Anxiety and obsessions

It's days like today where I really struggle. My mind just won't move on from this "thing". It makes me feel incredibly frustrated and down. It's not worry so I can't employ my CBT techniques. I don't know how to reach out to anyone to talk about it. I internalise so much stuff. No one has any idea and most people usually think I'm ok and I have no problems.

I'm very much a "oh my god this is it forever". I'm slowly learning to take the perspective that things pass and things change.

I sometimes feel- or is it think? -  ‘no end in sight’ and hopeless but the feeling always passes after its natural life span ends.  It seems dishonest therefore to characterise my ‘life’ or ‘situation’ as represented by moods or outlooks which are fractional in terms of time.  I forget that time does indeed pass and uncomfortable feelings do pass.  I wonder if ASD has as a trait the sensation that any particular ‘now’ is infinite.  That would explain why, when I am suffering even for seconds, it feels like hell.  Instead of ‘ I am certain this shall pass’ I seem to perceive the horrible feeling as ‘This shall never end: that is certain and it is all I know’ and that fact obliterates all hope and all consciousnesses of anything else. 

Same for me 

The biggest problem with being who we are is that we are wired differently to most. Our brains fixate on details, the "Good" and the "Bad", then have great trouble letting go-sometimes you even can't. This can be extremely upsetting, because what is worrying you is beyond your ability to do anything about in some cases. In others, you can help both others and yourself-but it's very hard to work out how. Emotional intelligence and intellectual intelligence are very different things.

What we need are ways to cope and deal with issues that affect us that "neurotypical" people don't have to worry about. For myself, I was most relaxed at university because I knew what I had to do, when I had to do it by and where to find what I needed to let me do so. Of course, there were those annoying people who thought it was funny to cause chaos and "tease" others, even do pranks they thought were funny. But they tended to get weeded out by university authorities because of complaints after a year or two.

I was least relaxed at work in a corner shop because there was NO telling who was going to come in next and what they might do and/or ask for. I never had to deal with physical violence, thankfully, but everything else came along. We were open seven days a week until very late, very small staff, idiots made life miserable... I came very close to having a Nervous Breakdown before I managed to get some help and find a way out.

That started out as Depression, but got much worse as time passed and Anxiety and absolute frustration built up without an end in sight. My outside interests helped, but people like us get ground down very easily in totally unsuitable environments. Yet there was literally no more I could have done to get myself out of the situation.

Suffice to say, I know all about not being able to put things aside and deal with them later. Being unable to let go of what was so upsetting to me nearly tore me down right to the foundations.

My sincere advice? Get some real help and stay in touch, sometimes it will be the only thing which holds you together.

Yes. I still think about things from a few years ago cos still have no idea what was meant. Of course, non AS people ruminate on things but I think by now they would have let this one pass.

Someone flirted with me at work once and it took about 5 years for me to realise. When Ive since recounted the story to others, theyve all pulled a disgusted face. It didn't even register with me at the time that it was a) obvious flirting and b) maybe a bit creepy.

I think intelligence is different to social "intuition" and they're not mutually exclusive.

I do agree with you, and I basically live my life with that kind of philosophy in mind. Where I struggle is accepting my poor track record with relationships. I've been told by the women I've been with that I'm good looking, although I'm sure it's a matter of taste as I'm not conventionally handsome, but still I often go years without being with anyone. I can spend huge amounts of time on my own and be just fine, like many autistic people I expect, but the awkwardness of never really getting to grips with how chatting someone up really works is going to get me left on the shelf at this rate. And to be honest it's becoming a lonely life.

I identify with this. I feel like I'm conspicuously slow thinking, but at the same time I'm intelligent enough to enjoy literature and art and other pursuits I'm sure people who are sharper than me don't seem to care about.

I also wonder,and can kind of see after something which happened today, that my perseveration or anxiety or rumination etc can also stem from trying to work things out which others can do more intuitively. So again, it feeds into uncertainty but I think the root cause could be to do with AS and not fully understanding a situation.

It is exactly what you think it is, we are all so detail orientated as a result of Autism/Aspergers, it's just part of who we are, that we cannot let go of things we see as important. No matter how absurd some may think it. As for obsessions? I could tell you favourite authors stories going over a decade off the top of my head, never stop picking apart a story to find any weaknesses and tend to find odd subjects interesting for no other reason than "Why not?"

That's me, everyone else on here is undoubtedly different in their own way.

But people who are not on the Spectrum often misunderstand that and find us weird or hard to understand. They see us as "other" and hard to understand or care about because we seem to not care about other people as a result-wrong, but how can we easily explain that?

Look at it this way: people may not understand you or your ways, but there is NOTHING wrong with being "different". If that means you are apart from almost anyone you might meet? Then clearly it's up to them to work out why. People on the Spectrum often have plenty to offer, misunderstanding you is a problem for them. If they don't ask? Clearly they don't want to know. An explanation may not be easy, but is always worthwhile.

That's very kind. I'll bear it in mind and maybe drop you a message some time :)

Well, if I am around, I would be willing to listen. 

Thanks Tassimo, I appreciate the advice but it's not always the easiest thing to express all my irrational worries to a friend. I'm a bit embarrassed. And even when I can get over that, most people aren't willing to really listen to something they can't fully understand. Or even if they are then to know I'm not understood kind of takes away from the help I might otherwise get. Sometimes it might be about whether or not you're lucky enough to have a friend with infinite patience and understanding!

I don't know if you are still following this post, Roguelife. But the only way I've found to alleviate the burden of anxiety and obsessive thoughts is to have the compassionate ear and the loving hand of a friend to ease your troubled mind as you walk through the anxiety and see it for what it is: fearful imagination.

You make some good analogies there. Anxiety is rough.

I've recently realised that it's like being in a semi-permanent state of stage fright.

Since my diagnosis, this is how I explain how I feel to people. I remind them of the time that they've had to go up on stage or speak in public and had that nervous feeling and then said "that's how I feel most of the time".

I think I've always been dealing with that feeling while trying to behave normally and not show it.

It's like having committed a murder and being worried about getting caught. For me it means that I worry all the time. If I'm worrying about a specific thing and that happens to be real and resolved, my mind then moves on to a new thing to worry about.

Bills, less time to make something of my life, (in my case) worsening physical health, receding hair... So okay not all catastrophic issues, and I know when I was young I had terrible anxiety and depression, and older adults who told me to buck up because 'when you're older you'll realise how hard life really is' made me feel belittled, so of course kids can have it just as bad. I just meant my load of worries has only increased over time.

Interesting that you went on a buddhist retreat, how was that?

Apologies for the delayed response, I'm going through a terrible time of depression at the moment and often it's all my energy is going on the basics like work and getting food in. 

Yes, I actually found it difficult to put my anxiety onto a scale as such because I felt there were different levels of intensity (techniques for anxiety such as breathing etc made no difference) and also depending on if I knew the source of what caused it. I also realised, during the safety of a buddhist yoga retreat where I decided not to mask, that what I thought was a 0 actuslly wasn't.  It was only at the retreat I discovered what 0 actually felt like.

One thing which helped through CBT was getting out of the habit of trying to find a reason for the anxiety. "It's never usually just one thing".  Another, which was a massive help, was not to see it as good or bad days. If i think "great! Im having a good day!" itll set me up for a fall because it will come back. I see them now as days. If something happens,  then it happens. I know from my own experience of exposure therapy, which has given me my own proof, that anxiety will always eventually go down. These mindsets have helped even me out a lot more but it's taken my own exploration through CBT to learn it myself.

Going back to the numbers, I think for people who have GAD and/or AS the base level from which we are starting is higher. Now, after CBT and further understanding of myself, I feel this base level has reduced somewhat relative to myself. So it can be done if you want to work at it. 

I also think, and this might sound contradictory, that I have a higher threshold than others for putting up with anxiety until I do something about it. I think this links with alexithymia but also masking in that I just carry on with things because I think it's expected of me, or I don't know how I feel till its too late.

Roguelife said:

As a 33 year old I have concerns that younger adults and children don't have, but its not just that

Would you care to tell me more? I may be able to relate to it.

I identify with what you say, and I also struggle with the idea of 'worry time'. When something happens to make me worry I sometimes get a massive spike of dread and anger and all sorts of excessive negative emotions and thoughts. It feels like I will never control this, but I do try, and I use the techniques you've described. I know I wasn't always quite this reactive, there were times in my life when things didn't bother me quite this much. As a 33 year old I have concerns that younger adults and children don't have, but its not just that.

This rating feelings on a scale of 1 - 10 can actually sometimes help me, so long as I think of it like this: if anxiety can be rated for most people at about 1 or 2 or 3 most of the time, and then something happens to make them more nervous or anxious, it will push it up to a 3, 4 or 5, but if someone is living their life at a 5 most of the time, and then something anxiety provoking happens, they will be pushed up to a 7 or higher, close to a panic attack probably. So if I can find some way to bring the normal level of anxiety down it might lower the intensity of my spikes of anxiety.  

I've read this thread with interest. I have wondered for a long time about obsessive thinking about AS and can relate to what you say. I have realised that I can have thoughts on repeat but they are not always necessarily worries. My CBT therapist said it could be to do with uncertainty. However I have identified that some of these repetitive thoughts are not about uncertainty. (One of them, I felt very certain about something and it was very positive but difficutl to stop thinking it).  I wondered if it was OCD but I dont do any behaviours to go with  any of the thoughts.  As another example, I know EVERYONE gets songs stuck in their head but I feel it's excessive with me. My mind is constantly whirring around. If it isn't worry it's repetititve thoughts about something or a song. I cannot switch off.

The whole idea about "worry time" is absolutely ridiculous and I think for a lot of people who have GAD, it is unrealisitc. I think a lot of worries can stem from our emotional rather than rational brain. So to think about things rationally (Oh, I'll worry about that later) is difficult. What does help with me for worry is thinking about Schoedinger's cat. Is it dead or alive? You don't know till you look in the box. Similarly, you don't know the outcome of something until it's happened, so it could go one way or the other. Why should it always be the negative outcome? Easier said than done to think this way!!! But I'm getting there.

My assessment report mentioned about getting stuck on thoughts. I don't know how to become unstuck. Sometimes I don't even know I am stuck on something but it makes me brain hurt haha. I have started doing mindfulness. I'm feeling the benefits already. It's helping me chip away at this.