Trying to find my place in the spectrum

Just to note, all the new medical evidence supporting the difference in biology with Autism and ADHD is due to the new trends of examining gut-health. If you'd like to send your therapist medical evidence supporting this specific area & difference with biological-Anxiety, I'd be happy to provide links. But they can also do the work they're supposed to and look this stuff up. They should have better access to medical papers. Some of which only came out 4-5 years ago. 

On a side note, therapy in the UK is not properly regulated. There is no governing body holding people accountable or making sure they understand the new breakthroughs in medical /neurological science. 

Thank you for your replies. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to reply to you each individually, but my responses would get repetitive if I did that so I'm just going to write this and hopefully that's OK.

All of your responses seem to back up what I was thinking about how complicated the link between autism and anxiety is, and how you can't really expect to just neatly separate them and treat them individually. 

I guess I'm sad because I thought my therapist understood autism and so I feel disappointed now. Part of me worries that we are all wrong, and the therapist is right, and I'm therefore I'm avoiding helping myself. But I try to imagine what it would be like to just ignore my autism and go ahead and restart doing things I've cut out of my life (for example driving, I stopped because it made me anxious) and it just feels like I'd be going back over old ground and getting the same result, which seems really foolish.

I am going to look more deeply at my triggers as you have suggested and try to manage my anxiety whilst respecting my autism. 

I guess the therapist's suggestion was helpful, but just didn't end up supporting her theory

Thank you

Impossible to answer. We are all so different. Many, like myself may have ADHD as well as autism or maybe something else and many will have anxiety/depression. I cannot work out what is ADHD and what is autism derived and what is caused by anxiety/depression myself. I am not sure that it would be possible.

I would be surprised if your therapist understands autism totally. I suggest you find a therapist who specialises in working with neurodivergent people.

Would also add that trying to separate the depression from the autism is probably a mistake. The way that you experience the world is probably contributing to the depression  

Definitely would look for someone who gets it a little better.

I’m not sure if I understand your post properly, but I can give some example. We like predictability and routine. So if we have to deal with unpredictable- it causes us stress/fear of what we will have to face in the situation. So here for example I’m sitting at work and working on invoices in the system - that’s predictable and repetitive. Suddenly a customer comes with their invoices. - here anxiety turns on, because I don’t know what they wanna ask about. I have to speak to s stranger, make some eye contact, answer some questions, but I have no idea what the questions will be. Maybe something that I don’t know and can’t answer. So the customer gonna think I’m unprofessional. So here I would say anxiety is caused by autistic trait + external situation, that an autistic person has to deal with. Im not sure if that helps. I figured out with the help of this forum and other resources, that customer service jobs are the most stressful for me and should be avoided (in my case).

Yellow tree 118 said:

For example many scientists have thought that autistic people are too inhibited I.e. they don’t have enough gaba the chemical which makes us relaxed and talkative. However there is no definitive evidence to back up this claim.

GABA is not responsible for making one talkative. But it is responsible for giving messages to out of control brain waves to settle down or aiding sleep. When researchers refer to Inhibition or Inhibitors, this is an internal system responsible for the gut, connected to immune system, responsible for pruning during development and limiting, resisting, and supporting filtering in the Salience Network. Now, how that becomes animated in the context of one's personality and being will be different for everyone. But Inhibition is an internal mechanism like a little police squad in your biology. 

In short, due to design, all the research is supporting that Autistics are vulnerable to far more stress-induced-anxiety than others. 

There is a great deal of medical evidence on this AND it also appears to be an evolutionary advantage in the right setting, the right time in history. However, in this modern western world we live in, and depending how you spend your days and who with, one can be pushed beyond the ability to cope due to the non-Autistic an non-ADHD biological ability to desensitise. 

Anxiety is Fight/Flight response. And while NT individuals might experience imaginary social driven anxiety, Autistics will have trouble filtering out and can experience sensory overload or sensory assault daily.

How one can fix this is complex, but I'd start by identifying things causing stress. Social stress may be partly due to miscommunication. But if you can take control of your surroundings and make them less irritating, that's a start. 

I'm a bit puzzled by this - it sounds like the therapist doesn't know what autism is?

Autistic people are all individuals, however we do all share certain traits that are different to neurotypical people and some of these traits can cause anxiety.

For example, many autistic people get anxious travelling by bus or train. because of the overload of sensory inputs (smells, people talking on phones, being too close to strangers,the environment being too hot, etc.) But I'm pretty sure there are some neurotypical people who struggle with travelling, because of depression, general anxiety disorder, PTSD, agoraphobia, etc.  And to make it even more complicated, people with autism are more likely to have those mental illnesses too.

Personally, I feel that when I get anxious it's almost always because of autism. Some.examples of this are:

Travelling by bus

Having to try to "multi-task" at work

Worrying about whether I have said the right thing or explained myself properly

Worrying that people will think I'm "strange" because I have different interests than they do

Wondering how to politely decline a social invitation

If you want to tell us what things cause you anxiety, we can give you feedback on whether we are affected the same way.

So I’ll help you answer your questions. Autism is a neurodevelopmental condition in which you perceive the world slightly differently. It appears to be caused by genetics. It is broad in its spectrum and is categorised by differing severities. Autistic individuals are withdrawn socially and follow strict patterns created by their minds which follow rhythmic waves of rigidity and false ideation. It is somewhat common for autistic people to copy others in an attempt to try and fit in socially. Anxiety is a condition in which the sufferer experiences a state of distress or panic towards things which wouldn’t normally bother the average person. For example autsitic people 9 times out of 10 have what we would call social anxiety or social phobia. They have an intense fear of social situations. There could be a number of explanations for this but we simply don’t know yet. For example many scientists have thought that autistic people are too inhibited I.e. they don’t have enough gaba the chemical which makes us relaxed and talkative. However there is no definitive evidence to back up this claim. Autistic people are only more inhibited in social situations only. They are perfectly uninhibited and naturally animated when they are alone or with objects or animals rather than other human beings. This very fact disproves that autistic people are too inhibited. As if this was the case they would surely be similarly quiet and shy even when alone. I am confirming right now that when I am alone I am a normal person by every definition it is only when I am amongst other humans that my behaviour noticeably changes to become more withdrawn etc. I cannot explain this phenomena as it is the very thing that defines autism and makes it so incredibly unique and fascinating. You will not find one person who can explain this. I have looked for years and years scouring scientific papers and not one person can claim they have the explanation for this. It’s anybody’s guess. 

Most of my anxiety comes from having issues as an autistic person trying to do something in the broadly neuro typical world.

I can also create myself some anxiety by worrying about all sorts obsessively (rumination) which is one of my autistic traits.

There's also anxiety from general day to day things, in some cases they might be easier or  worse for me as I'm using an autistic brain to process them. So I'm not sure how you'd ever separate them or know the difference, or need to care.

So in a nutshell I see it that anxiety is a reaction to or a result of something.  Could be an autistic something or could be something not. 

Trick is to see when  you have a bout of anxiety and sort it, by working out what causes it, then doing something to rectify it. That could be many different things depending on what the cause was. From taking time out, to mindfulness, to presence (if it's worrying) , box breathing, 333 or 4321 (see, touch, hear, taste etc.).

Well that sounds like a very helpful suggestion....not! As others have said anxiety is both an autistic and NT trait, we may experience it differently, but how do we know how anyone else experiences things? We only have descriptions that often don't even begin to cover the experience. Honestly it sounds as though your therapist is stuck. Spending more time in "the autistic community" might be a good idea, if you can find one! There are groups out there in fleshy land, but I dont' know if there are any near you or if social anxiety is one of your things? I remember a conversation with my psychologist where he asked why I'd not been to the autistic group meetings held monthly in a nearby town, I told him to remember that one of the reasons I was there was because of social phobia!

I hope you find being here helpful and find some friends and a sense of belonging.

Fiona said:

what is anxiety and what is autism

Anxiety is an autistic trait but not exclusively so - neurotypicals can also be anxious so it isn't a direct cause/effect situation.

I find it much easier to think that autism makes these more pronunced traits - higher sensitivity if you like.

Instead of focusing on what is my autism I just treat it as a factor that affects me in the same way that my fair skin affects my ability to be in the sun, how my height makes it necessary to stoop in very old house door frames and how my hairy chest can get caught in zippers.

All can be managed better once you understand them - for anxiety I found mindfulness and meditation were great tools for bringing these under control.

I wear sunscreen or a long sleeved top in the sun, wear a padded hat when visiting old houses and trim my chest hair now and again to manage the other issues.

With autism come a bunch of traits - identify which of these you have an issue with and there are techniques to help make these less of a nuisance at times.

After all you are still you - the autism is only a label for your traits so I suggest understanding the most prominent ones, manage them and you are still the same you, just with better management skills.

I guess you could try and fix everything and see what works.

I”m right at the beginning of my journey so I’m really not qualified to give too much advice tbh. I am so up and down it’s crazy. Just been to Europe for 5 days with my family and was fine with the city noise. Now I’m back it’s hit me a bit and keep going over stuff, it’s like I don’t realise it affects me until afterwards. 
I struggle to make sense of it all and guess therapy might be the way forward for me.

I hope you find some answers soon and that it works out for you. 

MelonCauliflower said:

what is anxiety and what is autism

If you figure this out let me know. I'm not aware that I ever really feel anxious. I know I feel stress different to my neurotypical colleagues. Maybe I just avoid so much that I have learned over the years that I'm not aware of it.

I don't know if you can 'fix' anxiety, but if you can, would it be worth trying to fix things anyway, then if it doesn't work it's not the anxiety?

I get nervous before giving a presentation even when I have a script prepared. But I wouldn't call it anxiety, because nerves are natural. I don't like answering the phone when it rings, but I don't know if that is anxiety based, because I don't answer the phone, I call or text back if they leave a message.