A Bit Of Confusion

The standard approaches to treating anxiety all made mine worse. Particularly the idea that if you keep doing something it'll gradually get less scary. That always had the opposite effect for me.

Some things that help.

1. Arranging my life so it meets my needs as an autistic person. When I have a stable routine, plenty of solitude,a regular schedule for food and sleep, protection from sensory overload (I recently bought ear defenders and they make existing in public so much easier) and time to engage in my special interests, I exist in a much calmer state. From that baseline I'm more able to deal with anything stressful that arises.

2. Exercise. Before I realised I was autistic, daily exercise is what switched anxiety from being a constant state affecting every minute of every day to something that arose in particular situations. I was still anxious a lot of the time, but during and after exercise I would get a break from it. I like to keep things simple by walking or jogging in the park.

3. Planning and preparation. It is normal, natural, and healthy to be anxious about something happening if you have no idea how you would handle it. I've managed particular fears by making a written plan in advance for what I should do if the thing I'm scared of happens. This gets rid of the need to make decisions while stressed, as you can just follow the plan. I also find it helps to be prepared: e.g. having stockpiles of medication or essential foodstuffs so I don't panic if something is out of stock for a bit. NTs think this is weird behaviour. F*** them. If it helps it helps.

4. Listening to my emotions and leaving a situation if I feel uncomfortable. A lot of anxiety resources advise the opposite, that you should push through anxiety and stay in a situation until it abates. Maybe that's how a neurotypical brain works, but mine is perfectly capable of existing in a state of utter panic for multiple hours at a time, and forcing it to remain in that state means that going into the same situation in future will be much more difficult.

5. Never blocking out negative thoughts. They're usually telling me something important. I might decide to not act on the thought immediately but I still acknowledge it (eg internal dialogue "I want to go home." "I know you want to go home but I'm just going to do this first. Then straight home.") Noticing when I have a lot of those thoughts and scheduling fewer activities and more downtime because that's what my mind is telling me it needs.

That is good advice. As someone who has suffered from lifelong severe anxiety all of that makes sense to me.

Like you I found all the standard approaches made me much worse. I wish I had not listened to the so called advice telling me that I just needed to 'push myself' or 'get used to it' 

I now understand that much of the autistic anxiety experience is sensory and environmental. Repeated exposure to sensory triggers will not make the experience less scary. The opposite happens and the emotional response increases as exposure increases. It amounts to sensory torture.

That advice you're talking about is called exposure therapy, and is a legitimate method to get over phobias. Avoiding something, anything, because of anxiety is what turns it into a phobia. The problem is people try to get over their phobias 'all-at-once', without taking any intermediate steps. If you are particularly sensitive to certain experiences because you are autistic, that doesn't mean you can't experience that thing and enjoy it. That would mean just giving up that experience! Is that really how one should live there life? 

A personal example:

I was terrified of going to bars in college. I tried to push myself and go, but it was just too much, so I stopped going with my roommates and friends which led to some very depressing weekends. I now know that this was a form of social phobia. I never realized this until I started reading about anxiety and phobias some years later. The first step would have been to let my friends know that I have a phobia of the bars, but I want to go with them. The next step would be to go on a slow night (monday, tuesday..) with a single friend or maybe two. From there I would just have to figure things out and work my way up to be able to enjoy a crazy Friday or Saturday night. There are also lots of exercises to do to relieve stress at any point in the recovery process that would need to be done, but I won't mention them here. 

My point is, there is no reason that one cannot get over their irrational anxieties and fears, given that they have the knowledge and motivation to commit to a recovery plan.

Oh ok, thank you for the references, I will check them out. I am new to mental health from the autistic perspective so I am learning lots of things each day.

The Luke Beardon book was transformational for me. It was so different from everything I'd previously read about anxiety. I'm going to look up the other one you recommended too.

Exposure therapy can be useful in some situations, where the fear is irrational and gradual exposure can be done safely. 

However an autistic person cannot change their sensory profile by repeated exposure. A person with such sensory processing difficulties lacks the ability to habituate or become accustomed to those triggers. Therefore their sensory anxiety is not irrational and exposure therapy will only make it worse.

A couple of helpful books on the subject:

Avoiding Anxiety in Autistic Adults: A Guide for Autistic Wellbeing by Luke Beardon (Author)

Sensory Trauma: AUTISM, SENSORY DIFFERENCE AND THE DAILY EXPERIENCE OF FEAR by Dr Rorie Fulton (Author), Emma Reardon (Author), Kate Richardson (Author), Dr Rachel Jones (Author)

Exposure therapy can be useful in some situations, where the fear is irrational and gradual exposure can be done safely. 

However an autistic person cannot change their sensory profile by repeated exposure. A person with such sensory processing difficulties lacks the ability to habituate or become accustomed to those triggers. Therefore their sensory anxiety is not irrational and exposure therapy will only make it worse.

A couple of helpful books on the subject:

Avoiding Anxiety in Autistic Adults: A Guide for Autistic Wellbeing by Luke Beardon (Author)

Sensory Trauma: AUTISM, SENSORY DIFFERENCE AND THE DAILY EXPERIENCE OF FEAR by Dr Rorie Fulton (Author), Emma Reardon (Author), Kate Richardson (Author), Dr Rachel Jones (Author)

Oh ok, thank you for the references, I will check them out. I am new to mental health from the autistic perspective so I am learning lots of things each day.

The Luke Beardon book was transformational for me. It was so different from everything I'd previously read about anxiety. I'm going to look up the other one you recommended too.