When you find out you are autistic…
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The Alphabet of Autism: A is for…Anxiety (and Some Tips to Help It)
This article is the first in a series of autism-related explorations, following the alphabet. What better topic to start than…anxiety?
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“I am not anxious,” I said. I said that for a very long time, because I was annoyed at my emotions. Why would I need to be held back by fears that don’t make sense? I can do better than that. I can be free from that. I can very well see that there is nothing to be worried about, so c’mon, let’s just do this thing.
Not only was I annoyed at my emotions holding me back, but I also had some frustration about the popularization of words like “anxiety”, “depression”, “trauma”, and so on. I do think that these words are often overused nowadays to indicate what are just regular life occurrences. Sometimes they are…just the right word, though. Constant dread is not a regular state for a human being, and “anxiety” happens to be the name for it.
So having established that I was not anxious, and having a very strong willpower, I just went on and did “the thing” — I actually did a lot of things, and I felt like crap the whole time. My body/brain was dreading so many things that I wanted to do. So I just ignored the body. Why? Was there another way?
