Published on 12, July, 2020
My therapist said that I should spend time in the autistic community to get a better sense of myself as an autistic person so I can work out what is anxiety and what is autism (so I know what to bother trying to fix). I find this very hard because it's a spectrum so therefore we are all different. So how are any of us supposed to be able to define what is our autism and what's not? How are we supposed to be able to draw a metaphorical box around which bits we shouldn't waste time trying to fix? Not sure what I'm asking, but any thoughts would be appreciated.
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.).