Gerotranscent elders begin to have a changed relationship with themselves. They accept parts of themselves that they once rejected, both good and bad. These individuals may also exhibit a decrease in self-centeredness.
Dimension of Social and Personal Relationships
Individuals functioning in this stage look at personal relationships in a different way. Gerotranscendent individuals tend to stop playing the roles they once took on. Individuals who once were the life of the party begin to enjoy the company of a few close friends rather than a large group.
Caretakers may interpret this as a pathological need to isolate or depression when, in fact, the striving for solitude and self-reflection could be a natural stage along the road to growing older.
Problems of reaching Gerotranscendence
Gerotranscendence must be considered a developmental possibility; not everyone arrives at this stage. Furthermore, even those individuals who do enter gerotrancendence will not necessarily exhibit all of its characteristics.
One of the difficulties of reaching gerotranscendence in the West is that the culture does not acknowledge the possibility of finding meaning through the aging process. If an elder in the East goes deep within the self in meditation to consider the cosmos, the family and other caretakers are likely to accept the changes in their loved one as healthy. In the West, however, caretakers may become worried and drag the loved one off to bingo.
Importance of Gerotranscendence to Caretakers
Caretakers have a unique opportunity to see the benefits of aging if they know about gerotranscendence. They may appreciate an older person’s need for solitude without feeling the need to continuously provid activities. There may also be times when the aging individual's reflections about a life led could create insightful moments for the caregiver as well. Knowing about gerotranscendence opens up more possibilities for interpreting an elder's behavior than the negative assumptions which are so easy to pull out of one's pocket.
