Anxiety

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Anyone else get anxiety that just appears without any reason? I've been
trying to make sense of it. Recently from what I can recall, it happens
during times of thinking. Not thinking about anything specifically or a
fear about something related to the thought, but more my head gets full
of so many different thoughts that there's too many jumping back and
forth between them all, possibly the speed of all of it too.

Similar things happen to me. I may be reading a book, or watching something, and a thought or a series of thoughts will enter my head, usually based upon what I'm reading or watching.

It may be that the neural diversity that results in Aspergers (including heightened sensory sensitivity) also results in mental processing that heightens anxieties.

Just as some use face touching, finger rubbing, or other tactile stimulation to reduce the anxieties of sensory overload, one may use a mental check list as a sort of "threat assessment" to reduce anxiety. If one intentionally reviews a current situation and finds no actual threat, it can help to establish a mental certainty that reduces the room anxiety has to grow.

When my mind spins up unless I stop and write these down immediately I get a little anxiety. It is like a computer buffer that get full and is about to overflow. It needs to be moved and empties or bad things can happen. So I generally carry a small notepad and pen with me wherever I go.

Generally when this happens I am in a disassociated state, similar to daydreaming. My mind has drifted off on solving some problem and I put my body on autopilot.

[By the way, this is a great gift! Just train yourself to write it down.]

I agree with previous posters - the anxiety seems to come from being overwhelmed by so many thoughts, but being unable to hold on to any one of them for long enough to resolve it. And I second jimmy m's advice, writing or recording a fleeting thought makes it much easier to properly grasp one and wrangle it the ground - it stops me from "losing my place" in a train of thought so much, or at least means that I can return to it later when my mind is calmer.

Thanks for the replies and advice from jimmy m. I'd say I already
do that partly, when it comes to writing up posts or sending emails
to others. I'm writing this from the TextEdit app on my laptop right
now. I find it a little more helpful doing it here than spending a
lot of time spending being idle on the post page here. The only problem
I find myself with it is after getting so much written, I end up
questioning myself... Is this what I wanted to say? Does it make sense
to both myself and anyone else who might read it? As I type something
out, there's something I want to say, but I won't recall a specific
word and spend a while trying to recall it.

One thing I've found that helps with anxiety here from time to time
is just listening to music, using my headphones to block anything else
possible out. Especially with songs that aren't too fast, as sounds
from outside generally distracts me, I'm able to focus on the song
I'm hearing and I feel my head slowing down to the tempo. Although
I end up playing the song over and over or switch back and forth between
two or three different ones.

It's funny also, I was just looking at the Joined for everyone who
replied and myself, it saying I joined in 2007 and I think this is my
first post here (aside from 2 replies elsewhere I did within the
same time). Both writing this and looking at the replies drives it.
I selected the option to have it email me when there were replies and
without even opening the email helped start driving my anxiety this
morning.

Yes, I can struggle with that a lot, too. It's not unusual for a paragraph or two to take me well over an hour to compose, then edit over and over again, then scratch my head some more about whether I got the tone right. After all that, it's not unusual that I have last moment doubts and trash it without posting.

If I do post it, and there's the slightest thing that I think might be controversial, or a bit of joking that might not be understood, I'll worry like crazy until there's been a couple of replies from names I trust, so that I know my fears were unfounded. Knowing that it has been very rare that I overstepped the mark, and that the consequences have never been too bad when I have, doesn't really make much difference - I still quite often have to take breaks from the forum when the anxiety gets out of hand.

It's less of a problem for my "anxiety note-pad" because I know that I'll be the only person who will ever read it.

Thanks Trogluddite, nice to be able to talk with someone who understands what I'm saying there. Although I find
communicating online a bit easier than in person, like online chat, I've been using IRC since the late 90s, I guess
forums/email/etc more anxiety driven as it seems more formal than chat. More room for errors here than there, more permanent, having more time than in chat to think. I wouldn't say I really fear the response from others but spending
all this time to think and write it out and ending up deleting it all and having wasted all that time and thinking for
nothing.

There's much more I feel I could say but just sitting here with a blank but overactive mind. I think I shall make myself
stop here and see if I get anything more out of this.