Strategies for dreading the future

[CassandraCopesWithChardonnay]

How do you all cope with the fear of the future? I have a constant stone sitting in my stomach all the time. Is it a mid life inevitability to be tolerated? HOW do you tolerate it?

I am at the point in life where I have ageing parents, children who are youngish and a job in a very volatile sector. I don’t feel secure in any of these areas: I worry about losing my parents or their decline; I look at my children and worry about their future. Job, no need to explain! I have quite intrusive, vivid, thoughts about terrible scenarios linked to all these things. It feels like a train coming towards me whatever I do and I’m just waiting for all of these things to hit, for the sword to fall.

My question is : how do you tolerate this on the day to day? The human condition is cruel! Speaking of which, the fact that I’m relatively privileged adds to my guilt and my frustration with myself. I want to shake myself out of it and think better thoughts

Anti anxiety meds.

It sounds like a mental health issue as you describe intrusive thoughts. I have had this in the past and managed to get through it with HRT and SSRIs (Citalopram).

Also, mindfulness really helps to focus on the present. Like, are you ok right in this second right now? Focusing on that. How do you feel in your body, clearing your mind.

Thank you, I did try SSRIs but because the things I worry about are still there I didn’t think they helped massively. I never got past 50mg though

It doesn’t work for every scenario, but you sound like a good candidate for Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.

I was going to suggest CBT or anxiety meds, but I wondered if you'd tried any of the self-help options such as yoga, meditation, Tai chi, dance?
Even a hobby that you can get into and enjoy is helpful in giving your mind something pleasant,constructive and satisfying to think about.
I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be doing this, but not looking at or reading about the news is very helpful.
People will always be worried about their aging parents, and their children, and even their jobs.
If you cut out the stimulus of worrying about the news and concentrate on making life good and comfortable for your parents, and for your children, and just get through each day, as people have always done at times of personal, or global crisis and conflict.

Definitely - it’s that’s focusing on the present and each day that I’m really bad at!

Menopause or peri menopause- anxiety increase is a well known symptom.

I’ve adopted a “let it burn” attitude. I never watch the news so I only have a vague awareness of the problems and deterioration, and I honestly don’t care. How could I? There is fuck all I can do about it.

If I lose everything, I’ll just go and live on a beach in Thailand - incidentally this is my dream 😂

Well stop and breathe

Your parents, presume they have, are living a full as it can be life, they have brought up you, possibly siblings, can see you are settled with children if your own, they know their grandchildren, it could be a lot worse from their point of view. You can’t halt or change whatever the future holds, old age and death will come to us all, sometimes accepting that makes the life you live today much easier to deal with.

Children, assuming no major health problems, they will grow, they will mess-up and learn from their mistakes, as they turn into teens and young adults they will surprise you in their resilience, hopes and dreams, they may have different goals than the ones you want for them but they will makes choices and have full lives, with friends, drama, laughter, tears, hard work and celebrations. Knowing they are loved, that if need be you will catch them if they fall is plenty to be going on with.

As for your job, just keep going, if it blows up you will find other work, might not be great work but it will be enough to provide for the things that matter.

So many things are out of your control if/when they happen that’s the time for them to be front and centre of your thoughts and don’t let your future steal today!

I too used to worry about my parents future - and everything I worried about did actually come to pass (dementia etc).

However do you know what? I realised that worrying made not one bit of difference to the outcome, and I devoted far too much headspace to it during a time when I should have just been enjoying them as they were.

Acceptance. Very few things are in your control. Focus only on today. If too much, this evening, if too much then this hour etc etc. Focus on this breath. The power of now.

I want to reassure you, as someone going through this, it is NOT normal and inevitable.

It sounds like you have developed anxiety and I am going through the same thing. It has transpired that I am suffering some burnout and it has triggered some quite bad anxiety.

There are treatments and no you don't have to feel like this. Worrying excessively and all the time is a sign anxiety has become an issue. Speak to your GP xx

Thanks for this wonderful post, and all the wonderful posts

Zen Buddhism

Would love to be able to stop my brain and do this but goodness knows how!

There are many apps for this. Breathe etc. Headspace etc

What you describe sounds very much like my strongest perimenopause symptom - a feeling of dread and low level anxiety that I had never felt before. If you haven't tried HRT I'd really recommend it. For me in particular increasing progesterone levels has helped anxiety (ie I needed more of that than estrogen to balance me out mentally).

I went to my GP this week to discuss my anxiety, I’ve had a similar feeling of dread for a while now. I’ve started some meds and my GP was wonderful. I think that some meds and some CBT could make all the difference. It took me a long time to call the GP. I should have done it a lot sooner. The first things they said was ‘well done for coming in to talk about it’. They were so lovely. I think you may need to call them. There are different options for meds also, you might need to try more than one. CBT is good for catastrophising, and it sounds like you might have a bit of this going on.

Parents passing you just need to accept. It’s the nature of life that children bury their parents. It’s inevitable. Cherish the final years you have with them and make them special. This is what I did with my grandma, I was closer to her than my parents and was very attached to her. In the final years of her life I took her on trips (her first time leaving the country), bought her a huge bouquet of flowers on every birthday, baked her special diabetic friendly cakes with stevia and almond flour. That’s all we can do

Acceptance commitment therapy. I did a course on living with health conditions and they taught this as part of it. It was very informative. Its the new thing alongside CBT now.

Couple of thought hacks that have helped me.

'Today is all I have ' ie you only have the day youre currently living in, can't live in yesterday or tomorrow. So if im spending all day fretting about something Ive wasted the day.

'I'll be happy when.... ever I feel like it!' stops me thinking 'I'll be happy when.. I get that new job/ new car/ go on holiday and having a conditional approach to happiness, which never works anyway as you then just want the next thing after the initial euphoria. This was massively helpful when I went through a period of unemployment.

Love this, thank you - will add them to mine

Try and tell yourself that you will deal with things as and when they happen. You could be wasting your time worrying about scenarios that may never actually occur.

I also try to tackle things in blocks. Whether that’s 24 hours or a week or a month. If I’m feeling anxious I will tell myself that it’s just the next 24 hours I need to tackle and go gentle on myself and make life a bit easier but letting go of big task and making sure I talk positively about the wins of the day.

There are so many awful things that could go wrong in life but the majority of them don’t actually happen. So just try and tell yourself that no matter what happens you’ll deal with it as and when and most importantly if it comes along.

I know this is eminently sensible. I will try harder to do a lot of the things that have been suggested here and pull myself out
of it when I spiral

It’s so easy to get into the spiral of it all. When I catch myself doing it I will say out loud “no you need to stop this, it’s wasted energy for something that may not even happen.”

If you really think about all the things you worry about and then think about how many of them have actually happened or will happen the numbers are slim so it’s wasted worry.

Conquer as trouble appears and try and enjoy the now because anxiety is robbing you of positive non troublesome days for no good reason.