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?!

Yes these are the exact thoughts I have sometimes too, just feels so deep and sad 😔
How old are you?

Oh 😔 really? What happens?

I work part time now, but don’t feel joy for my career at all the way I did pre dc

Perhaps you need a change, Chippy. I changed jobs at about your age and it was an extremely good move, I stayed there until retirement. I did work part time for many years and enjoyed that most of the time but it wasn't really a career.

If not work it sounds as though you need to be doing something that is absorbing. You hopefully have many years ahead and they need to be filled somehow.

Yes! Irregular periods! Get yourself along to the GP. Mine was extremely supportive. It’s not without risk but some thing the risks are exaggerated and based on a small sample. It also has benefits like being good for your bones!

Well it's not normal for me. I'm 61, enjoy life and look forward to what's ahead. Retirement, more free time, travel etc. Just enjoying day to day life. So I think it's depression, maybe see a GP?

Sixty-one

Blue period was 56 to 59; pandemic was thrown in to the mix too.

I know what you mean.

I look at news items with very old people in nursing homes doing pre-school jigsaw puzzles and I think, fuck it, I might take up smoking again.

I feel like this all of the time

I have just been thinking similar. I’m 40, with a nearly 8 year old. No more kids, just about to move to a job closer to home, very average at best relationship with my partner. It feels like things won’t get any better than this and it’s basically it.
I think it might be the ages of our children, they aren’t babies anymore. Also the time of year doesn’t help.
Life isn’t the same as when we were 20.
But you can still find joy. It’s more like little moments these days than mass excitement I used to feel.

It might sound trite, but I realise I have a lot of love left to give and we are thinking of getting a pet soon. Would this be an option for you?

I don't get this. Happy isn't about the future. It's not really about the past either.

Happy is a about right now. Right now, I'm happy. Earlier this year I wasn't. So I fixed the things that were making me unhappy, so I'm happy again. Trying to think about whether I'll be happy in 5 years is a fools errand. I could have been hit by a bus by then!

Well done!

You’re at the age when oestrogen is dropping fast. This affects everything. Spk to your G.P.

Maybe it’s hormones who knows.
i get angry at folk like you, health issues past 20 yrs , 63, now mid stage Parkinson’s, can ‘t work, go out for more than 3 hrs.
Good life with friends and dearest cat, I don’t know realistically how many coping years I have left, I will refuse nursing home, based on my right to die.
i hear of others ailing elderly relatives, it seems very unfair life is.
No one is promised tomm and no dress rehearsal

Start volunteering for a charity - make the world a better place!

Bloody hell OP yes get you some HRT! I’m 53 and it completely changed my life. Felt the same for a time a few years back. Literally it got my career back on track.

I don’t have kids but otherwise this could have been me 3 years ago. I no longer took pleasure in anything. It was a combination of perimenopause and depression. I started HRT (which I am still on) but for me the absolute game changer was ADs. They have transformed my life.

The advice about looking after yourself, eating well, getting enough sleep and trying to make space for things that make you happy is all good and I am sure works for some people - but don’t feel any shame if it doesn’t work for you and you need ADs. It can be very hard to engage in the self care that will make you feel better when you feel that nothing in life has value - the worst of all vicious circles. Wishing you the best.

Yes, get HRT if you can.

This completely resonates.
i would imagine that for probably the majority of people, their 20s and 30s aren’t all wonderful stress free years. There’s dating, settling down, all the responsibility of having young children, forging ahead in the workplace, keeping all the plates spinning and very often having money worries.

I’m shortly going to turn 60. I remember my 20s and 30s as bringing lots of joy (marriage, 3 babies) but it’s also quite a blur. We were both working, paying extortionate nursery costs, no family nearby and to cap it all we had those horrendous mortgage rates which made us fearful we could even end up losing our house. Of course there were joyful bits but much of it was hard graft, juggling everything.

i remember actually feeling pretty liberated when I entered my 50s. We were almost at the end of paying hundreds a month to top up the student loan for our youngest who was at uni. All 3 kids now in adulthood. Dh and I really established in our careers, those years of experience really paying off. A good core of solid friendships we’d built up over the years. No more struggling month to month, wondering if the cheque to pay for nursery would bounce, caught in that trap of both needing to work, but having very little money left over after bills paid. At long last we could have a meal out or book a holiday without agonising over whether we could afford it. No more rushing out the door at 7:30 after wrestling 3 kids into their coats to do the childcare drop.

honestly, life is just as good or even better. There are still as many wonderful moments, they just might be different moments to when you’re in a younger phase of life. I’m certainly appreciating more ’me’ time and after years of full time work, building my career, I now have the luxury of working part time as a transition to retiring. And lots to look forward to still. Dh and I taking a big block of annual leave and are planning a big trip for the spring. We really enjoy spending time with our adult kids and watching them forge their paths with careers and relationships.

honestly, much as I loved my 20s and 30s I genuinely feel at least equally happy now, and in some ways more so. Definitely less worries and day to day anxieties and more time to just ‘be.’

I feel this to OP. My oldest dc about to leave home. Youngest developing independence at a rapid rate… feel no joy. Miss the connection of the primary school gate. Elderly parents on both sides. Economic future uncertain. Just no spark at all

Years ago I read a magazine article that said there are five things you need to do to live a happy life. I wrote it down and gradually worked it into my life and, for something that came out of a probably trite magazine piece it only bloody works.

They are
Embrace change
Avoid introspection (not any introspection, but constantly living inside your own thoughts)
Be a leaf on a tree (be connected, make friends, see loved ones, join things)
Develop a passion (throw yourself into something that excites you enough to make you get up early to do more of it)
Live now.

I read the article when I was about your age and feeling meh, lost, fearful, like I didn't know what would come next and how I could be arsed with it.
My best friend had just died suddenly leaving two small children.
I thought the lights had been turned off in my life.

Since then I've lost more people (including all my aunts, uncles and parents), I've aged, I don't look like I did, everything has changed beyond all recognition.

New things have flooded in. New passions (one of which became a new career), an old hobby became another source of interest and income, volunteering in an area I really care about, a new home, a new location, new friends, new skills, a new way of looking at me and the world.

I am happier now, more fulfilled, more comfortable in my own skin than I ever was before. To be honest, my life is so full, so full of opportunity I wish I had more time and more energy. I feel on fire and free like I never have before.

I'm in my sixties.

Work consciously through this OP. This is your chance to shed shit that doesn't work for you and let new stuff in. If you do this the future will be better, you will be better than you could ever have imagined possible.