Ocd about your age?

[olb]

I feel like I am close to breaking down, several things bringing me down at once.

My other post is about the long term ocd contamination issue I am trying to understand.

also I am struggling to comprehend my age and how I feel I’ve totally failed in being where I wanted to.

I’m coming up to 40 an age at which I said I’d be living in my own place, I said this so many times but just weeks away and I’m still living at my parents. 
I do own a flat but due to COVID I have only just got possession back from a nightmare tenant. 
The flat was left in a state so I have to sort that out and sell it as I don’t want to live there myself.

I had the opportunity to buy my friends maisonette a few years ago and didn’t take it now I keep imagining myself living there and how I’d have been happy in that place. 
I just can’t believe I haven’t managed to take action and at least rented somewhere to live. 
I have never imagined being 40, and I’m now totally not prepared for it, i know it’s just a number but I don’t like it.

it fees like my mind is constantly torturing me lately and today the heat hasn’t helped. 
I just work too much and I may be ok financially better than some my age but it’s at the expense of my sanity and happiness. 
sorry I’m going on but maybe someone here can relate. 
just can’t believe how I’ve ended up, and I am certain the ocd hasn’t helped, probably why I’m single, although I’ve accepted that I think.

[BelAnna]

That's difficult Olb! 

I think having OCD consume chunks of your life, makes ageing so much harder.

On the plus side it sounds like you have a job, are financially pretty comfortable if you own a flat and have people in your life who care about you (parents etc.) Other things can be changed and really age is just a number. Maybe work out where you would like to be in 5 years and work on it. 

[Braeriach]

It's really easy to slip into "what if" kinds of thinking isn't it?! I used to obsess over thoughts of an imaginary parallel life in which I had made alternative decisions and was infinitely happier as a result, because I'd married that guy, not had that miscarriage, took that dream job that in reality I'd been too scared to accept, blah blah. Then, one day a therapist said something that seemed so simple but I'd really never thought of before: you don't know how any of those things would have turned out - every time you imagine that path you think of it as perfect, but maybe, if you'd married the guy you would have been miserable, maybe the dream job would have turned out bad. That "perfect" path you imagine is not real, it's an idealised version of reality that you use to torture yourself. All we have is the path we have chosen to bring us to where we are now. And who's to say that the path we chose wasn't the right one for us all along?

I'll be 40 next month, and I'm not where I imagined I'd be either. And it's natural to wonder how things would have been if circumstances were different, but maybe if you look on all you have achieved, you can find a way to give yourself a bit of a break and view yourself with the compassion you deserve.

And 40 is still young-ish! That's my line and I'm sticking to it

 

[BelAnna]

3 hours ago, Braeriach said:

It's really easy to slip into "what if" kinds of thinking isn't it?! I used to obsess over thoughts of an imaginary parallel life in which I had made alternative decisions and was infinitely happier as a result, because I'd married that guy, not had that miscarriage, took that dream job that in reality I'd been too scared to accept, blah blah. Then, one day a therapist said something that seemed so simple but I'd really never thought of before: you don't know how any of those things would have turned out - every time you imagine that path you think of it as perfect, but maybe, if you'd married the guy you would have been miserable, maybe the dream job would have turned out bad. That "perfect" path you imagine is not real, it's an idealised version of reality that you use to torture yourself. All we have is the path we have chosen to bring us to where we are now. And who's to say that the path we chose wasn't the right one for us all along?

I'll be 40 next month, and I'm not where I imagined I'd be either. And it's natural to wonder how things would have been if circumstances were different, but maybe if you look on all you have achieved, you can find a way to give yourself a bit of a break and view yourself with the compassion you deserve.

And 40 is still young-ish! That's my line and I'm sticking to it

 

This is a really good way of looking at things. I recently read a book by Matt Haig called 'The Midnight Library', which is on a similar theme and which I found really helpful.

[Bev53]

Hi,

4 hours ago, BelAnna said:

This is a really good way of looking at things. I recently read a book by Matt Haig called 'The Midnight Library', which is on a similar theme and which I found really helpful.

I second that andThe Midnight Library......great book! 

[Braeriach]

The Midnight Library has been on my "to read" list for ages - thanks for the reminder!

[Handy]

OCD often gets confused with GAD, which is thoughts without compulsions. Do you have a visible compulsion for your theme?

[BelAnna]

14 hours ago, Handy said:

OCD often gets confused with GAD, which is thoughts without compulsions. Do you have a visible compulsion for your theme?

Olb definitely has OCD and has both obsessions and compulsions but this worry (about age) may not be OCD in itself but rather related to OCD (because of the impact that OCD has had on many of our lives and that's fine). 

[PolarBear]

18 hours ago, Handy said:

OCD often gets confused with GAD, which is thoughts without compulsions. Do you have a visible compulsion for your theme?

On this forum, OCD rarely, if ever, gets mistaken with GAD.

I've raised this before... you specifically asked if the user has visible compulsions. That is a pointless question, because there exists covert compulsions, which are not visible.