Fear of time passing in general?

[GYDA]

Anybody just get depressed the fact that times are moving on, your not as young as you once was, your parents are getting older etc?

It just seems to be a daily thought that i'm getting older now, growing up, im not seen as youngster anymore and i never will be again etc. I'm only 22, but im past that 18-21 stage that's just pure going out your mates and having a laugh, now everybody's getting a house and settling down, im out of education n stuff. My parents are just about to turn 50, and they're be growing old soon.

Feels like im a just jibbering on but i just guess basically i don't want to grow up! haha it depresses me the thought of getting older, which im sure it does everyone but seems to cross my mind more often than it should. I saw a good quote the other day that made me feel a bit better 'don't regret growing old, it is a privilege denied to many' which is true, it's just life.

[jessed03]

For sure. It's always in the back of my mind, no matter how much I try to ignore it. I think it's worse when you have big chunks of your life missing due to anxiety, or illness, or whatever. You feel short-changed. Then you realize the meter of life is still running, and so you begin to panic a little.

At 25 and a bit, I certainly feel what you mean about noticing those younger years are gone. Society values youth above everything now. Be young or you're irrelevant, kind of thing. It used to be experience and maturity, now you're an old man at 35 as far as the media are concerned.

My parents are both older, too. Dad's in his 70's, mum's a little younger, but greying. It's just life though, right? I mean, death or old age isn't a surprise to any of us. We all know it's coming, eventually. I think all we can do is just try to live life as much as we can. Try to experience as much as we can. So that when it is too late, at least the fact that we were there, we did that, we lived it, can be of some comfort. I think wasting the years is what really gets to you. The best you can do is to look back on it all and say, "Hey, I actually enjoyed that."

If you can connect with spirituality or anything like that, that can relieve some of that existential anxiety. But not everyone can.

Still, as you say: better growing old than not having the opportunity to! I did read a slightly more depressing quite I'll share.

Times passes by, you say?
No, no. Time stays.
It is we who are passing by. - H. Dobson

[GYDA]

Yep defiantly, but like you say you're 25, im 22, yet im sure in 30 years when your 55 and im 52, we'll say to ourselves did we really think we was getting old at 22/25? I'd kill to be that age again! It's just scary how time flies i suppose, like ive been able to go to the pub now for 5 years nearly, it feels like my 18th was only months ago! It just doesn't help i've got a younger brother who's 17, hes going to parties every weekend, coming back and telling me all these stories etc and im just like 'i wish my mates still had parties!!' haha its all just about going to the pub now. Just wish it didnt cross my mind every single day, im still young but its just going so fast. I get your point about missing out due to anxiety, i've only had anxiety since i was 20 but it's had me by the bollocks for 2 years now, and i just feel like i havent lived some of my best years, 20-22, to the max.

Also I have health anxiety, and one of the comforting facts that i get from it is 'your so young, theres like 0% chance you have heart disease etc' yet when i'm older i won't have that to fall back on, so it'll be even harder to convince myself i haven't got whatever illness i've diagnosed myself with.

[jessed03]

Haha, I hadn't thought about the using the youth thing as a way of playing down health anxiety. I'm glad I kicked that shit.

Coming from a few years 'in the future', I just wanna give you some advice. If you're feeling this now, take a LOT of action. Because as the years pass, that feeling of regret, of missing out, it gets worse. At least if you do SOMETHING you don't quite look back on the years with the same dread. At least you were busy! At you were trying! My brother's 23 soon, so he's kinda having the same realization about not being a kid any more. I think I'd be hitting the students clubs lying about my age if my bro was 17 telling me loads of stories. LOL.

You're male, by the way, right? Doesn't matter too much, it's just that I've been a part of several of these time threads on here over the last couple of years. All by guys!

[GYDA]

Haha to be fair when I was first getting my anxiety and i didnt know what it was, i bottled going to alton towers with my girlfriend and went to a&e instead because i was still getting chest pains etc. The doctor was brilliant, told me its 100% anxiety and don't ever not do something social like alton towers because of it again, because that's when it spirals out of control. So i've always kept to it and never missed out on anything, but i've never been able to relax in the past 2 years, i've always had some kind of anxiety on my mind! haha never mind theres worse off people out there my age fighting illnesses etc.

Yeah tell me about it, every single sunday i get his stories from the previous night and im just like :(:( lmao its stupid im thinking this at 22. Ill start feeling old when i'm out of my 20's i think.

Yep i'm male, i think women are generally not too fussed about growing up, they're not as bad as lads who just wanna be in there prime forever, going out boozing etc. I know my girlfriend can't wait to grow up, she want us to get a house next year and everything! haha even that worries me abit though, because again i feel like if i get my own house im at the end of the young stage living at my mam n dads?