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.
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).