Loneliness of empty nesters is a closed psychological state, and they will feel isolated or excluded from the outside world, resulting in loneliness and depression. Contact with society is decreasing, especially social activities and interpersonal communication. Staying at home seems to be forgotten by society, which affects self-confidence and aggravates loneliness. Long-term or severe loneliness can cause some emotional disorders and reduce mental health.
Psychological characteristic 2: obvious sense of loss
Sense of loss refers to an emotional experience after something important that originally belonged to you was forcibly deprived by a tangible or intangible force. This sense of loss mainly comes from the lack of life values and goals and the lack of psychological preparation for the transformation of social roles.
For example, old people used to be leading cadres. After retirement, they turned their energy from their careers to their families. But because children have their own lives and families, they live separately from the elderly, leaving the elderly to live alone. The original busy life rhythm suddenly changes, and the old people often can't adapt, and the sense of loss will be great.
Psychological characteristics 3: obvious sense of alienation
Some empty nesters are lonely and even isolated from the world. They are eager to be cared for, afraid of the psychological gap and disappointment when their expectations fail, and feel helpless or even desperate, so they often refuse to associate with others.
For example, some elderly people live in a state of isolation, refusing greetings from others, refusing visits from others, and refusing community volunteers to clean up their garbage.
Psychological characteristic 4: Trust others.
Empty nesters are always lonely. At this time, if a young boy or girl is always caring and attentive, it is easy to break through the psychological defense line.
For example, Uncle Zhang was targeted by pyramid schemes selling health care products. These little girls surround him one by one every day. Although his retirement salary is only more than 2,000 yuan, he is frugal in life, but he still happily takes out money to buy various health care products. He also went out for "free travel" with various health care products companies, and every time he came back, he cheerfully bought back thousands of high-tech health care products, and even was cheated by a girl selling health care products for tens of thousands.
"Empty nest syndrome" refers to a series of emotional, psychological and physical discomfort syndromes such as loneliness, emptiness, loneliness, sadness, listlessness and depression caused by the alienation and abandonment of the elderly in the empty nest environment. "Empty nest syndrome" will make people's neuroendocrine system disorder, lead to the decline of immune function and body resistance, and then lead to various diseases, or aggravate the original diseases, seriously reducing the quality of life of the elderly.
Empty nesters often show symptoms of loneliness, depression, nervousness, anxiety and fear, loss of appetite, sleep disorder, frowning, sighing, even crying, blaming themselves, thinking that they have done something wrong to their children and have not fully fulfilled their responsibilities as parents. In addition, there will be a tendency to blame children, who feel that children are unfilial to their parents, only care about their own interests, and leave their parents alone in the "empty nest."