Why Do You Feel/Have Anxiety?

[BlueSky Aozora]

Unpredictiabilty seems to be a common denominator.

Yeah. People are so complex and unpredictable. So hard to process.

 

[BlueSky Aozora]

I think it's ymmv. My anxiety is limited to certain contexts (triggers). Outside of that, I don't feel much anxiety. I think many Aspies are fairly calm and live with little anxiety. Inevitably, it scales up with one's environment.

I thought aspies usually have anxiety. Are you an Aspie? I was wrong! But it's good that you don't have much anxiety. So environment plays a big role too.. What kind of environment will be helpful?

 

[BlueSky Aozora]

Im honerd Oh its true my life is as it is BUT compared to so many with mien and other diagnosis its nothing and make my story look like a princess story in comparison

I can imagine a story book with your profile picture, titled "Dear Princess Sarah S" or something

 

[Aru]

It must be hard for you. Are you feeling much better compared to your childhood days? Hope so..

It's difficult when it happens randomly. If we know the triggers, we can avoid it... but if we can change the trigger to not be the trigger anymore, that'll be better.. but is it possible?

Unfortunately my anxiety issues won't get better as it's been there my whole life and hasn't come up over time, and trust me i've tried my whole life with getting help and eventually health teams agreed not to take it any further as i'm a special case etc and is built into who i am as a person

 

[asperagus]

I thought aspies usually have anxiety. Are you an Aspie? I was wrong! But it's good that you don't have much anxiety. So environment plays a big role too.. What kind of environment will be helpful?

I'm a self-diagnosed Aspie. I get anxious when listening to medical stuff and when encountering confrontation. Outside of that, my anxiety is minimal. An environment where the anxiety triggers are minimized are ideal.

 

[Jojo_LB]

I've had severe anxiety for probably all my life. I can't even remember my first anxiety attack, but my mother told me it happened when I was 1 1/2 years old.

I do remember some of my anxiety attacks from the ages of 3-4 and up. They were caused by sensory overload, losing objects I was extremely attached to, and existential stuff (When I was 5, I started questioning the meaning of life.).

It's so hard to pinpoint the several things that make me anxious 'cause it seems like literally everything does.

I like your processing analogies.

 

[Gracey]

I got a little lost in your computer speak, but I do like the analogy

If you wrote lines of code and created a programme for a computer, those lines of code can be changed and the changes to the programme are immediate, instant.

The brain has to recycle/repurpose(?) organic matter to form new pathways (lines of code) to join with other pathways in order to create a new habit (programme)

It doesn't happen instantly, as you can imagine.

Now create a programme but omit one line of code in every hundred.

Is your programme still as efficient, functional and doing everything you'd like it to do?
Or do you have to work around the missing lines of code?


If it's missing, it's missing. Not much one can do to insert it.
But perhaps it's possible to work around it?


As for pinpointing specifics, ie, processing.
I believe there can be far too many variables in ones life history, memories, learned behaviours, defence mechanisms, experiences, genetics, knowledge to date, beliefs, perspectives and so on to be able to state a specific.

There are far better brains out there than my own who may be able to though

 

[Nervous Rex]

5. Hypervigilence and not being able to ever truly relax - a constant background unease. Hyper-aware and on the lookout. I'm always tense around people, feel more relaxed when alone.

This one is very interesting to me. For me, hypervigilance is due to knowing that it's the only way to navigate social interactions - watch everything, analyze everything, try to keep up. Social situations don't give me anxiety, but they are exhausting. When I described what I have to do to negotiate social situations to a counselor, he said, "No wonder you're tired all the time."

 

[Nervous Rex]

Anxiety's one of the co-morbids that comes with Autism; plain and simple.

Some estimates are that 80% of all autistics suffer from anxiety.

For me, all my anxiety is "performance-based". Am I getting enough done at work? At home? On my personal projects? If I don't feel like I got enough done or accomplished a sufficient number of things, then I feel anxiety when I try to go to sleep that night.

Also, future tasks that have unknowns in them are a source of anxiety - like if I don't have the whole problem solved and the whole plan laid out in my head, I get anxious about how I'm going to do it. So often, I have to give myself "pep talks" - "Just start", "Just do the part you know how to do, and trust that the rest of the problem will unravel later", etc.

 

[Progster]

This one is very interesting to me. For me, hypervigilance is due to knowing that it's the only way to navigate social interactions - watch everything, analyze everything, try to keep up. Social situations don't give me anxiety, but they are exhausting. When I described what I have to do to negotiate social situations to a counselor, he said, "No wonder you're tired all the time."

Yes, I think that hypervigilance makes me tired and wears me down rather than giving me anxiety directly. I think the anxiety in social situations comes from their unpredictable nature, a dislike of being put on the spot and a feeling of being out of my depth and social anxiety. It's often hard to pinpoint where the anxiety is coming from exactly.

 

[Nervous Rex]

The anxiety issue in general is something I've tried to take apart, analyze, and understand. This is as far as I've gotten:

Start with some broad, sweeping generalizations:
* Anxiety is very common among autistics.
* Autistics also seem to beat themselves up over past mistakes, social blunders, etc. I get this impression from viewing myself and from a lot of posts on this forum. We seem to tend to be perfectionists, and seem unwilling or unable to accept flaws.

Overall, it seems like things that cause negative reinforcement act much more strongly in autistics. Fear of doing something wrong becomes paralyzing. Regret over mistakes persists long after the physical or social consequences of the mistakes. Others seem to brush it off as part of being human, but I see a lot of people on this forum that take it to extremes - myself included. It affects self confidence, as I often only see my flaws.

What I am curious to know is what is the root cause. I can think of two possibilities:

1) It's in the hardware. It's neurological. The process behind negative reinforcement is magnified and far outweighs positive reinforcement. For this to be true, there would need to be different chemical processes for negative and positive reinforcement. One scrap of evidence pointing to this is the existence of dopamine, seratonin and other pleasure/reward chemicals that could help with positive reinforcements at the neurological level. Perhaps there are corresponding chemicals for negative reinforcement. Perhaps the autistic brain has too much negative chemicals or not enough positive chemicals. Perhaps it just receives, reacts to, or responds to the negative more than the positive. Perhaps the positive receptors are blocked or dampened. The science is beyond me so I can only speculate, but I would love to see it studied by real scientists, neurologists, psychologists, psychiatrists, etc. If it's neurological, the only treatment would probably be chemical.

2) It's in the software. It's learned. We've had enough negative experiences and negative responses from NTs that we just learned to be paranoid about getting things right. If this is the case, we should not see any anxiety in very young autistics.

I really want to see this studied.

 

[HidinginPlainSight]

2) It's in the software. It's learned. We've had enough negative experiences and negative responses from NTs that we just learned to be paranoid about getting things right. If this is the case, we should not see any anxiety in very young autistics.

I tend to believe it's this based on nothing but anecdotal evidence. Mainly because the anxiety is usually triggered by something unpleasant in our pasts, even if the relation is not direct. I've had countless unpleasant interactions with people from the time when I was very young. Not just among peers, but with authorities (teachers and such) and relatives as well.

Some of these particularly bad experiences stand out and if I have the ability to block even more unpleasant ones out I would certainly be the last to know. Many of them happened in formative years and are nearly impossible to erase.

Just to use myself as an example: When I was in the second grade (7 years old), I went to get rain boots. The pair that I liked were purple and I liked how they had two white lines at the bottom as opposed to the generic reddish brown soles. There were no gender distinctions between the boots and if there were I certainly didn't notice. Anyways, short story short, all the boys had black boots with reddish brown soles (yes, all of them). Mine were identified as, "girl boots" and I was teased mercilessly for it, and I mean past the point of what may seem reasonable even for 7 year olds. I'm sure some thought they would never see anything funnier in their entire existences; and perhaps they never did. As much as I would like to say this doesn't bother me to this day, it likely adds to anxiety when deciding upon what to buy in terms of clothes. I got a tremendous amount of anxiety over picking the safest brand name as a teenager and clothing stores are still a source of anxiety.

That is just one very strong possibility for a link. The social situations in which talking to other people has led to anxiety would take volumes too thick for most bookshelves.

 

[the_tortoise]

Oh, I thought everybody on the spectrum has constant background anxiety.. Are you on the spectrum? If so, how wrong I am.. but that's a good news too. I wish everybody could be rid of anxiety.. or reduced to a healthy dose.

Yes, I have been diagnosed with autism.

I experience a lot of anxiety but it's related to trauma and things that go wrong in present-day circumstaces -- it's not a constant thing unless something is very wrong in my life.

 

[shysnail]

I often feel like the world is not designed for autistic people, and that's where the anxiety comes in. It's a result of always having to fight against who we are just to get by. That sounds pretty dramatic, I'm sorry But yeah, I would say the unpredictability of life, the way that social situations are so front and central it's impossible to avoid them and still function, and the pure sensory overload of this loud, messy world also creates a lot of anxiety, I think.

 

[tlc]

Agree with most of what's been posted. If I had to deal with people 24/7, I'd have anxiety 24/7. I think the main reason is that people are unpredictable. Thankfully I live in a sparse area away from others so I don't. I feel for those who have to deal with people 24/7.

 

[Pinkie B]

Hi, i would like to ask a stupid question..

Why people on the spectrum, especially aspies, always have anxiety? 24/7 anxiety?

I'm not sure whether this analogy is suitable or not..

Is it like, MS-DOS (people on the spectrum) having trouble/burn-out because it's expected to perform like, for example Windows 10 (NT people)?

Of course managing to do everything with command prompt stuffs like in linux (?) is awesome. The disadvantage is it lacks the 'social skill' that a graphic user interface has.

Also, seems like people on the spectrum needs line-by-line guidance, like how a programmer must tell the computer how to do something by writing every single line.. Or else it cannot perform.

Or like it needs to be fed with lots of data then it can do machine learning. Similar to how people on the spectrum learns by mimicking, but having trouble in new situations. And difference is, computer will always accept the data, while a human might refuse to learn..

Anyway, is it the 'processing' that makes you have anxiety?

Is there any time where you don't feel anxiety at all? When?

I love your analogy! I have always described my brain has having a massive processor, but RAM measured in MB! And I like how you extend it to GUI/terminal interface. For me, I code everything from how to accomplish tasks to how to remember facts and, like a terminal, if you do the same task repeatedly, you will always be faster than someone trying to use a GUI because there are no images to load and you don't have to waste time lining up the mouse pointer. But if you deviate just a little bit from the plan, it's all bets off. Not that you can't still enter and execute the command, but you have to reinput the whole thing and possibly change to a different variable, which can take an enormous amount of time for just a tiny bit of flexibility. That's EXACTLY how my brain works!

That said, I don't think this is where my anxiety comes from. Maybe a little bit, it does. I know if I blue-screen my brain that I will have to do a hard reset so I try not to overheat it like that. But is that where the anxiety comes from? Sometimes I'm just anxious because I don't know what to expect and that kicks me into overdrive trying to predict contingencies. That's probably because I can't trust myself to react instinctively in a new situation. Sometimes I'm anxious because I know I need certain things to be functional and I know it's beyond my control to guarantee that I have them and I simply dread the readjusting period.

 

[Pinkie B]

I believe the majority of my anxiety is caused by a fear of people I care about suddenly feeling differently about me and being less kind or no longer associating with me, all of which is, I believe, caused by the fact that I don't understand the majority of people's behavior and reactions and so it all seems quite random and sudden.

Another portion of anxiety is fear of people, mostly strangers, randomly deciding to hurt me in some way.

Unpredictiabilty seems to be a common denominator.

You hit it on right here (IMHOP -- pronounced imhop). When I really stop to think about it, I can't get kick the fear that if people who are important in my life learn about the "real me" that they will abandon me.

And, scientifically, randomness is shown to cause considerable stress and anxiety. There was this famous experiment (actually, I don't know how famous it is outside of people who study this stuff) where two rats were put in a cage and shocked randomly. One rat could push a lever to turn off the shock and the other couldn't, but they were both wired together so they both got the same shocks. The one who could turn it off only experienced a little discomfort while the other rat got wigged the wig out.

It turns out that randomness is ok if you can do something about it, but for so many of us we simply cannot understand why people react the way they do, so everything feels like a blindside. If you could learn to recognize and manage it would reduce the anxiety, but most of us will never be able to.

I think that's why being with someone I trust calms me so much. If my role model isn't reacting, then I don't have to react and if I follow their lead they at least I can navigate with fewer surprises.

 

[Pinkie B]

Some estimates are that 80% of all autistics suffer from anxiety.

For me, all my anxiety is "performance-based". Am I getting enough done at work? At home? On my personal projects? If I don't feel like I got enough done or accomplished a sufficient number of things, then I feel anxiety when I try to go to sleep that night.

Also, future tasks that have unknowns in them are a source of anxiety - like if I don't have the whole problem solved and the whole plan laid out in my head, I get anxious about how I'm going to do it. So often, I have to give myself "pep talks" - "Just start", "Just do the part you know how to do, and trust that the rest of the problem will unravel later", etc.

Yeah. ↑ That.

 

[some/aspies/need/hugs/13]

For me I am not constantly anxious. I have several layers of comfort to insulate me. For example I often hangout with women because they are more likely to understand my need for emotional support. I also ride my bike to anywhere stressful as it makes me feel extra confident and safe. Also I take anxiety meds and when I can I get a massage.

 

[Edward764]

Because of my life experiences, my awareness of these experiences, the bizarre and unlikely nature and number of these experiences, and my reactions to these experiences, I have no human counterpart, and no support group.
I am all alone in the bizarre nature of my existence. I am a support group of one with no company, and I am understood by no one.
I exist in a dreamlike parallel universe, and I am the only entity in this universe.
The result is frequent bouts of anxiety.