Читать книгу Counseling the Contemporary Woman - Suzanne Degges-White - Страница 115

For some women, the midlife years may bring on new levels of anxiety. Research indicates that symptoms of anxiety are increasingly prevalent during the postmenopausal period (Mulhall et al., 2017). The hormonal changes that trigger anxiety in some women can also be accompanied by the new challenges and concerns that appear in midlife and that would naturally heighten feelings of stress and anxiety. Just as losses can trigger depression, new expectations and responsibilities related to caregiving for others can trigger anxiety.

Perceptions about exactly what midlife should “look like” for a woman are often filtered through cultural messages and media representations of midlife, and the mismatch between these images and an individual woman’s sense of self can generate anxieties about exactly what midlife should look like for her. As noted in other chapters, cultural representations of the “ideal” female, regardless of age, can be detrimental to the development or maintenance of a woman’s healthy self-esteem and self-confidence. This can generate body dissatisfaction, which can generate appearance-related anxieties (McLaren & Kuh, 2004). For detailed information on counseling women experiencing body image concerns, please refer to chapter 14; for low self-esteem, please refer to chapter 15; and for anxiety, please refer to chapter 17.