Anxiety about the future

Fusspot

Hello, I hope someone can give me some advice as I feel I am going insane. I am 58 and suffer with depression and anxiety. I am divorced and live alone, I work full time. I’ll try to keep this as brief as I can.

My current worry is where I live. I am finding problems with it when there shouldn’t be but I can’t stop worrying. The story is that I now live on an estate where I lived about twelve years ago and have always regretted leaving and have wanted to come back to ever since. I moved in haste when my Mum died in 2007 as she had lived near me and then was in a care home near me and I felt I couldn’t cope staying here after she died so I moved, despite people advising me to stay put and give it time.

I moved to a flat and an area I didn’t care for and deeply regretted the move so after two years I started looking to move again. I wanted to move back to the area I had left but it was proving impossible. There were no flats here available so I accepted a ground floor flat I was offered in another area and on a good bus route. Not my first choice but I accepted it and stayed there for ten years. I got burgled twice when I first moved there and the Council fitted an alarm for me and then the burglaries stopped and I settled there in a way but still wished I’d never have moved in the first place but I accepted it as my home and stopped looking to move.

And then last summer my nephew was looking at the Council property website for a flat and I decided to take a nosey myself and the first flat I saw up for rent was this one I am in now, back on the estate I wished I’d never have left. I put in a bid straight away, not thinking that I’d hear anything about it and if I hadn’t have done I wouldn’t have given it another thought but I did hear and I got offered the flat. I had one day to make up my mind and I decided to take it.

So what’s the problem you may ask? Well I love this flat, I love the area, I love the neighbours. I now feel comforted being near to where my Mum used to live. But this flat is at the top of the road and up two flights of stairs, whereas my other flat here was lower down and only up one flight of stairs. No problem at the moment, I am fit and I can manage but I worry incase I lose my mobility as I get older and can no longer cope with the hilly road and the stairs and have to move when I really want to stay on this estate. There are other people live here who are elderly and they cope. My next door neighbour is 76 and suffers from COPD and she manages but I still worry.

Also the bus service here isn’t as good as the other place and the rent is more but the flat is just perfect for me and I feel I belong here. If I did want to move I can’t put my name back on the housing list for two years and then it would take years to build up my points again so I need to get my head around this. I am currently having cognitive behaviour therapy to ease my worrying and so far I am still worrying.

I feel I am going to go insane if I don’t stop worrying about the future. Sorry for the long post.

Katiehound

You are having some therapy so hope that will help but it won't be instant.

I can't be a lot of help as I am a 'glass half full' person.

However one thing I can suggest is that at the end of each day you write down 3 good things that have happened, however small. (More if you can think of them) That way you end the day before you go to bed on a positive note.

Good luck

MovingForwards

If the time comes you can no longer do the stairs and the incline, apply to the council and they will put you into a more suitable property, which will be one for older people.

EssexHebridean

That sounds to me like an totally "meant to be" situation - buy all accounts you looked at that website and found the property available at exactly the right time, and that must count for something, yes?

Allowing that you are currently the age you are (which let's face it, is still relatively young!) and have no significant physical health issues by the sound of it - I would suggest that the odds are firmly on you having many more happy and active years in a flat and location that you love. Yes - in the future it may be that you are no longer able to stay there but taking your neighbour as an example gives great positivity that you are a long way off there now.

As said above also - if you DO reach the point where you need somewhere perhaps on the ground floor, there will be a mechanism in place to relocate then - please don't do yourself out of years of happiness somewhere that you are clearly meant to be by worrying about what may 9or indeed may not!) happen in years to come, though.

Anxiety is horrible and has absolutely NO logic to it sadly, so we can say to you here "not to worry" all we like but I do understand that it's not that simple. It does sound as though you are catasrophising around what "might" happen in the future, though. In this instance - the worst that can happen is that in 20 years time you're starting to struggle with the stairs and you ask for relocation. Yes you would be sad to leave, but you would also - I suspect, know by then that it was the best alternative for you.