Fear of Ageing

[angelk01]

Yes, Angel, sadly I agonize about my appearance almost every single day and this "aging thing" has added a whole new oppressive layer to my BDD.  Oddly, Sometimes I'll go for a few days of having absolutely great "face days" where ever mirror I happen to see myself in tells me I can pass for 22 (well, maybe 30), which in turn fuels a "fantasy world" of outwitting "the age demon".  Then I see some bad reflections and bad photos and the vicious cycle starts all over again.  But now "the good face days" are gettting fewer and fewer.
You look great!  You look like a pretty young 17-year-old that could easily pass for 16.  Savor your youth to fullest.  I wish I had.

Yeah it is tough when things get too much as i especially find this when i overthink. I always try to do
something to take my mind off it by watching t.v. or watching sports as i love sport so if you have a hobby u like
that mite help lol. Thank you for your advice. I know how hard BDD can be as i often think people are thinking certain things about me when they are not really . Is that how you feel when you are outside too with people?
Thank you for your kkindness. I hope you can feel goos too. :D. xxx

[jethro]

Gerascophobic Thoughts

I'm all tangled up, battered and bruised, in emotional barbed wire.  Well meaning people try to help.  But getting free must be done with the utmost care, lest emotional skin be lacerated and torn.  No amount of word-balm can help me.  I must face the task at hand and work my way out with painful slowness and unvarnished honesty.  That's my only chance.  I'll do what I can.

Physical youth and beauty, for some of us, especially our own, has its own intense and intrinsic allure, and it's passing a nearly unbearable sadness and unfaceable fear.  We cannot quite explain that to those who don't experience these feelings, however well-meaning they may be.

I'm trying to work around all this, to stay busy.  I'm not just curled up in a fetal position and wimpering, or wallowing in it.  Some days, some hours, I'm hopeful, almost optimistic.  Then I see something, hear something, experience something, that brings it all crashing down.  And a tight knot of anxiety forms in my heart again that I just can't get rid of.  The old strategies don't seem to work like they used to.  Oh my God, WHAT, am I going to do?

I don't want to be the cute old person, the hip old person, the "lovable curmudgeon", the old people on those ridiculous "Ensure" commercials (no, I don't mean the frumpy ones who drank the wrong brand, but the "savvy" ones all inanely pleased with their superior choice of nutrition-drink).  I don't want to be stereotyped IN ANY WAY.

I don't want to be GHETTO-IZED.  I don't want to be herded into "senior activities" or "communities" to play golf or bingo.  "I am no superman.  I have no answers for you."  If you're young, don't ask me for advice.  I have no wisdom to offer you.  I've got twice the angst that you do, and more.  I couldn't mentor anybody out of paper bag.  If you want to have an intelligent conversation, that would be great.  But please don't patronize me.  And don't worry, I'm not trying to break into your youth clique. But I hope we talk and collaborate if it serves our mutual goals.  When I was young, I never dismissed people older than myself (well, at least not the intelligent ones).  Sometimes, I wonder if "respecting" people is a subtle way of keeping them at arms length.  (Just speculating, and maybe I'm being paranoid.)

I understand my problem intellectually, and now and then, seem to JUST get free of it.  But it's a mercurial escape.  It's the anxiety that plagues me.  It's palpable, like heart-ache, like a nausea.  I suspect I'm repressing a fear I just can't quite face.  And further, this makes it harder and harder to "work around it", because everything I do is overlayered with, marred by this anxiety.  There's no enjoyment.  No zeal.  I'm just trudging up a hill, going through the motions.  Just getting through the day is a nearly interminable struggle.  Mornings are a little better, have a glimmer of hope, but they rapidly go bad.  The day's journey into night is a long, long one, and then there's the challenge of sleep.

Well, at least I've got some things to do. 

[tinam7]

Now I am the happiest know-it-all I could ever have imagined in old age. I would not be young again for all the tea in China (though I drink lots of tea). When I was young I was suicidal. Now I am mostly ecstatic at every day. When I was young I had to figure out what to do with my life which didn't even belong to me. When I was young I did not have a free moment to myself. Now I wallow in time all my own. The young gravitate to me because they can see and sense that aura of light and wisdom all around me. And I don't mind sharing that wisdom, a veritable oracle.

Jethro, your issue is not aging, as I see it, it is your inner Self. It needs refurbishing. Have you tried CBT? I can recommend it highly (after some Freudian introspection).     

[jethro]

Thanks tinam.

Yesterday when I wrote that, and the day before, I was having a very bad day (part of which was a very bad "face day", it's a BDD thing), with some very intense anxiety.  Today, I'm feeling much better, but frankly, I'm never quite sure why.  Yesterday and the day before were cloudy and overcast.  So is today, even rainy.  Today I'm much more hopeful and the palpable anxiety is gone, just like a headache banished with aspirin.  Let's hope this rally lasts a while.

I've known about Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy and have discussed this with a friend with problems of his own, who recommended it.  I just printed out and am reading Wikipedia's CBT article and discussion pages.  I'm pretty sure I've known the gist of the system for a while, and I have been trying to apply it as much as I can to my own problem, but as they say, Rome wasn't built in a day.  I will have pretty good days like I am now, and I'm sure I'll have more bad ones.  I think I managed to get out of my hypochondria with some approximation to CBT, but who knows, maybe I just got tired of being afraid, or it just ran its course.

In the Wikipedia article, "journaling", frankly expressing how you feel, is a part of some forms of CBT.  I think that's what I'm doing in this thread.  I know not everybody will understand.  But there may be people who can relate to my "whining".

My Dad, who died just about the same age I am now, seemed to go through something very much like I am.  Not exactly, but similar.  He was diagnosed as a "schizophrenic-paranoid", I think incompetently.  I think he was either unipolar, or maybe bipolar.  He tried, and tried, and tried to get out of it.  He went to psychiatrists.  He was even placed in a mental hospital.  I was 14, confused and frustrated with him, and yes, embarrassed, that my Dad was known all around the community as a mental-case.  I also, as I guess kids often do, felt guilty, that I was causing it somehow.

My uncle, my Dad's brother, contracted schizophrenia in his early teens and for years, had full blown psychotic episodes.  He committed 0119 at age 40.

What I'm trying say, tinam, is that some of us really got it bad. It's probably in our genes.  My grandmother was often very sad.  I know what you say is true and I'm trying to move in the right direction with CBT and all.  But some times I'll have a really bad day, or days, and I may just have to vent about it.  You may just have to bear with me for while
 

[tinam7]

You are not whining, jethro. What you experienced in your past and are trying to overcome is enormous. I know about genetic dispositions, have them too. Some days we transcend them, other days they trap us. Venting helps. In fact, it takes courage to vent. I create "books" for goodness sake, to get it out. It's an ongoing process.

In my mostly self invented CBT program Courage is big. You are being very courageous, jethro, and your good days will multiply. Give yourself much credit for your efforts in the face of great obstacles. Is there also an issue of facing death as you relate your father's and uncle's fate?