Stress Vs Anxiety!

I was diagnosed at 18 with depression/anxiety and was prescribed a ssri that had no effect whatsoever on how I felt.

Roll on 30+ years at a routine medication review I'm asked whether anyone has pointed out that I maybe on the spectrum as apparently I exhibit several traits.

I suppose when you feel as if you don't fit into the environment you find yourself it maybe a little stressful.

Anxiety for me is feeling nervous/unsure/jittery but stress (chronic) is more physical, stiffness/pain/confusion etc.

That might just be me.

Here's the problem. If you tell a medical professional that you have severe anxiety and not stress, they won't help you properly. This is a MASSIVE problem with being Autistic. Those SSRI's can be deadly for some, luckily for you, it sounds as if they didn't have forward consequence. 

There are medical definitions for Anxiety and Stress and they are very different. These cannot have fluid meanings ("what it means to me"), when the wrong diagnostic can create fatal consequences :( 

What a thing "means to me" is a Neurotypical expression, and usually exchanged in such a way that a medical practitioner will recognise and understand the code. Autistics do not use vocal language the same, which is why we tend to rely on clarity and proper definition. 

For clarity, Anxiety is the chronic outcome, Stress is different. Being nervous can be a stress response which everyone experiences, such as with public speaking, and confused or unsure to the point of making a bad decision or not being able to understand how to function/operate are neither. Xx

 I've never really thought of myself as suffering from anxiety. I feel the in the minds of GPs depression and anxiety come as a matching pair.

A psychologist said that I may also have Alexithymia which could effect my ability to "feel" or adequately describe happiness. This should also impact my depression diagnosis.

I've also been told that CBT or CBTi has limited benefit with ASD folk.

Empathy sometimes can feel as an all or nothing experience. Mostly I'm pretty flat with the odd bit of frustration thrown in. Then I encounter something extremely positive and I feel like bursting into tears.

Ain't life just grand 

In Fact, I would recommend the cognition an Autistic acquire to modify how I Respond to others, Behave in public, (which apparently includes the words I choose and use) start with learning a bit of physics, Logic and Inductive reasoning, immersive art, philosophy and psychology.

Learning to identify what is happening and how it is impacting me AND the choices I can make in my response, is the type of "CBT" We need. x

I have Alexithymia. It greatly affects how we're able to attach a word to a feeling. But we do have feelings, and often a riddle of them, if not often more complex once we hijack our own time to sit with them. It is this difficulty putting a word to what is being internally experienced which is now being noticed as one of the contributing factors to the Double Empathy Problem

Another issue potentially contributing to Alexithymia, is that we are not motivated the same as our Typical peers. What drives our response or instigates an action for Autistics can be very different than for someone who is motivated by social dominance. because of this, if we express an emotion, a non-autistic might identify the intent behind it according to their bias, if this makes sense.

So many of us grow up misunderstanding our emotions from a triad impact: Mis-identification from those driven by social hierarchal structures, a Difficulty accessing the correct word to assign to the feeling, and sense-perceiving too much all at once to compartmentalise individual feelings.

If CBT were designed for us, it would work. But it's designed according to what motivates the "Freudian" Neurotic now known as NeuroTypical. 

I have Alexithymia. It greatly affects how we're able to attach a word to a feeling. But we do have feelings, and often a riddle of them, if not often more complex once we hijack our own time to sit with them. It is this difficulty putting a word to what is being internally experienced which is now being noticed as one of the contributing factors to the Double Empathy Problem

Another issue potentially contributing to Alexithymia, is that we are not motivated the same as our Typical peers. What drives our response or instigates an action for Autistics can be very different than for someone who is motivated by social dominance. because of this, if we express an emotion, a non-autistic might identify the intent behind it according to their bias, if this makes sense.

So many of us grow up misunderstanding our emotions from a triad impact: Mis-identification from those driven by social hierarchal structures, a Difficulty accessing the correct word to assign to the feeling, and sense-perceiving too much all at once to compartmentalise individual feelings.

If CBT were designed for us, it would work. But it's designed according to what motivates the "Freudian" Neurotic now known as NeuroTypical. 

Empathy sometimes can feel as an all or nothing experience. Mostly I'm pretty flat with the odd bit of frustration thrown in. Then I encounter something extremely positive and I feel like bursting into tears.

Ain't life just grand 

In Fact, I would recommend the cognition an Autistic acquire to modify how I Respond to others, Behave in public, (which apparently includes the words I choose and use) start with learning a bit of physics, Logic and Inductive reasoning, immersive art, philosophy and psychology.

Learning to identify what is happening and how it is impacting me AND the choices I can make in my response, is the type of "CBT" We need. x