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Anxiety and obsessions

Roguelife

I go through a lot of intense anxiety, as well as depression, and generally I'll be worrying to death about things I know I don't need to worry about it, or which I should put aside for now and deal with later. People have always told me I should be able to do this - choose to worry about something later, or dismiss worries from my mind - but this seems utterly impossible to me. 

Is this part of the obsessive way an autistic mind works? I know I obsess over mundane things too which don't cause me anxiety but which I feel compelled to do, and also I get pleasure from obsessing over certain interests. Do we just have to accept this worry as part of the obsessiveness?

  • in reply to Plastic

    I know the joy and release of discovering a new passion, but I feel like you can’t always find something intentionally, it’s more that I stumble across a new obsession from time to time. The last one was classic “Roguelike” video games (hence my alias), but I can still fall back on classical and guitar music, literature, sci-fi and fantasy, and all the old loves. Sometimes though I’m on a wave of anxiety or a trough of depression and guess I just have to ride it out.

    I’m glad to see others identify with what I’m talking about though, to know it’s not just me.

  • in reply to NAS73935

    It’s interesting what you say about surrendering to the fears and having to admit they’re there. I’ve learned a similar coping strategy of acceptance. The woman I’m dating doesn’t agree with accepting difficulties, only in overcoming them, so I’m glad to be backed up by someone else’s experiences here. She’s a perfectly compassionate person, it’s just that she doesn’t know how fortunate she is. For certain people some issues will simply always be there to a degree, and I agree that surrendering to them is far better than agonising over an impossibly struggle.

  • Hi Roguelife

    Everything you say is very common for us - but you can just look for new and more exciting things to nerd-out over - new hobbies and interests - the other stuff fades when it's replaced with something new and shiny.   

    The old obsessions sometimes pop back up - but that's part of life - it's all in cycles.  Smiley

  • I identify with what you write.  Thank you for articulating it.  In Cbt I was told that Fighting the fear makes it stay longer.  It peaks and passes if you let it. 
    I think I am powerless over certain obsessive thoughts and the first step in dealing with them is to admit I am powerless over them.  This allows me to begin to ‘not fight’ them.  I imagine obsessive things as beasts which are fed by attention; the resistance to them, the ‘fighting them off’ is their food.  If I ‘surrender’ to them and stop trying to get rid of them they die.