Fear of being bored: The midlife experience

FOBB. Looks like a typo? But no, that’s on purpose. FOBB is an abbreviation. It is an abbreviation of fear of existence boring. This is usually a concept that comes to mind for clients in their 40s, known as a stage of life. middle age.

This stage of life is often referred to as a midlife crisis, a term I don’t like to use because it suggests I’m experiencing a crisis, but I think it’s more appropriate to think of it as a period of transition. A midlife crisis is a psychological crisis caused by events that highlight a person’s growing age, inevitable death, and lack of accomplishment in life. I prefer to simply call it “middle age.” Because if you remove the word crisis from any sentence, the sense of crisis diminishes. And I think this stage in life is not a crisis at all, but rather a normal reaction to the experience of reaching the midpoint of life. There, the act of evaluating what has been done and accomplished so far, combined with the knowledge that one has crossed the halfway point in life towards death, can create an unpleasant and disturbing experience.

FOBB is an offshoot of this midlife period. It reflects the conflict that is developing between us self image About how we once lived, what we did, the lifestyles we led, and the reality of our lives now, and the often obvious differences between them. This often includes reminiscences of when you were younger, doing exciting things, spending time with friends, going out at night, staying up late, traveling, and getting out of the house and experiencing life. Then compare it to your current situation. Add to this the fact that you’re often in a long-term relationship that may start to feel less exciting than before, parenthood and all the responsibilities that come with that position, and the inevitable aging of your body as you struggle to push yourself off the couch and hear your bones creaking as you stand up and groan.

It’s natural to feel this way. In fact, you Assumption To feel this way. it’s part of the process. Evaluating your life so far and considering all the things you could have done differently and the things you did wrong will help you process your life experiences in a way that will allow you to enjoy the second half of your life. In other words, this FOBB, or fear of being bored, creates the false premise that exciting = good and boring = bad. Our lives might seem boring if we were cleaning up the vomit from a child’s birthday party before going to bed at 9pm instead of cleaning up the vomit from a pre-party before heading out at 9pm. But I would argue that this explanation of life being boring is inaccurate. Our lives just changed the way they were meant to be. And in fact, the more time you spend feeling dissatisfied with how your life isn’t what you imagined, the less time you’ll be satisfied with how it actually is. Imagine this, the halfway point in our lives, as a moment in the future when we might look back and say, Really This is something I often experience with older friends and family members who see me as a 50-year-old man and wish they could be the same age as me again.

Please consider this if you are experiencing FOBB. Now think back to your younger days and think about how boring your life seems in comparison. But after you give yourself the space to feel that, remember that somewhere in the future there will be a 70-year-old version of you who wishes they had focused on what makes them happy now and how they (you) can enjoy the second half of their life journey, instead of obsessing over their 30s when they were in their 50s.