Four Reasons Your Senior Is Bored Lately

If your senior is becoming bored more often lately, she might find that she’s sleeping more, eating poorly, and becoming even less active than she was. Her energy levels can get sapped quickly by boredom, and that can lead to health problems if it carries on too long.

How She Sees Herself Has Changed

Your elderly family member has an image of herself in her mind and it maybe didn’t change much for a long time. But now, her mental image may be changing in ways she didn’t predict and can’t do much about. She may tie her identity to her health, whether her health is currently good or bad, and find that dictates a lot of what she does. This can be a complicated situation to unravel with your elderly family member.

Her Life Has Changed a Lot

Overall, your senior’s life has probably changed far more than she expected, too. She was busy for a long time building a home, a family, and a career. All of those different aspects of her life required time and attention that she gave. Now she may feel as if there’s no way for her to keep contributing to society or that her life’s work is done in a way. The challenges she conquered in the past are history and that can cause her to experience a variety of emotions.

She Isn’t as Social as She Used to Be

Everyone has a different approach to socializing and your senior may have been very social even recently. But with life and health changes, she may have cut back on her social engagements. If she’s no longer driving or if her closest friends have moved away, she may find that she has no one else she wants to spend time with on a regular basis. It can be shocking to find yourself in that position.

She’s Not Doing as Much in General

Lessened activity in general can have a big impact on your senior’s mental and physical health. If she’s no longer as active as she used to be, that can cause a decrease in all sorts of other aspects of her life. Muscle tone changes and her circulation may even slow down as her activity levels decrease. That becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because she starts to feel even less like being active on a regular basis.

Solving your senior’s issues with boredom may involve a variety of techniques. It helps if you can narrow down some of the contributing factors. From there, you might find that doing things like hiring senior care providers to offer companionship and to help your senior to be more physically active can help. They can also take over driving for her, which can help her to explore a social life again. Little changes can produce big results.