Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, you need to get her in therapy, stat, this summer, so she can get help before going off to college. She may even need an intensive outpatient program where she goes several hours a day four or five days a week. I agree this sounds like anxiety/OCD.

My stepson was like this (tho he worried about different things) and despite being brilliant got terrible grades his first year and now we are scrambling to get him into intensive therapy. Get out in front of this and get this treated, now. Call her pediatrician, call therapists, and get on waiting lists. try to find a therapist who will see her virtually once she is in school - is your home and her college in the same state?

+1

From what the OP posted, it sounds like she needs professional help as soon as possible — therapy and possibly medication.

This is a horrible way to live. She is really suffering.

Mental and emotional health are health.

I agree with this. What she is worried about is not the point or the actual problem. She needs professional help for an anxiety disorder.

Anonymous wrote:OP, you need to get her in therapy, stat, this summer, so she can get help before going off to college. She may even need an intensive outpatient program where she goes several hours a day four or five days a week. I agree this sounds like anxiety/OCD.

My stepson was like this (tho he worried about different things) and despite being brilliant got terrible grades his first year and now we are scrambling to get him into intensive therapy. Get out in front of this and get this treated, now. Call her pediatrician, call therapists, and get on waiting lists. try to find a therapist who will see her virtually once she is in school - is your home and her college in the same state?

+1

From what the OP posted, it sounds like she needs professional help as soon as possible — therapy and possibly medication.

This is a horrible way to live. She is really suffering.

Mental and emotional health are health.

She should see an experienced psychiatrist who can prescribe anti anxiety medication and recommend a good therapist.

You can just love, support and not transfer your anxieties to her.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sounds serious.

+1

Sounds like severe anxiety.

+2

That is an anxiety disorder that is settling on "the stress of being an adult" because it needs to settle around something.

Anonymous wrote:She sounds like a classic case of a kid who was never allowed to fail. The fear of failure becomes the boogeyman of any kid who was never allowed to fail. Tell her it's okay to fail, it teaches you good life lessons. If it happens, then you pick yourself up and dust yourself off. The most successful people in life are very comforting with failure, rejection, and abandonment by others. They had to fail and face rejection many times before finally succeeding. But they never stopped trying. Focus on the trying, not the outcome. Instead of telling your kid you're proud of them for winning tell them you're proud of them for trying. And yes, you might fail. But life is about trying.

Meh, yes, this may be part of this. But no. This kid has issues beyond this. This sounds like a mental illness that she was probably genetically predisposed to and is not the fault of parenting.

Get her into therapy, op. Now.

OP, you need to get her in therapy, stat, this summer, so she can get help before going off to college. She may even need an intensive outpatient program where she goes several hours a day four or five days a week. I agree this sounds like anxiety/OCD.

My stepson was like this (tho he worried about different things) and despite being brilliant got terrible grades his first year and now we are scrambling to get him into intensive therapy. Get out in front of this and get this treated, now. Call her pediatrician, call therapists, and get on waiting lists. try to find a therapist who will see her virtually once she is in school - is your home and her college in the same state?

Anonymous wrote:Sounds serious.

+1

Sounds like severe anxiety.

OP: Her biggest struggle right now is feeling overwhelmed trying to plan everything. She feels behind and is very anxious about it. She’s also worried about staying healthy during pregnancy and how best to prepare. But above all, she’s extremely concerned about finding the right spouse and thinks about it constantly. She’s looking for concrete, practical advice.

Sounds like she's using the excuse of the future to avoid the present. Tell her to focus only on the next two steps in life only.

It is stressful, isn't it? Your kid is right to be stressed about this because it is stressful. She is also the product of an individualistic society where everyone is alone and vulnerable to a simple twist of fate.

My kids, even though they are a part of the same individualistic society, have a family that is very collaborative and close-knit. They can run their thought-processes through the whole family and can get good advice with all the pros and cons. They have been told to prioritize -

- Health. Eat healthy and nutritious food, sleep well, get innoculated, get their health checkups, keep hydrated, exercise, have friends. Remove addiction and abuse from your life.
- Safety - Physical, health, financial, digital and reputational. Don't have a weird social media presence. Be careful of your digital footprint. Do not consume too much social media. Do not consume porn. Stay away from news and bystander trauma.
- Their family and friends - keep in touch, socialize, show up for others, have a plan.
- Succeed in academics and work. Most depressed kids get even more depressed when they are not doing well and get stuck in failure.
- Build up your wealth. If that means staying with family and leaning in to taking family help or utilizing family resources - so be it. It also means that you are living a comfortable, but frugal life. Learn to save and invest. Start small but be consistent in safe retirement vehicles like Roth etc.

These are things that your kid has control over.

For my own kid, they know that we will help them in all ways and they have a home with us regardless of joblessness, disease, divorce, displacement etc. We will help them to start their adult life - debt-free college, car, apartment, basic furnishing, seed money, adulting skills, wedding, childcare etc. They have a village in the family and they themselves are good villagers.

Sounds serious.

I really am not one that runs to diagnose people but is there any chance that your daughter, OP, might be grappling with OCD?

I have lived with OCD for over 30 years (the real kind of OCD, not the "everything-has-to-be-just-so" kind that people always say is OCD which is so offensive to those of us who truly suffer).
What you describe happening to your daughter is how my mind often works. I catastrophize when stressed and I can do so looking years into the future. It is almost like my mind is caught in a loop and the worry part acts almost like a salve to manage it all. Is your daughter having intrusive thoughts as well? I am not saying that this is what your DD is dealing with but if it is please get her help as it is an utterly exhausting way to live.

Comfortable not comforting.

She sounds like a classic case of a kid who was never allowed to fail. The fear of failure becomes the boogeyman of any kid who was never allowed to fail. Tell her it's okay to fail, it teaches you good life lessons. If it happens, then you pick yourself up and dust yourself off. The most successful people in life are very comforting with failure, rejection, and abandonment by others. They had to fail and face rejection many times before finally succeeding. But they never stopped trying. Focus on the trying, not the outcome. Instead of telling your kid you're proud of them for winning tell them you're proud of them for trying. And yes, you might fail. But life is about trying.

My daughter recently turned 18, and the stress of becoming an adult is really getting to her. She’s been worried for a while now but it seems to be getting worse.She puts a huge amount of pressure on herself to “have everything figured out,” and now that she’s technically an adult and getting closer to her 20s, she’s spiraling a bit thinking she’s behind in life already.

She worries constantly about the future — not just college and the transition ahead, but everything. Marriage, relationships, pregnancy, whether she’ll find the right partner, whether she’ll be able to raise kids the right way, even things like picking the right baby names, picking the right wedding venue, living in the right area, and making choices she won’t regret later.

What worries me is how far ahead her anxiety goes for someone who is only 18. She worries about future medical issues even though she’s healthy. She’s already anxious about aging and wants to start anti-aging routines because she’s afraid of getting older. She worries about whether she’ll raise future children the right way, where she should live to give them the best life, whether her future kids will be healthy, whether she’ll accidentally marry the wrong person and end up divorced, whether she’ll regret big life decisions years later, and whether she’ll somehow ruin important milestones like her future wedding by making the wrong choices.

She also worries about dating, about making the wrong decisions, and about having everything perfectly in place by the time she’s older. She even wants electrolysis, and is very worried about her looks. It’s like she feels she needs answers to every major life question right now at 18.

It’s gotten to the point where she says she can’t focus on the present or enjoy normal things because she’s always thinking ahead and worrying about adulthood and the future. She’s trying to plan things, and is constantly worried. Her mind is always racing.

I try to reassure her that nobody has life complete figured out at 18 (but she seems consumed by the idea that the best years of life are approaching and she’s unprepared for them.

Has anyone else dealt with this level of future anxiety as a young adult? What helped you?