Thought loops and anxiety

I would like to express my thanks to Autismman for raising this topic and all the other people for the many valuable contributions that have followed.

It is possible to reflect that this post is about a very human condition that many experience.

From what I understand of autism so far, as a neurodevelopmental condition there is both inherited genetic predisposition that means the brain is more likely to work in the fashion described and there are also events and experiences that maybe reinforce this predisposition.  There is both the "nature" and the "nurture" of the autistic mind.  This has been raised in several good ways in the thread.

Perhaps what many of us do is naturally take this as our normal, and somehow contrive to do the best whilst effectively being disabled by it.

There is first the acknowledgement that this is a problem, perhaps this is the hardest part? - I think it wise to so do - this is especially why I respect you Autismman for being open to share it and help others, including myself, to do so too.  

From this acknowledgement there is then the possibility that one may in some way experience or "nurture" both from external environment and by internally directing one's mind, it functions in the way that it does.  This forms the fashion of one's emotion, thinking, experience and behaviour in complex but potentially identifiable ways.

The same possibility for "plasticity" (that is to say reforming of emotions, thinking, experience, behaviour and ultimately the physical and chemical structure of one's brain) may both be harmful or helpful.  It appears to me that the challenge here is that  a difficulty with change is a core diagnostic feature of autism - yet change from some of the apparent "negative" experiences of being autistic is what many of us seek...

So maybe the key to this is to find strategies that

1) help us identify and acknowledge that the problem is taking place in the first case - in this case I pick up most is that one needs to be clear which of the cognitive distortions is most present in the situation (metaphorically there is little point applying treatment for a broken leg if it's the hand that is injured...)

2) then facilitates a means to address this to help beneficial change and nurture towards this becoming easier and easier to achieve

thanks again to the contributors who have pointed to the resources for this.

I've put thought loops and "cognitive distortions" highest on my work list for my self-led therapy as a consequence of this post.

I also can't resist the temptation to comment on how it seems that the best help comes from other autistic people and that my experiences of access and provision of help and support from "mainstream" health services for autism are woefully ill-equipped and lag far behind in understanding...  Hehe - come the revolution!

I wish all the best :-)

Everyone lacks the emotional maturity in childhood to articulate thier feelings NT's and ND's alike. thinking back to when I was counselling, I saw a lot of young NT people with seriously messed up lives, the one thing we all share is we have no control over the familiy we're born into, or how circumstances can change, an event/s happen. I don't think there's any logic to it or any logical way of thinking it through that provides any resolution to how we feel.

Maybe ND people do suffer trauma more and over different things, although I wonder how much everybody gets ignored, gaslit, hurt etc, but a world that just dosen't value emotions and smacks us cruelly with its lack of care. For example I used to be on another friendship site, where we all tried to keep things fairly well behaved and pleasant, but there was one chap who would try and bring nastiness to threads, pick on people and topics he didn't like, because in his words, in the real world and on other sites this sort of nastiness and worse were commonplace and we should grow up. As you can imagine this was met with resistance and a number of members blocked him. What do you do with people who feel the need to do this sort of thing? How do you deal with the sort of self righteous justifications peole like this come up with?

Do we just have to accept that some people are just horrible and nasty and best avoided if possible and when not try and wash off the emotional vomit they've splattered us with even though the stench of it will stay with us for a while? 

I think I felt the need to be more successful when I was younger but as I got older I felt I slotted into the real main stream of people who are just trying to get by. What really matters is that you are happy, if you feel chasing your dreams will bring you exactly what you need then go for it, if that’s someone else’s dream then you are chasing happiness for them, 

I feel the same feeling, exactly that feeling, and it plagues me all the time. I don’t have a solution as such, but I feel those same feelings, to the point of imagining a better version of myself that was much more successful than I was.

Most definitely agree with you there. I tend to people please more in the work environment however because a core feature of my own diagnosis is a lack of typical social motivation it means I also don’t feel the motivation to mask my disinterest in others, this is something that only occurred to me today really. I was reading a book and the guy speaks of masking because he wanted to fit in and with me I don’t care to fit in or be popular therefore I wouldn’t mask as much as others do. It isn’t that I don’t care morally I just don’t care socially for the most part. I think others notice this too as I don’t join in conversations and will often try busy myself doing other things, it makes me feel quite like a bored child that their mothers dragged out while she has a coffee with her friend. 

Expecto_Patronum said:

I heard a programme about PTSD once and they were saying that for some people with autism something like a change in bus route could trigger PTSD due to the level of stress it causes

Francesca Happe uses the story of the guy bus was diverted and he didn't know where he was or whether it was safe. So then would not take any bus and had problems going near a bus stop.

I think 3 key things that contribute to PTSD are 1. good memory, 2. problems with understanding and creating a coherent narrative, and 3. emotional disregulation.

Without understanding what's happened to you and why, you can't process it and tend to remember how you felt, which is hard.

I think you're right EP about trauma, I don't have worries about the future particularly and have always been fairly happy to make life up as I go along. I'm very much an instinctual person and have learned to rely on my instincts and intuition, it's when I make plans that things go wrong, even if it's something simple like having people over for dinner.

Yes. I think our trauma threshold is also lower due to what we find stressful. Normal day life for a neurotypical person can cause huge amounts of stress for us. I heard a programme about PTSD once and they were saying that for some people with autism something like a change in bus route could trigger PTSD due to the level of stress it causes.

I think you also set your own standards, which can be too high.l

I always expected to do double what other people did, or put up with things I wouldn't expect other people to.

I don't know why I don't value myself.

I think trauma is more easily developed in autistic people due to lacking in what everyone else is born with when they are NT. When you are younger you lack the skills to accurately articulate your feelings and then tie those feelings to the logical cause. If you are not listened to or heard then you end up feeling very alone.

I think it’s a fear of judgement by others and society as perhaps not meeting the standards, expectations and criteria to be seen and felt as an equal human being. Internalising the punishment feels like the right thing to do, why should I enjoy nice things and have nice people around me? I’m half a person or a machine missing important modules so cannot function 

I remember lots from the past too and sometimes torture myself with guilt, but I've started to forgive myself, if something happened decades ago, then who am I feeling guilty for, is guilt even the right emotion?

A therapist asked me 'who am I not good enough for?', its a very good question, I think part of it it is that we remember being damned but rarely praised and probably we are rarely praised. I've noticed several thread where people have said they dont' know how to take compliments and feel like they're being laughed at when told they're good at something. How are we ever going to build confidence if we're never told what we do right, but only of what we do wrong? Life becomes a tightrope walk with a big drop of either not completing a task on one side and getting it wrong on the other, getting to the other end of the tight rope successfully feels more like getting away with it unnoticed rather than something to be proud of.

good advice, thanks

I really identify with the first part of that. Being involved in a minor situation (usually somebody else's, against my will, because I always avoid such things myself) will leave me going over and over the repercussions,or particular phrases someone said or I wish I had said, again and again. I think I have grown better with this over time, simply through recognising that I often overthink and overplay the significance of such things. One thing I have only just started doing, is talking to my wife about it. Saying the thing you wanted to say, out loud to someone else, can remove the feeling of an unresolved matter and you can get the perspective of a neuro typical person on the importance of the situation. Usually, I get the message back, in so many words, that it's not as big a deal as I think and that tends to help me relax about it.

The only person that can control or change your thoughts is you. Unless you take drugs.

The brain can be (re-)trained.

What you can't do is forget things, so you have no option but to come to terms with them and look ahead. It is hard to avoid a car crash if you are driving looking in the rear view mirror.

You also need to eat well, or at least not be malnourished, exercise and sleep as well as possible.

This helps to level you hormones which promotes your brain working properly.

If the brain is like a muscle mine can lift a 3 story house by now. Speaking of which, I do remember reading that a part of the brain was larger in some London taxi drivers because they had to remember and recall thousands of different roads and locations, interesting stuff. 

It definitely seems to common. A lot of people with autism have good memories, particularly long term. I don't know whether this is a factor in that we remember more of the last. Rumination is certainly something that I struggle with.

I read once that people's memories are inaccurate because the same part of the brain is used to predict the future and the future is not certain so that part of the brain has to be flexible, meaning that memories end up being flexible too. I wondered when reading it whether that part of the brain is actually different in autism in that it isn't as flexible and so that same part gives us better, more reliable memories but struggle with uncertainty of the future and are rigid about changes with plans coming up etc. I may have completely made up science with that theory but it made sense to me.

Unfortunately, I also think a lot of people with autism do have bad experiences growing up whether it is just finding the world confusing and overwhelming or experiencing things like bullying. These negative experiences shapes our brains and leads to these patterns of rumination. This could be another reason.

Negative experiences stay with us whoever we are I think, especially if we aren’t very confident. I know that looping thing and it’s so persistence

Thanks, I’ve done CBT but it never really clicked with me because of the black and white thinking, it gave me some new ways of trying to think which was good because I’d try anything if it’s a positive step in the right direction but CBT only works as well as you do with it so there’s a lot of homework and self discipline needed. 

Thank you Bunny