Dealing with fear
I experience fear and anxiety everyday. I feel a sense of dread, of impending doom. It's as if I've committed a crime and judgement is looming. I try to ignore the sensation. Some days are better than others. But the feeling persists. I don't shirk away from it. But a brief respite is most welcomed. I've tried NLP and it's helped, meditation as well. I've accepted the fact that the feeling will most likely never leave me entirely. Over time it's strength has lessened, perhaps through my understanding of the Aspie's neural network and self inquiry. Well, I've said enough. Does anyone here have a similar experience?
Yep, every day.
But by now now it's mostly background noise (um, I'm old).
The "impending doom" feeling is one part of it, and specific fears are another. But they're related.
The best remedy I know of for fear is pushing through.
I've found that if/when I can force myself to go on regardless (easier said than done) once I'm in the moment it's usually not as bad as I expected. The anticipation is worse than the experience.
So pushing through is less awful than worrying about it. More productive too.
And if I can keep doing it, that specific fear slowly fades away.
That's how I got over my (severe) public speaking phobia.
My job required it, I did it for years (fear and all, vomiting beforehand) and now it doesn't bother me any more.
You can endure the sh***y thing, or endure the sh***y thing plus the fear.
Set the fear aside and keep going. It probably won't be as bad as you expected, and it'll get easier with practice.
And doing the hard the hard thing in spite of your fears is a respite from the general doom feelings.
In my experience, the doom feelings stem in large part from feeling helpless, powerless. Not in control.
Pushing through specific fears helps with that, because they feed it.
Choose to do hard things, endure them, and succeed. Then the helpless, powerless feelings will lessen.
Fear is a feeling-- it's not objective reality. Don't let it control you. Accept that you feel it, set it aside, and do what you want to anyway.
Yes, setting your fear aside is hard. Yes, it takes practice. No, it never completely goes away.
From your post, sounds like you've already made good progress.
Keep pushing, keep moving forward. You'll be happier for it, in the long run.
My two cents, YMMV
CockneyRebel
Veteran
Joined: 17 Jul 2004
Age: 51
Gender: Male
Posts: 121,187
Location: In my own little country
auntblabby
Veteran
Joined: 12 Feb 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 115,227
Location: the island of defective toy santas
Oh my yes I feel like that constantly and then trying to coach myself out of it I start to feel like I'm shirking some kind of responsibility I have to be ever-vigilant about anything that could possibly go wrong or anything that I may have done that could be considered less-than-optimal... I was brought up under extreme judgementalness and abuse. Sometimes I think it's my parents still lurking around in my subconscious causing me to lose my personal sovereignty. There are times, though, that I believe the whole aspect of autism that involves vortexes of consuming attention apply to vortexes of emotional terror and it's not just the ghosts of my abusive past, it could be just the whole feeling that fear gives me that starts to feed on itself and almost exponentially I end up ramping up to maximum fears keeping me up at night or causing my heart to pound and my vision to blur during the day. I only get calm when I can identify that I am actually ramping up unnecessarily. I value energy and hate wasting it so I apply how much I hate wasting my energy toward these stress vortices and have been able to back that stuff down pretty effectively. I ask myself - "couldn't I find a way to stop feeling guilty about having a little fun today" because dammit I feel so guilty when I just go out and have a good time. Just buying a restaurant meal OMG I feel guilty. Like I shouldn't be doing that with my money, I should be saving it and even one restaurant meal a month is too much! AAAK. Oh the levels of shame I manifest internally for no frikkin reason - I finally got better at stopping them before they ramp up to a level that sometimes incapacitates me. There is so much to be watchful about - no human could possibly consider everything at all times but it seems like my internal task-master wants to pressure me like that. I need to see everything before it gets me, I need to prepare for everything, and I'd better evaluate things from every perspective if possible to make sure I have not done something wrong depending on how you look at it. Oh dear I hate that thought process so I try to identify it early and I have this "Glenda the good witch" in my head who smiles at me and waves her little wand and tells me I can LET IT GO. That works, however cheesy it may sound but if that's what it takes to break the cycle of self-abuse, that's what I will do.
