Aspergers, OCD, general anxiety and phobias.

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@Rocket123 i'm glad i'm not the only one that worries a lot, i'd guess it's another trait that we aspies tend to suffer with.

@kurando777 thanks for sharing some good advice

It (obsessive worry) has plagued me since I was young. In fact, one of my treasured objects as a child was a Worry Bird.

I wrote a long reply to this and the captcha ate my post.

Well, yes. But it got better, then worse again, and now it’s the worst it’s ever been.
I didn’t see this before, and when I did I wrote a long post in reply and the captcha ate it.
When I was small, I was at a friend’s house, playing outside, and a friend of hers was across the street. We went across the street together so I could meet her friend. We were all standing in the driveway talking, me and my friend and my friend’s friend and the four parents (not my parents because home was five blocks away and they didn’t know I was visiting someone else) and everything seemed fine.

But then a pair of Doberman Pinschers came running through the garage, bit me on the butt and ran back to the back yard. It hurt a little, and scared me a lot. I started not liking dogs around that time, and it increased to not liking the smell of them, their barking, their jumping up on people, and most of all their sniffing of people’s crotches.

I still dislike those things about dogs.

But most of all I hate the way NTHubby acts around dogs. So lovey, so excitable, so who’s a good doggie, who’s my new best friend, oh huggy petting kissy bellyrubs what a good doggie! He’s practically making out with the stinky noisy icky things, even though he knows I don’t like them and would prefer to keep them away from me. The more he teases me about it, the more I hate them, and the more I hate the way he acts around them. Even service dogs on duty--you’re supposed to ask if you can even pet them, and generally people say no he’s on duty. And even if the service dog is okay to pet, you’re supposed to respect their actual function as a service dog--not mess them around so they act like stupid drooling untrained puppies. But they turn into stupid drooling untrained puppies around him, because he treats them like puppies learning to play fetch instead of well-trained service dogs. And he’s a good trainer of dogs, when that’s what he wants to do. But instead he does this stupid oh what a loveable kissable smooch doggie woggie bit more and more-- sometimes I think he does it on purpose to tweak me.

Any way he tells people I’m afraid of dogs, instead of that I don’t like them and hate the way poorly behaved ones act around me with the jumping and barking and crotch-sniffing. He doesn’t even tell them that I’m allergic to them, which is technically true. It’s a mild allergy; I’m more sensitive to trees and cats and horses than to dogs. But I like trees and cats and horses, so I don’t avoid them like I do dogs. But he’s said it so many times, it’s basically become true. They startle me more than they used to, I jump out of my skin when they bark, and if it’s at all possible I walk as far away or around as possible when I meet them on the street. Like the Pharisee walking around the injured man in the Parable of the Good Samaritan. It’s more like a phobia than a dislike now. Eight years ago I worked in a place where the boss had two dogs, and the dogs were in and out of my work area all the time, and I was only bothered by it if they pooped where I step. Now, I can hardly stand to be in the same room as a dog.

As for crowds, jangling keys, and shrill laughter . . . I don’t remember anything bad happening to me in a crowd, other than momentarily losing track of the people I was with. But that’s hardly traumatizing.

The jangly key phobia started around the time when NThubby started his position as custodian of our church. He now wears a big jangly key ring on a belt loop a lot of the time. Sad to say, I have developed a fear of NThubby due to my inability to please him, and my inability to understand why what I did was wrong enough to displease him when he’s displeased.

The shrill laughter I’m pretty sure is a result of being the center of a circle of MeanGirls teasing and taunting and bullying me on a semi-regular basis while attending middle school. I generally know that when I hear shrill laughter these days, it isn’t about me. But there’s always a sub-conscious part of me that thinks it is.


Above is a reproduction of it, though I know it differs in detail and wording from the way I had it originally.