Need help with anxiety

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Guys, thank you for your support, but don't feed the trolls. I'm not upset, it's all so beside the point. I am really thankful for your advice.

In the words of autistic actor Paddy Considine:

"If I listened to every Motherf***er that told me I couldn't do something with my life, I'd be hanging from a tree."

https://www.digitalspy.com/showbiz/a853 ... ourneyman/

I love Paddy Considine.

So let's do fun and useful stuff, and when we run into trouble we help each other. That simple.

I would say, try meditation. Even if you give few minutes every day it's very helpful.

Sorry if I don’t feel bad for a 40 year old complaining about school.

There was a TV show once where somebody with stage fright was told to pretend everybody in the audience is in their underwear.

That seemed to cure the stage fright.

I have similar anxiety. What I do is say to myself, “screw it. I have the knowledge. If the others don’t appreciate what I say, it’s tough luck on them.”

You're a very articulate person in writing. I would say practice in front of a mirror. Maybe tape yourself talking. See how your words project. Breathe in between saying major phrases (but don't make it look like you're breathing).

Make sure you know the material you are talking about. I have often fumbled when I didn't totally know the material--only had a vague idea about it.

And....the old joke about "How do I get to Carnegie Hall?"--the answer: Practice, Practice, Practice.

When you are under great stress, your anxiety builds up which can lead to a panic attack. In a panic attack, your breathing becomes very shallow. Your body no longer releases the carbon dioxide stored very deep in your lungs. That signals your brain and your body automatically begins a shutdown response. Your heart rate increases.

So one way to get back your control is to breath deeply. You need to take deep breathes and exhale. Fill up your lungs with oxygen. That can give you back just enough control to decrease your anxiety level, preventing a meltdown.

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There is another tool that you might try using. It is fairly off the wall. You might try wearing a pair of silver mirror finish glasses. This is the kind that motorcycle cops sometimes wear. I use to wear a pair when I was in college 50 years ago. It doesn't need to be full sunglasses. It is like looking through a one way mirror.

It seems like NTs are always misinterpreting Aspies intentions. They look us in the eyes and imagine our thoughts, so maybe by wearing mirror sunglasses we deprive them of this tool of assessing our intentions and our vulnerabilities. So maybe this has a therapeutic value for Aspies.

Psychologist Paul Ekman, an authority on facial expressions, says that of the 23 facial expressions relating to human emotion, about one-third involve the eyes. Shades may slightly obscure your view of the world, but they also hide the world's view of how you are feeling.

Not being able to see a person's eyes greatly reduces our ability to infer his or her emotions. For example, telling a fake smile from a real one can be difficult, but if the smiler is wearing shades then detecting the sham smile is almost impossible. In a real smile, a muscle called the orbicularis oculi is activated, creating a hard-to-fake crinkling around the eyes. The eyes truly are the windows to the soul.

The sunglasses might force them to listen to your words and not just look at things on your face to get your meaning.

Also you might want to accessorize. There are many unique looks that blend in quite well with reflective mirrored shades. Such as WWII Bomber Jacket look, Surfer look, Flight Jacket look, Motorcycle Jacket look, Archeologist look, Mountain Climber look, Arctic Explorer look, and Western look to name a few. So that you would not look to conspicuous.

Individuals under stress will sometimes experience a disassociation of body and mind. They become spacey, off in their own world. One of the techniques discussed in somatic experiencing is called grounding. It is a way of anchoring the body to the mind so that one can sense areas of the body that retain stress, which will then open the door for sensing and neutralizing the source of the stress and trauma. This first step is called grounding.

According to Peter Levine, shut–down and dissociated people are not “in their bodies.” Being, as we have seen, nearly unable to make real here-and-now contact no matter how hard they try. It is only when they can first engage their arousal systems (enough to begin to pull them up, out of immobility and dissociation), and then discharge that activation, that it becomes physiologically possible to make contact and receive support. The brain area associated with awareness of bodily states and emotions is called the right anterior insula and is located in the frontal part of the limbic (emotional) brain, squeezed in directly under the prefrontal cortex – the locus of our most refined consciousness. 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).