Prioritizing Mental Health in Retirement: Tips from Our Community

Retirement is an important, enjoyable, and also challenging phase in many people’s lives. I believe that it can be helpful to create a simple daily check-in by taking a short mindful walk each morning, which can help you notice how you feel and make small adjustments to your day. It can also help you identify and process your emotions, particularly due to the highly emotional phases of retirement in the beginning. Personally, I do a 15 to 20 minute mindful walk at the start of each day and pair it with yoga, which keeps me centered and supports my mental health. This routine can be accommodated to support most individuals without too much physical strain.

If you are worried about your mental health during retirement, take time to reflect on the important pillars in your life and how often they will continue to show up. These pillars may include time and relationships with family, close friends, and your local community. Connection and community are core pillars to health and well-being and while it is important across the lifespan, during retirement it may be even more crucial for physical, emotional, and mental health to continue going on a positive track. When we are actively engaging in genuine, quality time with others, our stress hormones go down leading to a longer, healthier life. Community engagement may lead to increased physical movement as well depending on the activities you enjoy. Overall, having community and relationships in your life that are strong, consistent, engaging, and active will have a positive impact on your mental health. If these areas already feel like a worry, check out your local community center and volunteer opportunities to see how you can get involved and increase your connections.

I’ve prioritized my own self-care and well-being by increasing my time with meaningful friendships in-person and over the phone for those who are long-distance. I have also continued to go out and explore nature, get fresh air, movement, and sunlight with my significant other while having meaningful, connecting conversations.

One of the biggest traps during retirement is dwelling on what feels missing—structure, status, certainty about the future, or fears of decline. Those worries are understandable, but they can quietly shrink our world if we let them take over.

My advice is this: take the initiative to open new doors rather than waiting for meaning to find you. Retirement isn’t the end of purpose—it’s a transition that requires intention.

I encourage people to shift their focus from what they no longer have to what they still have and can actively build: curiosity, experience, relationships, time, and choice. That mindset shift alone can significantly improve emotional well-being.

Personally, I prioritize self-care by staying engaged in work that matters to me, continuing to learn, maintaining physical activity, and protecting time for reflection and connection. I’m deliberate about staying mentally active, saying yes to new opportunities, and reframing challenges as invitations rather than losses.

Mental health in retirement isn’t about avoiding anxiety altogether—it’s about choosing perspective, staying engaged, and recognizing that meaning is something we create, not something we retire from.

Start thinking about what you’re retiring to, not just what you’re retiring from. I’ve seen too many people go from a full schedule to nothing overnight, and that sudden loss of purpose and routine can be really hard on mental health.

My advice is, before you retire, start building a life outside of work. Get new hobbies, volunteer work, and build social connections that aren’t tied to your job. The people who do well in retirement are the ones who already have things they care about and look forward to. Don’t wait until your last day of work to figure out what comes next.

I had to learn the hard way that I can’t take care of others if I’m running on empty. For me, it’s about protecting certain things: I exercise, and I actually take my vacation days.

Working in mental health, I’m around people’s pain and struggle every day. I need those spaces to recharge and process. I also lean on my colleagues. We check in with each other, and that support keeps me going. It’s really just practicing what I tell others: that asking for help isn’t weak, it’s necessary.

I am the Clinical Director of Taproot Therapy Collective. I often treat high-achieving professionals who enter retirement and immediately crash into depression or severe anxiety. Here is my advice on managing this transition:

1. Advice for the Worried: Beware the “Cortisol Crash”: “Do not underestimate the physiological addiction to productivity. If you have spent 40 years in a high-stress career, your nervous system is adapted to running on adrenaline and cortisol. When you retire ‘cold turkey,’ your body goes into withdrawal. The silence feels like a threat. My advice is to titrate your retirement. Don’t go from 100 to 0. Find a ‘bridge’ activity—volunteering, consulting, or mentorship—that mimics the structure of work but lowers the stakes. You have to wean your brain off the need for validation-through-labor.”

2. Prioritizing Well-Being: “Useless” Hobbies: “In my own practice, I prioritize self-care by aggressively protecting time for ‘useless’ things. In our culture, we try to monetize our hobbies or turn them into side hustles. I force myself to engage in activities that have zero financial or status metric—like hiking or bad watercolor painting. Teaching the brain that it is allowed to exist without producing capital is the most radical form of self-care you can practice.”

If someone wants to protect their mental health when they retire, I would recommend working with a functional practitioner who will test their bloodwork, genetics, evaluate their diet and lifestyle, and create a plan for a longer health span, not just a longer lifespan.

Also, rediscovering your purpose in retirement and being involved in your community, whether it is volunteering at the food pantry, animal shelter, even spending more time with family or neighbors, can make a huge impact on boosting mood and preventing loneliness.

I prioritize moving my body everyday and avoiding food or substances (like sugar, alcohol and THC) that will increase my risk for dementia since it runs in my family. I also think it’s important to prioritize friendships and family, because when you look back on your life you will never say “I wish I worked more”. Instead you might say, “I wish I put more effort into my friendships.” Live your life today so your future self will be proud of you.

As a clinician, the best piece of advice I would give is this: do not wait until you feel overwhelmed to tend to your mental health. Retirement is a transition, and transitions deserve support. Create structure and purpose in your days, and stay connected to your community. Allow yourself time to grieve what you are leaving while embracing what is ahead. I have prioritized my own well-being by building rhythms that support my mind, body, and spirit. I do regular check-ins with myself, set healthy boundaries, exercise, stand firm in my faith, rest without guilt, and have a strong support system. Self-care is not indulgent at this stage of life; it is essential to thriving, not just aging.

Retirement can be an opportunity for individuals to rediscover their identity, interests, and hobbies. Major life transitions are not easy, and it takes time to acclimate to a new reality. People who may struggle most during these transitions are those whose identity, self-worth, or purpose is tied to their work, titles, or credentials. However, retirement can be a time when people can learn about themselves and what they find meaningful aside from their work. Individuals can also have true autonomy over their time and decisions because they are no longer tied to their roles or responsibilities.

For those worried about their mental health during this process, I’d suggest building meaningful connections and establishing a community. In doing so, it increases the likelihood of creating new positive memories, which improves mood and helps offset feelings of loneliness. There are multiple ways to prioritize self-care, including making time for themselves, scheduling events, and prioritizing their needs to emotionally recuperate rather than being goal-oriented. Self-care can look different for everyone. Retirement is a wonderful time to experiment and explore what self-care means, or to reconnect with parts of themselves that have been neglected.

If you’re feeling anxious about your mental health in retirement, my best advice is to lean into small, joyful rituals each day–whether it’s making a cozy cup of tea, walking in the garden, or cooking a favorite meal from your childhood. For me, getting my hands into food–chopping fresh herbs or simmering a pot of soup–grounds me and reminds me to savor life’s simplest pleasures. Give yourself full permission to pause and reconnect with what makes you feel alive, even if it’s something as simple as sharing a homemade crepe with a friend.

– Train your nervous system to tolerate unstructured time before you retire. Practices like brief self-guided imagery or slow, counted breathing teach the brain that calm and direction can exist without deadlines, which reduces anxiety when work-based structure disappears.

– I treat my body’s stress signals the same way I treat a client’s symptoms during assessment. After decades of seeing how ignored tension becomes chronic illness, I address physical stress immediately instead of waiting until my body forces me to stop.

Dr. William Deihl

Founder of Doc Hypnosis

One of the biggest mental health issues with retirement is the lack of purpose or usefulness. Self-care and well-being are, therefore, a top priority, but they need to be placed within the social context of life. What helps here is to examine the roles one plays within their community, society, and world at large. By identifying the different parts we play, we can better learn what our responsibilities and duties are to the world around us. Think of roles like a parent, a sibling, a partner, a friend, a volunteer, etc.

Once you have identified these roles, then focus on executing the duties and responsibilities the best way you can. These will give you clear goals and objectives to work towards. Their success isn’t the target; the manner of execution is.

When we only identify ourselves with the job we have performed, we forget all the other connections we have. Learn to reinvent yourself and focus on what matters to you and those around you.

To me, “retirement” seemed like a tired old word, waiting to die. I refuse to lay down to the word; I see it as “my next journey”. I like to use the word ‘journey,’ because it invites me to embrace the next chapter of my life with enthusiasm. It’s a wonderful chance for me to focus on myself, care for myself as I did for others, and still be able to look back fondly on the beautiful pages I’ve already written. This perspective makes the transition feel more welcoming and full of possibility. This journey I am on is made possible because the past is with me, and the present is my reward.