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Dealing with anxiety

Cinnabar_wing

How do people cope with being anxious?

Sometimes it just gets too much and I crumple. But only on the inside, I'm quite capable of not showing it at all and getting on with life, it's just an extra thing to carry quietly.

Music does help me feel calmer at least for a while.

Anyway, apologies.

  • I think that anxiety issues often come hand in hand with being autistic, but it’s also the case that struggling with anxiety is a common thing for vast swathes of society. It’s certainly been one of my biggest challenges throughout my life. Many times it’s felt so bad that I’ve had suicidal thoughts because it’s felt so unbearable to live with such consistent and debilitating anxiety. 
    So I relate to your situation, and I’m really sorry it’s such a struggle for you too. 
    I think the first helpful step is to try to accept that some anxiety is just a part of being human, and to change our attitude towards our anxiety to one that is less about ‘trying to get rid of anxiety because I hate how it feels’. The more we respond to anxiety with ‘fight or flight’ - the worse it gets. 
    As humans our anxiety response is there to help us, to keep us safe and to enable us to identify threats and respond to them effectively. So anxiety is not our ‘enemy’, and we don’t need to be ‘afraid of anxiety’ itself. If we hate how our anxiety feels, and fight those sensations and run away from them - we are only adding to the anxiety. Essentially we become ‘anxious about anxiety’ - and get caught in a loop that only makes things worse. 
    I’m so tired now as it’s late - but I’ll return to this tomorrow because I have found that there are so many things that can help - that I’m too tired to go into now - I’m virtually falling asleep!