ODW2027 Understanding Retirement Anxiety: Clinical Strategies for Identity, Purpose, and Life Transition with Margaret Wehrenberg

Retirement Anxiety: The Overlooked Source of Midlife Anxiety

A client in midlife presents with anxiety. They may blame increasing work stress, relationship dissatisfaction, financial concerns, health worries, or a growing sense that life is no longer working as it once did. Treatment focuses on these apparent sources of distress—but what if an important underlying issue is being missed?

For many people, the approaching possibility of retirement brings them face-to-face with questions they may not yet recognize as retirement anxiety: When should I retire? Who will I be without my work? Will I still feel useful and relevant? What will give my life structure and meaning? Am I prepared for this next stage of life?

Because these concerns are easily attributed to other stressors, retirement anxiety may remain unrecognized by both client and therapist.

In this webinar, Margaret Wehrenberg, PsyD, examines how retirement anxiety can present clinically and how therapists can identify when fears about retirement, aging, identity, purpose, and endings are contributing to a client’s anxiety. Participants will learn practical ways to assess retirement anxiety, bring previously unrecognized concerns into the therapeutic conversation, and help clients move from anxious avoidance toward thoughtful planning and greater readiness for change.

And therapists are not immune. The work of psychotherapy can become deeply intertwined with identity, meaning, purpose, and connection. This session also invites clinicians to recognize how their own anxiety about eventually leaving the work they love may affect their thinking about retirement—and even influence their clinical work with clients facing the same transition.

Recognizing retirement anxiety opens new paths for understanding anxiety in midlife and for helping both clients and clinicians approach retirement not simply as an ending, but as a significant developmental transition that can be anticipated and thoughtfully navigated.

Presented by Margaret Wehrenberg, PsyD
Author of 11 books on the treatment of anxiety and depression, including the best-seller The 10 Best-Ever Anxiety Management Techniques, and co-author of Letting Go of the Work You Love: A Workbook for Therapists to Prepare for Retirement, Close a Practice, and End a Career with Integrity (PESI, August 2025). Read her full bio.

Understanding the Roots of Retirement Anxiety

Using the 4-Stage Readiness for Retirement Model, participants will learn to assess the key drivers of retirement anxiety. The training highlights how cultural narratives around success, productivity, and growth can make it difficult for individuals to navigate the natural transitions of mid and later life with confidence and emotional stability.

Supporting Clients Through Transition and Change

Participants will develop practical strategies to help clients move toward retirement with greater clarity and reduced anxiety. The workshop introduces tools such as anticipatory coping, the Ripple Effect Worksheet, and the Reverse Bucket List to support clients in identifying values, redefining purpose, and planning for meaningful engagement in later life.

Working with Identity, Meaning, and Legacy

A central focus of this training is helping clients—and clinicians—reframe retirement as a developmental stage rather than a loss. Participants will explore how to support individuals in recognizing their legacy, utilizing their strengths and accumulated knowledge, and approaching this transition with compassion and intention.

Applying Insights to Clinical and Personal Practice

Because therapists are not immune to these concerns, this training also invites reflection on the clinician’s own relationship to retirement, aging, and identity. By increasing awareness and developing practical tools, participants will be better equipped to support clients while also navigating their own evolving professional and personal journeys.

By the end of this training, participants will be able to —

• Identify key contributors to retirement anxiety, including concerns related to identity, meaning, aging, and uncertainty about the future.
• Apply the 4-Stage Readiness for Retirement Model to assess client readiness and sources of anxiety related to retirement.
• Implement practical strategies to help clients plan for retirement in ways that reduce anxiety and increase confidence.
• Reframe retirement as a developmental life stage, emphasizing meaning, contribution, and legacy rather than loss or decline.

This training was originally presented September 18, 2026.  This training offers 3 hours of direct contact (not counting breaks or lunch). It is the participant’s responsibility to check with their individual state boards/regulatory body to verify CE requirements for their license to practice.

Attendees of the original live broadcast receive instructions on how to obtain their Certificate of Participation at the end of the course and in the “recording ready” email, which is sent 1-2 days after the live course has ended.

Attendees watching the previously recorded/on-demand version must complete a Post-Webinar Quiz with a passing grade of at least 80% to verify their attendance and receive their Certificate of Participation.

Note: The course recording is available only after the live broadcast has ended.

The Certificate of Participation includes:

• Name of participant.
• Title of training.
• Name of presenter plus their credentials.
• Number of hours of training.
• Date of training.
• Confirmation of 100% attendance at the original live broadcast OR a passing grade of at least 80% on the recorded on-demand version post-course quiz.

Get details about CE credits for Canadian and non-US international participants.

Get details about CE credits for US participants.

Please check with your regulatory body/organization to ensure that this certificate is sufficient proof for you to claim CE credits.