How to be happy when it’s all going to get worse

[Chatchippytea]

Sorry to depress anyone.

I just can’t seem to shake this feeling of What’s the point of life’ at the moment and I hate it, that flat, can’t be bothered, but also bored of ever feeling, does anyone else ever get this?
But recently I’ve started thinking about what is there to look forward to? My Dd will grow and move away from me, parents get older and die, Dh and I get older. I realise this is the process of life, but when younger it’s peppered with things to look forward to..maybe marriage, having kids, travel, career progression…I still look forward to some travel..sort of, but it doesn’t make me feel alive like it used to, same with work.
I see my main purpose as raising Dd and supporting her, but everything else 🤷🏻‍♀️
Should I really feel like the best is behind me now at 47 with an 8 year old?

Does anyone else feel like this? Is it depressIon or normal?

How to get out of this funk?!

I felt like this last year and actually posted on here about it, and got some of the same advice; have a night away, etc.

None of that touched the sides of my dissatisfaction; so I have divorced DH and met a partner who brings fun and adventure to my life in a way that I just didn’t have before.

This may not be anything remotely like your issue,
but for me it was covering up the big gaping hole in my life, which was my marriage, which was not horrendous but was simply…meh.

If only 😅 I was once good looking, not now

Are you not just menopausal? I'm younger than you but I have these weird feelings at certain times of the month, I feel quite flat, but then the next day I snap out of it and feel fine. Maybe it's partly being menopausal and then just general aging, if you focus on the bad bits of growing older (losing parents, children flying the nest and that part of your life being behind you, well yeah it is sad), but there is lots of joy still to be found in life!

Now I couldn't feel more differently to that.
I'm 56, sailed through menopause, barely breaking a sweat, and feel the fittest and healthiest I've ever been.
My life is pretty easy now, and very free. I have less responsibility, more time and more money and find loads of things to do with it that give me joy. It's far better and more fun than when I lacked time, energy and funds to do what I wanted.
My children are adults, but my GC give me the chance to enjoy the best bits of small children without too much of the grunt work.
My parents are no longer here, and I miss them greatly. But life has given as much as its taken away and I now have Daughters in law and a son in law as well as my partner, DC and GC, so many people still here to love.
Far from feeling the best is behind me, I feel this is my reward for getting the hard stuff out of the way.

OP, your dd is eight !! You have 10 of the easier and most joyous years of her childhood to look forward to. Loads of fun.

My ds is 17, just about to start A'level mocks. I've got maybe 810 months with him at home and then three years of him coming home for university holidays.

My job will likely disappear so I may retire involuntarily. I'm already thinking how I can use my time. Get the house and garden at their best so I can sell and down size. Take on a course to develop new skills. Build up my social life after years supervising homework. A return of freedom and socialising. Of eating out and travel and friends.

You are more than a decade younger than me. You have so much going for you. 🙂

I felt like this before HRT. It's not made it 100% better but I am improved (started at 45).

But also, google the 'happiness curve' - you're bang on the lowest point.

It sounds like anhedonia - classic perimenopause symptom. Mine landed at about 47. Just trudging through. A good friend called it her ‘TV years’. But, she did come through it. I assume I will, and so will you. I have found that accepting it helps. It’s not forever. It will pass.

Yeah I was thinking about the upside down bell curve of happiness and 45 is right at the bottom.

I thought you were going to say there was something to imminently dread in your life - someone dying or bankruptcy. But you don’t say anything negative apart from how you feel, so possibly perimenopause or depression. Your dc is only 8 so you have a whole decade before they reach adulthood! And possibly 20 years in your career, so time to develop it if you’re not happy there.

I am 49 with 11 and 13yo and do feel like things are getting worse. My mum is descending into dementia and our other remaining parents are mid 80s and not doing well. Dh is out of work due to depression and I’m at risk of redundancy in the next year. So things could be a lot better, but there are always positive times ahead - for me, raising my kids and then having more time and energy for my career and hobbies. It feels too early to start worrying about feeling purposeless without my dc. I had a fulfilling life before dc and I will have one after they grow up, it’s just a different stage of life.

I have friends of different ages so maybe that helps, and a lot of them don’t have kids.

This is a really depressing and negative outlook. If you approach life with that mindset it's always going to go to shit.

I'm not trying to say that everyone can think themselves out of a funk, I know it can be deeper than that. I realise that people can have debilitating health problems etc etc. But if you convince yourself you're on a downward spiral you're more or less inviting it. You can't go through life like this.

There's a lot to love about getting older, and, whisper it, there's a lot to love about your child being less reliant on you.

• More freedom to learn who you actually are, rather than fulfilling roles other people have asked you to step into (wife/mother etc)
• More time to do things you enjoy as opposed to for other people
• Freedom from other people's opinions and expectations

I'm menopausal and yes it's sometimes not a barrel of laughs but I'm tired of this menopausal determinism. It's not a death sentence, you come out of it eventually and if you look after yourself you can mitigate the worst effects.

If you can't envisage any purpose other than being a mother then you're setting yourself up for failure when your kids leave home. And not creating a great model for them for their future.

And honestly while I will probably never have a "soaring romance" again (not sure I want one), there are lots of great things to look forward to. But you have to try to want it.

There is no point of life @Chatchippytea not really, to leave the world a slightly better place for having you in it perhaps?

You are raising a daughter, you have an opportunity to be influential in the woman she will become. To be part of a family and be a key cog in that set-up is the goal of marriage, relationships, pregnancy, and you have achieved that.

If you let go of having a point, a goal, and just exist in what you have and where you are you might start to climb up the bell curve a bit earlier than is average, otherwise you have to trust the statistics and believe that in 5 years or so you will look back and then think, yes it's getting better now.

You are not alone. I feel very similar and I'm 44

It's not all going to get worse.
Things will change and importantly, the things you think are important will change too. You'll be happy, perhaps happier, but in different ways.

Older people come out tops in happiness stakes. If there's nothing to look forward to after you've ticked all the early milestones then why are older people the happiest?

Some interesting stuff in this article about your age group OP and older people.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35471624

OP, I could have written your post 2 years ago
I'm 45 with a 20 Yr old and 15 Yr old. I was utterly miserable with my husband and had been for 8 years (not saying you are).
I got the courage to leave him after an absolute coercive controlling marriage, met a lovely man who is my soul mate, got married in Vegas and now have a blessed life with him and my kids and the dog. I count my blessings daily as I have anxiety.
Don't ever give up. I thought my life was over, in reality it just began.

Are you me?

I think the important thing is that even if the best of your life is over (which it may not be!) then you can still make the most of the rest of it. You have one wonderful life. What are you going to do with it?

I really want to say YABU, but actually I deep down kind of feel a bit the same.
I’ve fallen to thinking a lot about when people I love might get ill or die, and indeed about how I too might die!💀
Horribly morbid.
I think it’s because the world is such an uncertain place with change so rapid. The world is a totally place now to how it was even 15 years ago, who knows what it will be like in another 15. I think I’m clinging to and mentally trying to plan for the few things that are certain, and unfortunately that’s death and old age, with all its attendant miseries.

Maybe it’s S.A.D. due to the nights drawing in?
All I can suggest OP is that you watch something aptly frivolous like Monty Python’s The Life of Brian, with a glass of something alcoholic and a dessert!

I hate to pull the C card but I was very premenopausal then got cancer this year and a menopause to boot.

a lot of introspection has bought me to the point where I think the purpose of life is to leave the planet/your community/your loved ones better off for you being here. Do things for other people, volunteer locally. Pick up some litter, plant some trees. Enjoy the small things.

if you are too in your head get out and help some people. And don’t take for granted living with peace of mind. Boredom/ennui is a total luxury.

The only times I have felt like this is when I didn’t have many ‘real’ problems. When I have got tangible serious issues to deal with, I don’t have the ‘luxury’ of existential angst. That really isn’t meant to sound critical; I am reflecting on myself and the 55 years I have been on earth.

Sounds like some sort of depression has set it - whether it be peri-menopause or something else.
I've had times like this - in fact this thread is the first time i've heard the term anhedonia, but that is definitely how I felt for years after the death of my father. Couldn't find the joy in anything.
I've been having therapy which has helped tremendously - but I have to say, you are not alone in feeling like this. I had a little mental count up today, and realised that all my sisters and my 2 best friends are all on anti-depressants. All in our 40s & 50s. I'm the only one that isn't- and I think that's only because of my therapist (she's the best). Something to think about.

You sound like me before I discovered HRT

I felt a bit like you during the menopause - horribly aware of my own mortality, fretful about the future. It lasted maybe 5 years altogether.

Was crap while it lasted, though.

That's not your purpose in life

Your purpose is to have the most enjoyable life you can

I was like this before HRT. Happy again now

I wouldn't see any reason to assume things will just get worse, seems rather soon for that - as people have said, maybe perimenopause blues?