Having abnormal high anxiety

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Is it common for autistics to have severe anxiety to the point where anything small that can put you in a panic mode. I know anxiety isn't restricted to just autistic people. I know many people without autism who have anxiety but it doesnt seem to be anywhere close to mine. One example is everday before work some of us from my team of 15 have to read a few points about company news. The team leader randomly picks anybody. I haven't been called on but I go into panic mode just thinking about it. If I was called on, i would not be able to mutter a word without shivering and being jittery. It has happened many times before and it isn't fun.

I have severe anxiety about things. Snow is one of them. I hate it when it snows and the ground is all covered, and I hate walking out in it.

I also get anxious about house fires because I worry about losing all my valuables what I can't replace. When I stay at my mum's place I have to take my teddy bear with me, along with a few other small precious things, because some of the other people in the apartment building are students so different people come and go and I keep worrying that there might be some careless people who will unintentionally burn the building down. We have a smoke detector that is very sensitive and is loud enough to wake anybody up in a deep sleep, plus we're on the ground floor, so my boyfriend is able to escape. But objects aren't able to save themselves and some objects are as valuable as people are to me.

I think it is worse if you have other stresses. It just adds up.

Anxiety is a very common comorbid of autism. We have LOTS of issues fitting in to society & those issues can easily lead to anxiety &/or other issues like depression. My anxiety was very bad at times till I started the med Buspar.

Stress is very common in Aspies. It should almost be our middle name. Unvented stress builds up in the various layers of our brain. It is cumulative in nature. If you let it build up, even small things can cause you to overload. It can lead to panic attacks or a condition called tonic immobility.

Brain research using fMRI shows that the insula is strongly inhibited during shutdown and dissociation, and it confirmed that these traumatized individuals are unable to feel their bodies, to differentiate their emotions, or even to know who they (or another person really are).

One of the things that Bessel van der Kolk showed when he first started to do trauma research with functional MRIs is that when people are in the trauma state, they actually shut down the frontal parts of their brain and particularly the area on the left cortex called Broca's area, which is responsible for speech. When the person is in the traumatic state, those brain regions are literally shut down; they're taken offline.

It is very scary being in a traumatized state in a total shutdown. Unable to move or talk.

So what can be done.

1. Learn to shed stress. You do not even need to focus on the minor area that causes the shutdown. There is a lot of stress stored in your body and you need to reduce it overall. Remember it is cumulative in nature.
2. Learn techniques to prevent panic attacks. There are several techniques that are effective. One is deep breathing. When you are approaching a panic attack, you breathing automatically becomes shallow. That means that you are not exhaling the carbon dioxide in your body properly. That carbon dioxide overload sends a signal to your brain to shut down. If you take very deep breathes, that allows you lungs to function properly and prevent panic shutdowns.

So in the example that you gave. If you are asked to read, begin by taking a few deep breathes and let them out. Next get the company news and read the first point. Take another deep breath and read the next point. Concentrate on one point at a time, not the entire scope. (You might also come prepared. Read the company news prior to the meeting and review it. If you are the one to pick the points to discuss. Make sure you pick it ahead of the meeting.)

I think my fears and anxieties might cause me to die of cancer. I have a fear of anything inserted between my legs, I can't bear it, it doesn't just hurt it feels like my bladder is being sliced apart. So PAP tests are a problem, and it's no good telling me to relax. Colonoscopies are also a fear of mine, not so much the actual thing but the preparation scares me, having to drink stuff that everyone says is disgusting, and being on the toilet sh*****g out water is just horrible.

I am 100% aware that these precedures will save my life, but I am equally as terrified as the precedures than what I am of the diseases. It's a vicious cycle really.

Yes. I feel that I should be named "the most anxious person on the planet." I am constantly overstimulated and overwhelmed. Some days, I have more relief than others, but on other days even tiny things, such as opening my school email or replying to text messages, are anxiety-inducing. Very small things make me so anxious that I can't see straight and feel like I'll combust. Before taking anxiety medication, I was so constantly anxious that I genuinely couldn't do anything, to the extent that at 14 years old, I was a shut-in and couldn't leave the house for three months. My mom tried to get me to leave once during that whole ordeal but I was so agoraphobic and overwhelmed by the sun and the thought of seeing someone I didn't know that day (I remember those things vividly, though they might seem random) that I just sunk under the glovebox of her car and cried (I'm short - 4'11.) I disassociate sometimes. I also go "blank" for up to four hours or so sometimes if everything is too much. Even with medication, my anxiety is what a normal persons would be that would cause them to go in for medication, I think. Without medication, I really couldn't do it.

Also important to note that sensory things get me really worked up, too. If my hair feels greasy, it's a physical feeling that I can't take, and I get extremely worked up and can't handle it. Wow, I'm really making myself sound like a fun person to be around.

There is a role for both medication and therapy for sufferers of anxiety. If your doctor has only offered you medication, you are being shorted. Several therapeutic approaches are mentioned in the earlier posts. Another is exposure therapy, a subtype of cognitive behavioral therapy. The various nonpharmacological approaches can be very effective.

With regard to the workplace performance demand of reading before a group, I recommend talking to both your own supervisor and your team leader about your having extreme anxiety about that task. Make it sound like it's very specific to group or public speaking tasks, even if they are from a script. Anxiety disorders are very common. It would be cruel to make a person with fear of heights walk on a high beam or a person who is claustrophobic to crawl into a very tight space. So you should be accommodated with this task, and it should be done privately and quietly. No one in the office needs to know why you never get called on. And you don't need to tell the employer about any other psychiatric issues you have.