title: A Female Therapist's Perspective on Growing Older.
abstract: As an older woman therapist, I find that my life experience grounds me in my work with people of all ages and backgrounds as they deal with life crises, aging issues, and loss. People with whom I work in therapy appreciate the fact that I am older and have had varied life experiences. Gender issues are still central to my work with clients whether I am working with a man or a woman. I am an integrative therapist, with a background in cognitive-behavioral therapy and gestalt therapy. Therapists need to help clients to identify less with their aging bodies and our culture's view of attractiveness, shifting instead to a paradigm that values life experience and the cultivation of wisdom. We need to find ways of embracing what we have learned about life instead of extolling youthful values. As I get older, I more fully appreciate a constructivism framework and life-cycle perspective, focusing on making sense of clients' life narratives. Storytelling and memoirs have both provided a framework for working with clients on coping with the many changes and challenges of life that bring them to therapy and added another layer to my integrative therapeutic work.
authors.affiliation: New York University.
authors.forename: Iris
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Fodor
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology*; D015928:Cognitive Behavioral Therapy / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D005864:Gestalt Therapy / Q000379:methods*; D006282:Health Personnel / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans
keywords: ageism; aging; integrative therapy; life cycle; loss; narrative therapy; senior woman therapist