Back in 2008
When the company I was working for moved to another state, they offered to let me work from home. That seemed like a dream come true, so I set up a desk and computer, and settled in to have blessed alone time while getting things done.
Or that was the plan.
What I didn’t fully appreciate is that my supposed dream come true was a recipe for high anxiety.
(By the way, this is a story that took place a few years before I figured out I’m that Autistic.)
I was looking forward to not having the pressure of eyes on me, of people seeing when I was showing up, or walking behind me and looking over my shoulder, but it also meant that I had even less info about how people were perceiving me, and what they were thinking about me.
And my anxious mind made up all sorts of explanations about what a particular chat comment meant, or why someone took a certain length of time to get back to me, or what they were saying about me in the office, or if my boss would call at an unexpected time, or what he was thinking about me, or if they could tell how much, or little, work I was getting done (since I was heading towards burnout).
And I had no way to conclusively disprove any of those worries. No amount of reassurance made any impact on me, because I explained it all away as just them being polite or following social scripts.
No amount of reassurance made any impact on me, because I explained it all away as just them being polite or following social scripts.
Plus, because of the compact layout of my tiny house, the only space for the desk was in the living room, which meant being visible from basically everywhere in the house, which meant that my roommate could see me anytime she opened the door to her bedroom.
Which I began to dread with a stomach-clenching intensity.
Fortunately, she worked full-time, so I got a few hours a day of blessed release, but every time I heard her car pull up, I ran for my bedroom before she could make it inside, and I shut down.
When she was home, I would hide in my room, and avoid any possible interaction. Then I felt trapped in my room until I was positive she was asleep, late at night, or until she left again the next day.
I tried to time it so that I would get food before she got home, but there were many times I didn’t, and I went hungry rather than risk passing her in the kitchen.
This might’ve made sense if I were avoiding someone toxic, but she wasn’t. We had been best friends for years and I was incredibly comfortable with her. (We’re still best friends. Fortunately, she didn’t take my avoidance badly, and it didn’t damage our relationship.)
But my point is, that this wasn’t about logic. This was anxiety.
As the anxiety got worse, it got harder and harder to leave the house.
Every little thing freaked me out more and more.
The genuine sensory stuff and social stuff that really did bother me, felt worse and worse.
And every time I came home, as I rounded the corner to my block, my eyes would dart to where my roommate parked in front of our house, and if her car was there, my stomach would clench.
“Overreacting”
Some people said I was overreacting. Or blowing things out of proportion. Or making up fears. Or that it was all in my head. I don’t agree with any of that. Even now, even after things are so much different in my life and I’ve worked through my anxieties.
I think those are oversimplified labels that other people who don’t understand what it’s like use to let themselves off the hook for taking the time and energy to understand, and maybe even have empathy.
Because these anxieties didn’t come from nowhere. They didn’t come from an overactive imagination inventing ludicrous scenarios.
Because these anxieties didn’t come from nowhere.
I actually have been judged and scrutinized and misinterpreted and misperceived and been misunderstood and hurt, both by people that I knew well and by random strangers that I encountered in public, more times than I can possibly count.
And it makes sense that my brain would find a way to try to prevent me from getting hurt again. And anxiety is a very effective tool for preventing me from doing things that, in the past, have gotten me hurt.
And my natural instinct to think my way out of something, to explain it away logically, didn’t work. Because the explanations that I came up with, the things that I thought that people were thinking about me, were entirely possible, and were in fact true sometimes.
And my anxiety about going into public spaces that were bright and noisy and crowded…well, they really were bright and noisy and crowded, and that hurt. (I didn’t know about sensory sensitivities at the time. I just knew I didn’t like it, or that I got migraines.)
How am I supposed to “just get over” the migraine that I got every time I went to the grocery store?
No, the things that people suggested generally didn’t help much. Even my therapist’s “take a few deep breaths,” pissed me off, because it seemed to imply that I didn’t have real problems that needed real solutions.
Getting worse and getting better
You’re probably expecting a lovely turnaround to this story, but I don’t want to paint too rosy of a picture.
Things actually got worse for several years before they started getting better. I went through the worst burnout of my life, then figured out some stuff that helped a little, and then went through another burnout.
And that’s when I finally got to the point that enough was enough, and I was more afraid of things staying the same than of things changing.
It still took several years of trial-and-error and slogging to get a handle on anxiety, and burnout, and to unmask, and to deconstruct my life and create a life I genuinely love. But I did it.
As I was going through it, I wasn’t thinking about it as ‘trying to deal with anxiety.’ I was thinking about it as just trying to get through one day at a time. Trying to figure out something, anything, that would feel a tiny bit less awful.
Eventually, as I found things that did work to get the anxiety to subside, and applied them more intentionally, and more often, it became a bit easier to do more of the things that helped, and that made it a bit easier to do even more of the things that helped me make the life I want.
It was still hard. But it did actually work.
Though, honestly, my life before was hard, too. But this hard was leading to something better.
My life now is nothing like it was in 2008.
I work from home, again, and now I love it.
I stay home when I want to, without guilt or shame, and go out when I want to, and have strategies for dealing with the sensory stuff.
I don’t care much about what people think of things that don’t matter. And I’m a lot better at being able to tell what matters and what doesn’t.
And I’m a whole lot better at dealing with anxiety when it does come up, so that it’s not very intense at all anymore, and doesn’t last very long.
Some help
It took a long time for me to get to this point, but I’m absolutely convinced that it wouldn’t have taken nearly as long, if I had had someone to show me what would actually work.
For my AuDHD brain.
And my highly sensitive nervous system.
And my particular flavor of awkward social interactions and misunderstandings.
For when it’s being perceived that I hated, and not just being scrutinized.
For my history of rejection sensitivity.
For my uncomfortable combination of people-pleasing and demand avoidance.
I’d love to share what I’ve learned with you. The shortcut.
This is why I made the course, Anxiety Reduction for Autistics.
It’s a short, four week course that distills the principles into a manageable framework and specific strategies that you can use in your own life, with your particular flavors of anxieties.
I’m not claiming that your anxiety is going to go away in the four weeks of this course. That’s not realistic. And I wouldn’t trust anyone who would claim that BS.
But I do genuinely believe that this framework, and these techniques, will be an instrumental part of dealing with anxiety… both the background, every-day anxiety, and when something particularly spikes it.
If you find even some of what’s in this course helpful for you, and use it, even intermittently, it can make a big difference over time, in your ability to do the little and big things you need (and want) to do every day, to be around people, and to build the autism-positive life that you really want.
In case you’re interested, you can go to my website to learn more about it, at www.autismchrysalis.com/anxiety.
Either way, I hope you find something that helps you deal with anxiety. So you can do the things that you want to do in your life.
Wishing you a neurowonderful day.
