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Nostalgia, wanting to go back in time, yearning for a 'golden era'

Hope

I have touched on this topic before, but it is a recurring 'obsession' of mine. My life WAS better in the past, objectively better. When I tell people this, they always contradict me, trying to tell me that my life has barely started (I am 25), that my life is good now - I have support, my own flat, and even a part-time job. But no, my life pales into insignificance when compared to my life before the age of about 15. The pre-lapsarian era, before my fall into a black hole of fear/uncertainty/constant anxiety and crippling OCD. I am not depressed; I actually get pleasure from life, but I am sad that my life is no longer 'free' in the real sense; free from fear. I have always been anxious, always had problems, but they used to be manageable, and they  were often other people's concern. I am intellectually an 80 year old, but emotionally still a 10 year old. I just cannot grow up, and neither do I want to. I resent adult seriousness, change, and responsibility. I want to feel secure, with readily available meaning bequeathed by others. I lack structure, meaning, and I feel lost. And I am anxious ALL the time. No-one has succeeded in removing my constant general anxiety, despite the fact they have helped my OCD and specific phobias.

Parents

  • It is indeed the lack of direction  that is most frustrating, and the fact that there is not much to work towards, other than trying to combat my OCD. When I was younger, I at least had special interests that kept me occupied: child development and the actress Kate Winslet. I think the former enabled me to relive childhood: I collected the toys in parenting magazines and listened to nursery rhymes well into my teens.  Winslet was a mother figure and surrogate friend: I watched all of her films repeatedly and thought about her all the time. Every day I read her interviews and looked at her pictures, particularly the ones of her child.

    I don't have any special interests right now, and I see this as a bad thing. I think that people on the spectrum often use their interests as a shield, protecting them from the world and from anxiety. Without strong interests, other, more negative obsessions have filled the gap along with the all pervasive anxiety.

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  • It is indeed the lack of direction  that is most frustrating, and the fact that there is not much to work towards, other than trying to combat my OCD. When I was younger, I at least had special interests that kept me occupied: child development and the actress Kate Winslet. I think the former enabled me to relive childhood: I collected the toys in parenting magazines and listened to nursery rhymes well into my teens.  Winslet was a mother figure and surrogate friend: I watched all of her films repeatedly and thought about her all the time. Every day I read her interviews and looked at her pictures, particularly the ones of her child.

    I don't have any special interests right now, and I see this as a bad thing. I think that people on the spectrum often use their interests as a shield, protecting them from the world and from anxiety. Without strong interests, other, more negative obsessions have filled the gap along with the all pervasive anxiety.

Children
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