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For three decades, Jim Kilkenny worked as a financial planner advising people on sound retirement plans.
So it was reasonable for him to expect that, once retired, leaving his rather stressful job behind would be a breeze.
Only it wasn’t.
After a few months of “decompressing and doing very little”, Kilkenny realized he wasn’t very happy.
“I found myself drinking more than I should at the beginning of the day. My physical and mental health was starting to suffer. And it was starting to get on my wife’s nerves,” he tells ABC RN’s Life Matters.
“And all those things were going to go wrong unless I did something about it.”
Things you don’t realize you’ll miss
Kilkenny says there is a post-retirement condition known as “relevance deprivation syndrome.” Throughout his career, he saw many clients experience it.
“They lose things like the structure of their daily lives, social networks, intellectual challenges, tasks, projects, schedules… all those kinds of things that you don’t realize you miss (until) you don’t. you have,” he says.
“Some people might transition into retirement and disregard their work life like an old coat, throw it in the trash and move on and never think about it again.”
But others “were very attached to that coat.”
“They were constantly looking for ways to fill the void.”
He says retirement can be especially difficult for people with “type A personalities,” who have very stressful work lives, long hours, and jobs with a lot of emotional and intellectual commitment.
Often before they leave work, they are excited. They think, “I can do what I want, when I want; I can sleep in; I can do a lot of other things with my time; and I can decompress and dramatically reduce stress,” Kilkenny says.
“They (are) blissfully ignorant of the fact that ‘nothing’ can create a void.”
And a void can manifest itself in “apathy, a reduction in mental acuity… a distinct lack of satisfaction (and) feeling increasingly disconnected.”
It is difficult to know what emotions will arise after the life change of leaving paid work.(Image: Freepik)
Kilkenny says for many people there is a jarring disconnect between expectations and reality.
“You don’t really understand what the impact of retirement will be because you haven’t done it before.
“And you’re still harboring the fantasy that this will be great, that doing nothing will be great.
“So I think a lot of people have to go through a bitter experience. And that was certainly my situation.”
Finding a network outside of work
Mr Kilkenny’s wife was instrumental in helping him turn things around. She encouraged him to get out and start doing “something meaningful” and, in particular, something intellectually challenging.
He enrolled in a French course, which he said was “fantastic.”
Aside from the intellectual stimulation, the course provided much-needed structure.
“Plus, it opened up my social media outside of work, because almost all of my social media was work-related,” she says.
Kilkenny also delved into researching and writing about his family history, which he said “was incredibly cathartic, rewarding and satisfying.”
He also took on some short-term jobs that “weren’t particularly financially rewarding” but that “demonstrated that I still had some brainpower left in me.”
Fighting isolation
Jan Wild is semi-retired and the founder of the retirement advice website, Retiring Not Shy.
More than a decade ago, when she was 50, she and her partner decided to retire at the same time and move from Melbourne to a regional Victorian property.
As in the case of Mr Kilkenny, things did not go exactly as planned.
“We had visions of growing our own vegetables and… playing music and… taking on other creative roles again as well,” Ms Wild says.
“What we found, however, was that there was definitely that sense of relevance deprivation syndrome.”
They found it difficult to immerse themselves in their new community and began to feel isolated.
“It was a dream, and dreams can be challenging,” Wild says.
They can also be incorrect.
After several years, the couple discovered they needed a different life in retirement and have now made the happy move to a home in inner-city Brisbane.
“It couldn’t be more culturally and restaurant-saturated,” says Ms. Wild, which suits her and her partner perfectly.
For them, socializing is an important part of being happy in this new stage of life.
“We have realized again how important our families, including those not of blood, are to us,” says Mrs. Wild.
“We don’t go out every night of the week,” he says. “But (we) really stay in touch with people, keeping those connections strong.”
‘Opportunity to rewire our brains’
Bec Wilson is the founder of a large online community for older Australians and author of How to Have an Epic Retirement.
She says that even though retirement can take up almost a third of our lives, we don’t tend to think about it too much, beyond financial planning.
“We live with these job titles and hierarchies in the first half of our lives, which are so important to our sense of identity (and) suddenly, there’s a void in what our identity is.
“I’m very passionate about the fact that we have to look at who we want to be in the next stage of life before we get there.
“The change is real,” he says.
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During retirement, there is often a responsibility to pursue activities that have meaning or offer a sense of purpose, but generally people “haven’t taken the time to really stop and figure them out” beforehand, Wilson says.
“They have been so busy working, making ends meet, meeting the cost of living, managing their families and taking care of everyone else that they may have forgotten.
“I think it’s a really exciting proposition to think about the purpose ahead of time, like five years later.”
Wild also believes that retirement offers enormous benefits, if you are able to take advantage of them.
“Our purpose is basically to enjoy life. And we don’t need external gratification to achieve that,” he says.
Retirement is “a kinder time.”
“It’s an opportunity to rewire our brains and (consider) what’s really important to us.”
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