Causes of my anxiety / NT vs AS decision-making ?

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By advance sorry for the wall of text and the complex stuff. (This post is the one I did not manage to write.) I completely understand it if you don't have the desire, time or ability to be my therapist But if you can relate or somehow help I will be grateful.

I am trying to understand the cause of the anxiety problems that have been plaguing me for years, in order to solve them. I am gradually learning to better take care of myself (through relaxation, meditation, sport, being more assertive, and globally being more respectful to myself) and that is good, but I still find that much of it is a waste of time and energy. I mean, it is good that I learn how to relieve my anxiety, but the energy and attention I focus on it would be better used for other things. I don't want to spend my whole life getting anxious and then having to relax because I'm anxious. I want to do something about the underlying causes.

I have only been diagnosed with AS for one month. but I have always be aware that I was an anxious and worrying person and trying to fix it. Diagnosis simply changed my perspective on the matter. But there was a time where anxiety was something I had to face occasionally. More often than many people, sure, but still, most of the time I could just focus on what I liked. Now it is like anxiety is my "default" state ; sometimes it jumps up to anxiety attacks, sometimes it lowers a bit, but it is always back to a "moderately anxious" level. It makes me worse at everything (work, personal pursuits, relationships, etc.) and I want to end that.

I believe that I have finally identified the source of my anxiety as the unpredictable parameters the influence of other people introduce in my decision taking process. It is very vague and I am not happy of that way of describing it, so I will try to describe this in further detail.

I believe that at the time when I was not so anxious, I felt that I had some personal control on my life. I had an idea of my abilities, my position and the various decisions I could take and courses of actions I could choose. Whatever the issue, big or small, I could consider the various options and engage in the course of action that just felt the best. It was sometimes very difficult to choose and I did not only take good decisions, but they were just my decisions. I think I could do that because I didn't take much other people's behaviour in my decisions, it was therefore quite easy for me to anticipate the result.

To take some specific examples, at a time I had to choose what I wanted to do for a job, among a few plausible options. (I know I am lucky to just be able to choose ) It was a difficult decision because I discovered the job for which I had trained was in fact terminally boring, and the other alternatives I could consider were things I didn't know well, full of uncertainty. It took me some time to choose and I was a bit depressed, but not really anxious, and after a time I just made a decision and I did not regret it.

At another moment I had to move and ended up having to choose among a few possible places to stay, some smaller but closer to the people I know, some better and cheaper but far away. I considered the two options and again took a decision. In that case the decision had something to do with other people (living close to them or not) but I only ever thought of it as my decision based on my personal preferences, what they could think about it was completely irrelevant (at the time I had not the slightest idea that they even might think anything about that.)


Now I know I have Asperger, and I have learnt that other people do indeed think some things about my actions even if I don't usually realize it, and it makes me very anxious because I can't integrate their reactions into my decision-making process. Currently the issues mostly happen with my family and my girlfriend, although it is sometimes an issue at work too. I have lost any ability to project myself into the future and therefore feel that I can't take any decision.

For example for next summer holidays my girlfriend would like to spend some time with her grandparents and her father. My parents would be happy to spend some time with us too. And my own idea of perfectly good holidays would probably involve travelling, either alone, with my girlfriend or with a friend. However there is no way we could have the time and funds to do everything, and besides that all options have their merits and drawbacks. If it was just my decision I could take it easily, but now it depends on myself, my girlfriend, her father, my parents, and her grandparents. I don't even know which realistic options are really possible, I don't know how anyone will react to any decision or proposition, I don't know how any decision could influence my further relationships with any of those parties (and their own relationship between one another, that could be degraded, which they could later blame me for if I didn't choose "well"). This just looks like a mess, I don't know what to do, I am more or less letting things go and letting other people take decisions but I feel anxious about that and I am quite sure I won't spend pleasant holidays.

On a longer perspective, I am currently not living with my girlfriend but it is planned that I go back to our common home city after summer and we live together. (We have been together for 4 years, we have been living together in the past and that caused some issues, but we are currently living in different cities for work and study reasons.) It makes me absolutely scared. I don't know what life will look like, I am completely unable to make that future mine and I don't know what to do. That was what made me write a few months ago that I don't know if I can live with someone.


All that make me very concerned and sad because as much as I can't imagine living in constant anxiety and without being able to make any plan for the future, I can't imagine either living without my girlfriend (or the other people I care for). She is a wonderful people, I love her and I am very grateful to her for some things she did for me. It looks like most of my anxiety comes from being forced by circumstances to use a NT style of decision making that I can't really master. But since I can't really ask them to put up with my aspie decision making style which is probably as toxic and anxiety-generating to them as theirs is to me.

I don't know much what to do. Thank you for reading. I am afraid it is not the clearest post I have written, feel free to ask for clarification if needed. And any advice or opinion is of course welcome