Anxiety. and coping

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Havacat, I developed an anxiety disorder last year mainly due to an insane trainwreck of a work situation, which is how I wound up with my diagnosis of mild Asperger's. Few things I learned I think might help.

Firstly, do you suffer at all from Alexithymia (however you spell it - the condition where it's difficult for Aspies to identify and deal with emotions acurately)? This was a major part of my problem. Because I couldn't identify, order and deal with my emotions, my body was just throwing anxiety and physical symptoms like shortness of breath at me. My brain couldn't tell me exactly what was wrong, but it had to tell me somehow that I needed to get out of the situation I was in.

I had to untangle exactly what was causing the reaction and what I was actually feeling (angry at coworkers for not pulling their weight, overwhelmed by workload, stressed by lack of structure in my work day and lack of a clear job description, etc) so that I could deal with the problems individually. It may seem like you don't have a specific stressor, but it may be that you're scared of not living up to NT expectations or stressed by social interactions (both true in my case). Talk to a good psychologist to help you unravel your stressors.

Until I addressed the root causes, the only thing that helped with the anxiety was medication. I would also withdraw at times and hug myself and go for walks and drives, but those would burn off the anxiety, not stop it developing. Exercise and drawing helped my overall state of mind. At the end of the day the best way to recharge my batteries was to play computer games that were interesting but only required simple mouse-clicking (try Diablo 1 and 2 and titan quest) or dragging and dropping (playing doll dress-up games on the internet, and yes before you ask, yes, I am 30 years old. Sue me, it's relaxing ).

Good luck. There is light at the end of the tunnel, so don't get discouraged.