Here’s Why Some Retirees Feel Anxious

Retirement sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? After years of living your life on someone else’s time, you’re now free to live your life the way you’ve always wanted. That means not waking up to an alarm anymore, not fighting through traffic, not spending hours and hours away from your home and family every day. This is your time to live your life exactly as you’ve dreamed about.

For a lot of people, that’s freeing and inspiring and amazing. These people truly embrace retirement as a special time and get the most out of it from the beginning. However, for many other people, this doesn’t happen right away. The truth is that retirement doesn’t always feel incredible. It doesn’t always immediately become the best time of your life. It’s common for some retirees to feel anxious, stressed, worried, or even depressed during retirement.

These feelings are all natural. 

There’s nothing “wrong with you” if retirement doesn’t bring you relief right away. There’s no particular problem if you don’t take to being retired with ease from the beginning. What really matters is that you learn to adapt to the changes and eventually create the retirement that’s right for you.

Doing that means understanding why retirement can cause anxiety.

The Lack of Structure

For some people, the lack of structure is one of the best parts of retirement. It gives you a fresh, empty canvas where you can start to paint whatever you’d like. For other people, however, this situation is stressful. With no structure at all, it’s easy to feel lost or overwhelmed.

It’s very easy to feel aimless or lost at this point. You don’t know what to do, you don’t know how to spend your time, and you don’t know how to make your days meaningful.

Working life is generally very predictable. You know when you have to wake up, when you have to leave for work, how long you need to be at work, and everything else about your day. Your work life creates structure in the rest of your life. When you eat, sleep, run errands, and have social time is all based around your work schedule. Without this stabilizing factor, it’s easy to have your entire day blend together without realizing it.

Losing Purpose

Your job was one of your main purposes in life for many, many years. It wasn’t just what you did with your days, it was also how you identified. When you met someone new, it’s how you introduced yourself. It’s probably also how you thought of yourself in your mind.

Even more, your career made it pretty straightforward to set goals for yourself. You knew what you were supposed to do. In most cases, there was a direct career trajectory that you could follow. Knowing this helped you find purpose in your life.

You could dedicate yourself to making the next big sale or getting the next big promotion or achieving a certain level at work. When you’re no longer in the workforce, many people find it difficult to refocus and they feel like they’ve lost the purpose in their life. This can cause a lot of stress and anxiety as you try to figure out what you should be doing. 

Trying to be “Perfect”

Another stress associated with retirement is the pressure to do it perfectly. TV, movies, advertisements, and social media give us a specific idea of what retirement should be. We think that our days have to be spent laughing with friends, playing with grandchildren, bonding over golf, and taking walks on the beach. We expect travel and fun and relaxation 24/7.

When you can’t put together this “perfect” retirement, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. It’s easy to stress out that you’re “wasting your days.” It’s also very easy to run yourself ragged building the retirement you think you’re “supposed to” have. 

Financial Stress

Depending on your financial situation when you came into retirement (and what happens during your retirement), it’s common to feel stress about money when you’re no longer working. Even if you built up a strong retirement fund, done all the calculations, and know that you’re in a strong place financially, it can still cause anxiety.

After all, for most of your working life, you’ve been building up your savings. You’ve been putting money away regularly and watching your retirement fund grow. This didn’t just prepare you for the future, it also made you feel good. Now that you’re instead withdrawing money from your savings, that changes how you feel. 

You might also have concerns about outliving your savings. The amount you put aside for retirement might be fine as long as everything stays the same, but what if prices increase? What if you get sick and have medical bills? What if you live longer than expected? That last point is a blessing, but it’s also a potential cause of anxiety. 

Health Concerns

Your health can change as you get older. If you have medical challenges or if your health situation is different than it was when you were planning your retirement, these concerns can cause a lot of anxiety.

Even if you’re currently in good health and have no reason to assume things will change for a while, the stress of health issues possibly happening in the future worries a lot of people. We all know that we’re unlikely to go our entire lives without medical issues, especially as we age, and these concerns can weigh heavily. 

Not only do you have your own health to care about, but the health of your partner can also be a cause for concern. You may worry about your future and whether you’ll need to get care for them or if they’ll need to be a caregiver to you. This can cause incredible anxiety.

What You Can Do About It

A big part of finding a reset is establishing a new routine. Create a schedule for yourself and follow it. To do this, think of the things you enjoy, then design a plan that helps you do those things. Planning, organizing, and structuring your life will help you feel more in control, and that can reduce anxiety. You’ll also feel a sense of accomplishment, which gives you purpose and that helps alleviate stress. 

Reviewing your finances with a financial planner also helps. They’ll assist you with budgeting, help you understand where you stand financially, and ease your mind about potential money issues in the future. 

Another way to ease anxiety is to focus on your mental and physical health. Prioritize social connections and try to get out there and talk to people. Join classes or teams or groups and make new friends. Put in effort to talk to and meet up with old friends as well. Social connections improve mental health and that helps you feel more relaxed and calmer.

Regular physical activity matters as well. Exercise helps your body deal with stress and anxiety, making it easier to stay calm and focus. Plus, while you can never be certain that you won’t end up getting sick or hurt, focusing on your health can improve your overall wellness, helping to alleviate some of the stress you might be feeling.  

Retirement isn’t the same as your working life, but with some planning and motivation,  you can feel relaxed, happy, and calm for your retirement years.