How to cope with anxieties living away from home?
I've been living in a shared house with other students as I am, and this has been over 3 months and I have settled in well. But I feel as the months have gone on and we have done less social things as a group, I have grown more anxious being in the house and it is affecting my happiness.
One thing is that I am very sensitive to noise and although the house I'm in is often quiet it is still the case. This especially is case with the person in room next to me. Her habit is to run up and down stairs every day and I am getting a bit exhausted with the same thing that happens each day it is overloading me a little.
Another is about uncertainty when people will be back. Before I moved I lived with family, and they did not leave house much so it wasn't uncertain when they would be coming back. But I never know in this house when they do and its just completely random and I don't know if its going to be really late or really early and it just worries me probably more than it should.
Probably the biggest problem I have is I get extremely focused on other people's emotions and feelings, and let that affect me. And this is case especially with person next to me. I some reason feel dread when they come back because I don't know if they will be in a unhappy mood or not and I let their actions affect mine. And I get very anxious even just to walk up the stairs because I don't know whether she will be in or not and I get a lot of social anxiety and self conciousness in house.
Can anyone help me address some of these feelings I have? I do enjoy freedom away from parents but I feel more anxious being here because of the above issues.
_________________
Diagnosed with Aspergers syndrome (mildly)
I can relate, last year I shared a house and experienced most of the anxiety related experiences you have described.
Things I done to cope were: support from a health professional to manage the anxiety symptoms, buying noise suppression headphones, learning my housemates routine and scheduling my alone time for when she was out, and if I didn't know when she would be back I would estimate that I had at least 30 minutes to myself and then sometimes I would go out after the 30 minutes, just to have that feeling of certainty.
Living by myself is much better, but that wasn't an option last year.
I tried to memorize the people's timetables in my house too but it is very unpredictable and they come back really random times, sometimes really late and other really early. Back in my parents there was not this uncertainty and for some reason this causes me to be stressed out. I guess I have to deal with it, anyone else feel same way and is it just natural thing living with strangers as an autistic?
_________________
Diagnosed with Aspergers syndrome (mildly)
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