Do small things stress you out?

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For me things have to be a certain way. I plan things. Today I was planning to go to my room and stepped in dog poo. So I had to stop clean it off with a hose and I huffed/puffed agitated by this. Aggravated mad and so forth. Mom said it's something small get over it I shouldn't get so angry about it but I had to stop what I was doing to do something different such as clean dog poo off my shoe and the ground!! !

Yet some big violence happens and it's OMG! hope it doesn't happen here. The news is depressing! There's always a death/murder/car wreck so on. I always see FB posts of "bad parents" X killer should have been killed and so on. The talk is OMG! a killer! How could that happen!! ! Easy. Everyone is a potential killer and everyone is a potential victim. So the latest tragedy of the day of the state or nation is a blink of an eye vs. having to stop my plan (was going into my bedroom) to stop and clean up dog poo!!

Can anyone relate? Small things stress you out vs. the OMG! catastrophe of the latest killing?

If I stepped in dog poo on my way to my bedroom I'd be pissed, too.

i'd say aw shat! then i'd probably cuss like fred flintstone ["rack 'em brack 'em etc."] while I was hosing off that stuff.

If I'm driving and I see someone tailgating someone else, it really ticks me off and I have a hard time forgetting about it. Most people wouldn't get upset unless someone was tailgating THEM -- and maybe not even then, unless the person actually ran into them. But not me. Ironically, someone DID run into me once, but I didn't get mad because the guy wasn't tailgating and he was very apologetic. Another time, someone vandalized my car, busting out a window. I was annoyed, but not nearly as annoyed as a lot of people would be, and I rarely think about it any more. And yet if someone made a snide comment to me years ago, I'll dredge it up over and over and get angry about it. Strange.

This is really two posts in one.

One is reaction not proportionate to the degree of disturbance or disruption . Most do it and I would think NT's would do it more then us because we are more logical.

The other is a small disruption to routine. Me being at 98th percentile (higher is worse) percentile on the "Shift" portion of the Brief-A executive function test answers that one.

i get stressed out when interruptions happen to the plan I've made. Like yesterday, I had this plan for my morning and then my mom called with something she needed me to do instead and I started stressing out--and then I start re-planning my own schedule to fit around other people, and by the time I've worked myself up about this, I've created about 10 different other plans in my head to deal with a situation that's... much less in real life than it is in my head.

yes. but those "small" things are important to me such as somebody leaving a light on in a room that nobody is using.

Hi zeldapsychology,

I often get stressed out by things that I think are major but that other people tell me they consider to be trivial. Whereas often things that other people think are major, I consider to be small.

What it would have been like for me had I been you today, was that in my mind I would have a plan of what I was going to do when I got to my room. Steps A, B, C, D, E, F, G, etc. but then stepping in the dog poo was "throwing in" a random event.
Suddenly I couldn't do 'step A' & the "whole deck of cards is shuffled".
In that situation what I would do is to clean the dog poo off my shoe, and then go back to where I was when I decided to go to my room. I'd then do again whatever it was I was doing before I had walked to my room; putting out of my mind what had happened the first time. I'd have another attempt at what I had originally planned to do before it had got distrupted.

On a personal level I'd be very confused & upset if I walked to my room & stepped in dog poo coz I don't have a dog.

I get stressed over small things, things what others take for granted and wouldn't get so stressed about, which then makes me sound insane. Makes me feel insane too. Before doing something nice, like a day trip to the zoo or something like that with my family, all these what-ifs come into my head, and they're not just general what-ifs what most people might worry about. They are things what are incredibly insane to worry about, and I daren't list them here because even other Aspies here would go, ''bloody hell, mate - get some help!'' If you pardon the cockney slang.

I don't know if hearing about murders and things are considered the ''big'' things everyone worries about. Yes, they are awful, and are frightening too, but most people worry about things like losing their jobs, not having enough money, loved ones dying, etc etc etc. But not saying depressing stuff on the news never bothers me, because it does. Even now I keep thinking about what happened at the Sandy Hook Elementary school and I just want to cry and cry. It really stresses me out when I start thinking, ''but why didn't that (excuse my language) demented c**t just shoot himself before going into the school, instead of after?'' Then the innocent children and teachers who got unexpectedly shot have families what are most probably still in devastation today. And also the children and teachers who lived are probably traumatized.

Small things do stress me out sometimes, especially if they are unexpected. I tend to get stressed if I am either late for something, mess up on what I am doing or working on, or stuff don't work or break on me by accident. People tell me not to get all worked up over it and that it is not a big deal when I think otherwise.

I get easily stressed over small things. I remember one time I had arranged to meet a friend to go for dinner at a local restaurant which does really great spaghetti bolognaise (which is one of my all time favourite meals anyway). I knocked on her door on the arranged day and she told me that she had forgotten about our arrangement and had to babysit her little brother so we had to eat at her place instead and this really disappointed me. The thing is, when it's something that small that stresses you out, most people can't get why it affects you so much.