High / Low Anxiety?

I’ve been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder. It makes things like driving in unfamiliar places or walking on a crowded city sidewalk almost unbearable. I am medicated for it, which at least makes it much easier to work.

I’d say there’s a lot of overlap for my anxiety and Autism. My social anxiety is pretty high and so I struggle even more than others when faced with complex social dilemmas. Ex. At my workplace we have consumers that can exhibit extreme behaviors, and I seem to never be able to know what to do when someone is having a behavior. My coworkers always seem to effortlessly know what to do and how to handle extreme situations.

profdanger said:

My coworkers always seem to effortlessly know what to do and how to handle extreme situations.

Companies that require you to interact with the public should offer courses on "dealing with difficult customers" that will train you on how to interact.

It it largely scripting so should be fairly easy to learn as an autist and with practice you get more comfortable with using it.

Being able to identify when you are in a situation where you need to use these skills is possibly a bit more tricky but with expereince you learn to spot it.

The start of my career was like this but I kept puting myself in the situations where I would have to deal with this sort of thing until I mastered it - stressful but the fastest way to be able to cope for me.

It is also how I dealt with many other areas that caused me anxiety - I faced them down and proved I could deal with them as I was always taught "the only way out is through" and it worked very well for me. All this was decades before I was diagnosed so I always considered myself to be neurotypical back then.

profdanger said:

My coworkers always seem to effortlessly know what to do and how to handle extreme situations.

Companies that require you to interact with the public should offer courses on "dealing with difficult customers" that will train you on how to interact.

It it largely scripting so should be fairly easy to learn as an autist and with practice you get more comfortable with using it.

Being able to identify when you are in a situation where you need to use these skills is possibly a bit more tricky but with expereince you learn to spot it.

The start of my career was like this but I kept puting myself in the situations where I would have to deal with this sort of thing until I mastered it - stressful but the fastest way to be able to cope for me.

It is also how I dealt with many other areas that caused me anxiety - I faced them down and proved I could deal with them as I was always taught "the only way out is through" and it worked very well for me. All this was decades before I was diagnosed so I always considered myself to be neurotypical back then.

I get what you’re saying. There is potential that I could interact with the tougher consumers more often to build up that muscle.

A little more background: I work as an employment specialist for people with disabilities. So the business I work for has a day program for people with disabilities. When I say extreme behaviors, I mean things like (for example) anger outbursts from dementia.

The good news is that’s not really a core function of my job to deal with behaviors (unless it is one of my clients that I am job coaching), as I am not a direct support professional. I just help them out from time to time when I’m not busy. So “the only way out is through” approach probably would work for me, but it’s ultimately optional for me in order to keep employed.

I also agree that a little more training would help. A lot of the behaviors are unpredictable, but you can see the signs that they are coming usually. The only problem with me getting more training is that we have to squeeze that in with the work I am actually supposed to be doing.