Working With Older Clients
I started working out at a gym shortly before my 60th birthday. In picking a gym, I chose a small, private gym where two of the trainers were men in their 70s.
Why?
Two significant reasons. First, I didn’t see any value in joining a meat market operation for people in their 20s and 30s. Second, I needed trainers who understood aging bodies and who knew that “just work through it” was not the right answer to every question.
That reasoning proved to be correct and I lost the weight, gained the muscle, improved my attitude, and amassed the benefits that I’d hoped adopting a regular routine would provide.
What’s that got to do with you?
We have created and developed a similar model – one that takes into account all of the aspects of aging that contribute to your alcohol abuse as well as the skills, interests, and abilities you have amassed that can be directed towards eliminating the problem.
Imagine that?
Now imagine how you’d fare in a mass market program where the majority of the clients are in the 16 – 29 year old range? With poorly trained, para-professional staff in their 20s and 30? Using 85 year old methods which have proven to be ineffective at best? And where no one has a clue what to do with you except ignore you, quiet you, demean you, and scoff at your concerns and questions?
Never mind that there is no respect, understanding, confidentiality, privacy, individual attention, or the development of effective methods and skills. After 30, 60, or 90 days you will be discharged back into the same day-to-day life that created your problem with nothing changed, no skills or perspectives added, and feeling more resentful, angry, and abused than when you arrived..
Oh, yes, and $45,000 – $200,000 poorer and ready for recycling via their revolving door, as designed.
Believe us, their one-size-fits-all really means one-size-that-fits-none. Great business model, lousy treatment model.
But there are other possibilities, and that starts with understanding all of the age related factors that may contribute to your alcohol abuse. These may include menopause, retirement, “empty nests,” loss of parenting roles and activities, deaths, divorces, declining activity levels and abilities, and myriad other age related issues and concerns.
Yes, we’ve been there too and we aren’t going to tell you to “just work through it.”
As the saying goes, “growin’ older ain’t for sissies,” and neither is fixing a problem that is both literally and figuratively diminishing your life. Some decline is unavoidable, but you don’t have to hasten that race to the end. Much of getting older even has benefits.
Isn’t it time to let us help you find, expend, and incorporate them into your life instead of succumbing to depression (alcohol induced, usually) and despair?
That’s what we think too. So make that call and at least talk about the possibilities that might apply to you as a private, intelligent, and uniquely capable individual.
“How Can You Possibly Cure My Years of Alcohol Abuse in Just 5 Days?”
Many of You Expressed Interest in Dr. Loevinger’s Model as I Wrote About Last Week
It’s interesting that our work with Loevinger’s model and measure help us custom design approaches and solutions for you. It’s also fun, in a forensic psychology kind of way, to discover how you got to where you are in life.
The problem is that understanding, while interesting and potentially useful, doesn’t fix anything. That’s the discouraging part.
As an example, let’s back up 5 weeks to the evening when, being really really stupid while visiting a new gym, I dislocated my right shoulder doing a bench press I should have given up 6 years ago. I know exactly what happened, having done it before, and I know all of the whys and wherefores and what ifs. I understand it all down to the last damaged nerve‘s name.
Guess what?
Not a shred of “knowing” is going to fix anything.
Damn.
I’m still going to have to do months of physical therapy, wait longer yet for damaged nerves to regenerate, and type these newsletters pretty much left-handed.
The same applies to fixing any of the conditions in our lives. We can read a thousand self-help books, diet books, motivational books, listen to tapes, attend seminars, and see therapists by the boat load. None of that will side-step the necessity of having to actually do the work.
Double damn!
No, we aren’t selling magic. Not the magic of the palms, beaches, vortex, mountain, or cirque. We won’t claim – falsely – that the horses, wolf-dogs, ropes, or helicopter rides will do it for you.
AA and magic Steps won’t either – at least Loevinger explains that and puts it to rest.
We are saying we can save you a lot of time, money, and frustration, and help you put together what’s going to work for you. And then we will work with you to institute the changes in you real day-to-day life.
No,neither we, nor anyone else, can do it for you or to you. But we will, uniquely, do it with you.
And that, folks, is the only thing that actually does work. No rocket science, no magic beans. Just real solutions for real people living real lives.
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