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Constant stress about everything

hypercolius

Hi,

I'm 22, and recently diagnosed with ASD. 

I recently found out that my grandmother has stage 4 pancreatic cancer. I'm extremely stressed out about this, and don't know what to do. 

It took me 8 years of near constant suffering, but I've finally found a young woman who likes me, and we're starting a relationship. She is overwhelmingly positive and sweet, but I periodically get extremely stressed about this. This largely subsided after she reacted very positively to my Valentine's day message and congratulated me with it, but I still get disturbing thoughts when she doesn't immediately respond (most recently, a thought that she blocked me. Obviously turned out incorrect, but that's what I felt). I'm supposed to be going out with her on Saturday, and extremely anxious. 

On top of that, I'm finding it difficult in university. I was recently bullied out of a society because of two people who had fabricated a report against me. After theirs was thrown out and my report triggered an investigation when I provided sufficient evidence that they fabricated their report, I lost 16 friends from that society. 

Yesterday, someone who did not contribute to my experiment at all (literally doing 0% of it and distracting everyone the first time) began saying I did everything incorrectly and demanding explanations, which caused me to shut down and freeze. My friend, who had previously angrily said 'He was ill' when I asked him what he was doing by not contributing, also angrily addressed me and asked me to explain it to him, who was saying things like 'OK, I'll assume that was a yes' (although she apologised later). 

Finally, I'm having problems in my accommodation. A spoilt, entitled person living with us has taken a habit of blaming absolutely everything that goes wrong in the kitchen on me. He has, for example, claimed that I broke our oven and microwave (despite being absent both times) and went whining to the property management when I said those who did not use the bins should not take them out, causing the property management to threaten everyone with fines. 

Finding it very stressful and difficult at times. 

Parents

  • First of all, I am sorry to hear that you are finding things stressful and difficult at the moment (it is important that you both realised that and found a way to say so to someone).  In addition to continuing talking with us here on the forum; I would really encourage you to also talk with someone confidentially about it in the real World too.  If it feels to awkward to speak with a friend or relative - maybe someone who feels more neutral might be of help.  Many Universities have a Pastoral Care Team or a professional Student Guidance Councillor.  Otherwise, it can be a good idea just to check in with your GP so that you are not carrying burdens in isolation in the real World - as they can also impact our physical and mental health or wellbeing too.

    Of the five main areas of stress you described, I want to highlight the news about your Grandmother's health as being in its own spacial category - of compassion to self being required (with everything else of concern slightly put to the side in a different category of - tackle later).  i feel the one topic of looking after yourself as you adjust to your Grandmother's news eclipses the capacity to reasonably portion too much energy towards the other topics, so they will need to wait for another time.  You do not need to tackle how you feel about your Grandmother's situation on your own.  There are neutral, confidential, knowledgeable people available to contact via the Macmillan Support Line.  If telephone conversations are not your comfortable method of communication, there is also a "chat to us" service and you can email them too.  You don't need to worry about what or how you feel, or whether yiu know enough to make sense talking with them - they will understand where you are coming from and realise that can change over time too.  If you phone their support line the call will be free from UK personal landlines or UK mobiles (their line opens at 8 am.

    My first thought, when reading your post, was that each of those five areas happening in your life would stress a caring and conscientious human being.  What I am acknowledging is: that you are trying to manage lots of stressful things all at the same time because they matter greatly to you.  Where I reflect upon my own experience and share the learning is the observation: that we as people cannot always juggle lots of competing stressors well for very long.  If you can, concentrate on the one super important one for now.  My suggestion is how you feel about your Grandmother.  Conserve your energy for that journey of understanding and life experience.

    That knowledge and understanding doesn't make how you experience those things feel any less stressful for you as a person.  When people get really stressed about something it can have a ripple-out effect (a bit like those record-breaking attempts when someone has stood up loads of dominoes close together and then knocks one over onto a neighbouring one and then a pattern of knocked over runs of dominoes starts to become visible). 

    What I have experienced; is that my Autism means I can have a greater tendency than some other people to start trying to deal with all the different stressful strands I am experiencing all at once.  In overdrive.  Until I don't just get tired but risk totally run out of energy.  Now, when I start to detect that situation gathering, I try to stop, pause, prioritise, identify what is helping and what is unhelpful.

    The good people in you life will probably realise something is stressing you, they may not be able to work out quite why, but they may not be confident how best to help you at this time (even though they want to).  If you can think of something they could do to help you - gently let them know.  When I am really stressed I don't always look as stressed as I am to others.  I have had to learn to say things like: it might not be obvious, but I am really stressed about something important, please could we just do something a bit quieter today?

    There is loads more I could say, but when we are really stressed we don't always find it as easy to take in lots of new things in one go. 

    For now, I am encouraging you to concentrate on just three things:

    1) be kind to yourself,

    2) explore the one very stressful thing - about your Grandmother's news, and 

    3) also talk with a human in the real World too.

Reply

  • First of all, I am sorry to hear that you are finding things stressful and difficult at the moment (it is important that you both realised that and found a way to say so to someone).  In addition to continuing talking with us here on the forum; I would really encourage you to also talk with someone confidentially about it in the real World too.  If it feels to awkward to speak with a friend or relative - maybe someone who feels more neutral might be of help.  Many Universities have a Pastoral Care Team or a professional Student Guidance Councillor.  Otherwise, it can be a good idea just to check in with your GP so that you are not carrying burdens in isolation in the real World - as they can also impact our physical and mental health or wellbeing too.

    Of the five main areas of stress you described, I want to highlight the news about your Grandmother's health as being in its own spacial category - of compassion to self being required (with everything else of concern slightly put to the side in a different category of - tackle later).  i feel the one topic of looking after yourself as you adjust to your Grandmother's news eclipses the capacity to reasonably portion too much energy towards the other topics, so they will need to wait for another time.  You do not need to tackle how you feel about your Grandmother's situation on your own.  There are neutral, confidential, knowledgeable people available to contact via the Macmillan Support Line.  If telephone conversations are not your comfortable method of communication, there is also a "chat to us" service and you can email them too.  You don't need to worry about what or how you feel, or whether yiu know enough to make sense talking with them - they will understand where you are coming from and realise that can change over time too.  If you phone their support line the call will be free from UK personal landlines or UK mobiles (their line opens at 8 am.

    My first thought, when reading your post, was that each of those five areas happening in your life would stress a caring and conscientious human being.  What I am acknowledging is: that you are trying to manage lots of stressful things all at the same time because they matter greatly to you.  Where I reflect upon my own experience and share the learning is the observation: that we as people cannot always juggle lots of competing stressors well for very long.  If you can, concentrate on the one super important one for now.  My suggestion is how you feel about your Grandmother.  Conserve your energy for that journey of understanding and life experience.

    That knowledge and understanding doesn't make how you experience those things feel any less stressful for you as a person.  When people get really stressed about something it can have a ripple-out effect (a bit like those record-breaking attempts when someone has stood up loads of dominoes close together and then knocks one over onto a neighbouring one and then a pattern of knocked over runs of dominoes starts to become visible). 

    What I have experienced; is that my Autism means I can have a greater tendency than some other people to start trying to deal with all the different stressful strands I am experiencing all at once.  In overdrive.  Until I don't just get tired but risk totally run out of energy.  Now, when I start to detect that situation gathering, I try to stop, pause, prioritise, identify what is helping and what is unhelpful.

    The good people in you life will probably realise something is stressing you, they may not be able to work out quite why, but they may not be confident how best to help you at this time (even though they want to).  If you can think of something they could do to help you - gently let them know.  When I am really stressed I don't always look as stressed as I am to others.  I have had to learn to say things like: it might not be obvious, but I am really stressed about something important, please could we just do something a bit quieter today?

    There is loads more I could say, but when we are really stressed we don't always find it as easy to take in lots of new things in one go. 

    For now, I am encouraging you to concentrate on just three things:

    1) be kind to yourself,

    2) explore the one very stressful thing - about your Grandmother's news, and 

    3) also talk with a human in the real World too.

Children
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