Anxiety

Feeling unable to breathe in a crowded place? Panicked by sudden changes? Having difficulty making new friends? These all point to one thing: Anxiety

What is Anxiety?

Anxiety is an unpleasant feeling of distress or worry. It may be about what is happening or might happen in the future. It is perfectly normal to feel a little anxiety at some point in your life. However, if allowed to grow out of control, then anxiety will make your mind feel paralysed leaving you trapped in your own thoughts. It may become physical through panic attacks or vomiting.

What causes Anxiety?

Anxiety is part of our human instincts that we have had since we were cavemen that protected us from threats such as wild animal attacks. Now we are more evolved, what threatens us has now changed. The threats that cause our anxiety today are: new changes in our lives, failure, interacting with others and sensory emotional overload. Before you can deal with these threats, you have to understand what your triggers are.

Understanding your Triggers

The key to managing Anxiety is understanding what triggers it. Triggers are negative reactions such anger, fear, frustration, sadness, tiredness or hunger which are how we react towards what is threatening us and this causes us to experience emotions that autistic people struggle to understand. If you can understand what is triggering you, you can work out what strategies will work to help you manage your anxiety.

How do you manage Anxiety?

Anxiety can be managed by first working out which threat is causing your anxiety and then trying the different strategies that are given to you below based on each cause of anxiety.

What are Changes?

Changes are alterations to our daily rituals and routines. When they happen, we may feel anxious and automatically consider the harm the changes may cause, a reaction from our fear of the unknown.

How do you manage Anxiety of Changes?

In short, here are 3 different strategies for you to try: Learn from what Worked in the Past, Make the situation More Familiar OR Reward yourself for Dealing with the Change. These strategies are all explained in further detail under the tabs above.

What is Failure?

Failure is when we don’t succeed at something we expected to succeed at. When this happens, most people deal with it rather badly. At best, this is expressed by beating ourselves up (where we tell ourselves how bad we are for failing) but at worst, we will avoid trying things just so we won’t fail at them which can lead to us missing out on the great opportunities that can further develop us as people.

How do you manage Anxiety of Failure?

In short, here are 3 different strategies for you to try: Be Kind to Yourself, Find Victory in Defeat OR Look at the Worst Case scenario. These strategies are all explained in further detail under the tabs above.

What is Interaction?

Interaction is basically where we talk to and be around other people. Interaction for autistic people has always been difficult especially with people we don’t know as we never know what to say and do to start up an interaction.

How do you manage Anxiety of Interaction?

In short, here are 3 different strategies for you to try: Plan It Out, What to Talk About OR Find a Social Group. These strategies are all explained in further detail under the tabs above.

What is Emotional Anxiety?

Emotional Anxiety is where people are overwhelmed by the amount of information they have to take-in, either through thinking or their 5 senses. For autistic people, we have difficulty connecting with our emotions and this combined with the information that we have to take-in our day to day lives causes us to feel great distress, we could feel angry, sad or afraid but not be able to understand why we feel that way.

How does Emotional Anxiety affect people with autism?

The emotional distress autistic people will be in from Emotional Anxiety will lead them to burnout which is where people become emotionally and physically exhausted from their distress. Burnout is what will happen to them but it is how they deal with it that is the real issue. Autistic people will typically deal with burnout through either having a “Meltdown” or a “Breakdown”.

What are Meltdowns and Breakdowns?

Meltdowns and Breakdowns come from our natural Fight or Flight instincts which we have had since caveman times. Meltdowns are an autistic person’s Fight instinct in which they will become angry or frustrated which can get physical at times. Breakdowns are an autistic person’s Flight instinct where they choose to withdraw away from the situation they are in and hide until the danger passes. These happen because they don’t know how to say they are not okay and need help.

How do you manage Emotional Anxiety?

In short, here are 3 different strategies for you to try: Focus Yourself, Distract Yourself, For Outsiders. These strategies are all explained in further detail under the tabs above.

GENERAL

All photos on ANXIETY page are taken from Pixabay OR Unsplash except for the ones stated below:

CHANGES

The photo used for 'Identify the reason(s) for the cause' was taken by SlowPhoton, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons. The photo used for 'Consider how to use that in the current situation' was taken by Michael Ball, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.

FAILURE

The photo used for 'Accept Defeat and Move on’ belongs to me.