escape, and engagement.

Conclusion

The study’s results indicate that confrontation or avoidance of existential problems can be perceived as a factor contributing to developing an older person’s identity in two different ways. On the one hand, the readiness to face existential concerns leads to maturity in old age, a high level of social adaptation, supporting others, and, at the same time, focusing on oneself while ignoring existential concerns, which may contribute to held age identities that are younger than actual age.

Keywords:

• Existential concerns
• educationally active older adults
• death and dying
• qualitative inquiry

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 It is worth noting that another dimension has been added to Erick Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development, and late adulthood consists of two different stages of personal development. The stage eight crisis is on a continuum between involvement versus resignation, while the stage nine crisis is about integrity versus despair (Bugajska, 2017).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.