Autism related generalized anxiety disorder

Post Reply New Topic

I also.suffer from.anxiety. I take medication for it. If it gets bad I will.take a lavender.oil capsule and that seems to help.

I have been in the past afraid of shootings.

when I was on my externship for school there was mass shooting that killed.some of my coworkers. It was very difficult. I was afraid for awhile after.that of losing people that way. I realized that this is what the people who do these things want. They want people to be paralyzed by fear..I decided not to let those.kind of people control my life. That.isn't to say I don't find shootings and other violence upsetting. Just im not going to stop doing things that make me happy because of them.

I believed my parents wanted to kill me by the time I was age 5 and had perpetual nightmares. I think it was trauma based due to constant punishment from the time I was an infant, and my autism did not allow me to understand why the sudden and painful attacks until I was around age 8. I remember lots of punishments, and only one time can I remember what it was for. So trauma may induce anxiety, having autism may predispose us to having anxiety. I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety (GAD) and was suicidal by age 8. I didn't get diagnosis of my autism until my late 60's but suddenly I understood how come the rest of my life had been such a mess. What a relief to get that self understanding. My anxiety has greatly decreased ( I am 71) and I have not been seriously suicidal for years, although sometimes I go through times of being depressed. The two most common co morbid diagnoses for autistic people are anxiety and depression. I believe we are more prone to these because our neurology hides self understanding and understanding of others' motivations and intent from so many of us.

I'm so sorry about this. Wow.

Is it your GP? I'm sure you aren't saying the wrong thing. Maybe they aren't qualified to diagnose mental health conditions. The diagnoses I listed were all from Psychiatrists (medical doctors), or else my PhD ASD Clinical Psychologist. They did formal questionnaire screening assessments, rather than letting me just report my feelings.

My GP will prescribe mental health meds for me but I usually go elsewhere to get assessed first, like my ADHD assessment which was 20 hours. My GP was given authority to supervise my meds after the diagnosis was given by a Neuropsychiatrist. She'll refill SSRI if I want them, because I was diagnosed by so many other specialists in the past.

My social anxiety has come from being targeted when I was younger (which I understand isn't as traumatic as a shooting, I'm sorry you went through that).

But when I was at high school, and beyond into adulthood, I was often targeted. I never wore make-up or even girly clothes yet I often somehow attracted attention from boys before I was mature enough to handle it, and most of the time I didn't know the boys, and they didn't target me because I was beautiful, because I wasn't, so the only other two possibilities were because I looked vulnerable or because they were making fun of me.
And with girls I was targeted even worse (not sexually of course). They'd do random things just to get my attention, because I was as weak and pathetic as I looked. I started to become less targeted by girls as I got older.

This even happened after school life, when I was in my late teens and early 20s. I could list a whole load of unprovoked mishaps and misadventures I've had in public with strangers, that it's a big wonder I never got raped or kidnapped, with the way people saw me. But I was targeted more by women, and was treated like my feelings weren't valid. I have a hard time asserting myself and I'm not the sort to cause a scene, so I'm not sure if they wanted me to cause a scene or what. But it's not very nice feeling like you're pushed around by strangers and always feeling like you're in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It's like I have a red target symbol thing painted on my forehead and people go "oh, pick on her, she doesn't have any feelings, she's not valid, she shouldn't even be part of our society, look how dumb and pathetic she looks". Then I picture my stupid face and I want to slap it.

And people wonder why I have such low self-esteem. Nobody is born with low self-esteem.

I don't know, they've fobbed me off all my life, I've never got diagnosed with anything, except autism, ironically. Maybe I seem a lot more efficient and together than I feel.

I can relate to this, in my 20s I lost count of the times men would come up to me and say 'you're so ugly' or something similar, and run back to their friends laughing. Always when I was alone/lost/unhappy/at night. It was so threatening because I didn't know what would happen next. Would they get more aggressive and attack me? I knew better than to respond and make it worse. I tried to just hurry away and look invisible. It never happened when I was feeling happy and confident.

I find that with women they seem to feel threatened by me so it's like they have to challenge me to test me or prove their superiority or something. I generally just stare at them in confusion so eventually they give up. But it happens every time I go into a new situation.

As I keep saying though, humans are predators. They will pick on who they think is weak.

I used to have social anxiety I think, but it morphed into avoidant personality disorder. I don't experience anxiety during social situations anymore, so much as I'm just very on guard around others. It's second nature at this point.

I also have autism and general anxiety disorder and death is one of my biggest fears. I'm not currently on any meds, though.

I have PTSD from a lockdown when I was in high school and a classmate got shot, and didn't make it. So yeah I do worry about that, it is a big reason why I couldn't get through college, being in a classroom was just too stressful. But yeah due to that PTSD when I hear about mass shootings and stuff it bothers me and I do tend to be a little nervous going to big stores and places...so I usually observe where the exits are just in case, But it does suck thinking about that so much since it makes me anxious.

I don't have as much issue with just being outside though, I guess at least outside I could maybe have more room to get out of the area if there was an active shooter, more so than like if I was in a store where one came into. Hence why I look at where all the exits are when I go into stores.

Did you ever get access to trauma therapy for that experience, Sweetleaf?
It's so utterly horrible I can't imagine.
I know schools usually offer crisis counsellors afterward.